PB 1400/250

[jwmcfarlin]

Picked up a PB1400, 64MB with a 250MHz NuTech accelerator--equipment was in pretty good shape. It is running 9.1 right now and I am in the middle of reconfiguring it with a CF card. Details down in the PPC Forum.

Best,

John

 

[Byrd]

That's nice John - it is a 603e CPU or G3? Either way, nice boost over a lowly 166Mhz max speed.

JB

 

[jwmcfarlin]

I didn't even ask until you asked. It's a G3. Woo-Hoo!

Best,

John

 

[Strimkind]

Very nice. I have a PB 1400c with a 233 in it. The only thing I wish I had was the internal video board.

Now that you are doing a CF card upgrade, what else do you have planned for it?

 

[jwmcfarlin]

I have a WaveLan Gold PCMCIA card, and a Global Village 56K Modem/Ethernet card (no dongle however). The optional external video card only puts out 800x600, so I am kinda meh on chasing that down...though I believe that Wegener Media has the video card for about $30 if you want one.

What I am working on now is getting the WaveLan card working. It seems to be eluding me but I am sure I'll get it figured out. I'm giving Diablo another run, just a little at a time. I'm trying out MpegDec. I am considering a larger CF Card and partitioning it with Japanese OS 8.6 on it (I'm looking for it).

The PB I picked up only had the 8x CD-Rom module, and the bezel mounts are broken though not so badly that it couldn't have a spot of gorilla glue applied to the to the attachment points and allowed to expand just that little bit necessary to secure it. I pulled the 12x from the first 1400 I purchased and all is well either way.

Best,

John

 

[J English Smith]

Oooh, I'm envious! Those faster boards must be great. I thought I'd track down one of the Sonnet boards a long time ago, but one's never come close to a price point I can justify, alas.

I think Wegener still has the 8x bezels if you decide to go the replacement route. The 8x drives do have the advantage of being better built than the old original Apple 12x. Most of my 12x drives have been replaced with 24x ones that the bezel will fit.

 

[jwmcfarlin]

You have to keep your eye out, but it only took about a month of looking before I saw this PB1400 on eBay. It didn't have the highly desirable higher-end Sonnet accelerator, but just going to G3 is pretty good in and of itself in terms of one of these older machines--as large a jump as 386 to 486 or 030 to 040 I'd say. I have to admit that if you're longer on cash than time or if you're in a bad spot geographically (probably not a lot of old high-end Apple equipment floating around garage sales in Quincy, Ohio, for example), eBay is your option of first and last resort. It went for just shy of $50, and had the RAM to boot, but I think folks were put off by the bezel being broken and the lack of photos and detail.

Best,

John

 

[ClassicHasClass]

The real bummer is that Sonnet is officially out of the 466s, so what's out there is what's out there.

 

[jwmcfarlin]

Gah. That's terrible. Oh, well. I guess this whole thing will take patience then. But more to the point of the endeavor you're involved in (Classilla), memory, not processor is the wall that a 1400 has to deal with.

Best,

John

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Yes, definitely the low ceiling of the 1400 impairs Classilla, but every release of it is tested on my 1400+G3/466 at minimum memory settings just to stress test it a little. RAM Doubler at least works well, and better than Apple VM. Certainly if more RAM could be crammed in there, I/O would definitely improve with caching.