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PowerBook 190cs

bizzle

6502
Got a PowerBook 190cs today with 8MB RAM, 500MB hard drive, about 300 floppies with software, webcam, Stylewriter printer, original sales invoices, all previous repair paperwork, original manual and a ton of other paperwork I didn't even look at yet. The machine works great! Only thing wrong with it is the I/O cover flap on the back is broken and taped on. I looked on ebay and there isn't a single one for sale. What are those things worth these days?

 
When they are available, they go for about $13-15. You might check with Wegener Media. Their electronic part costs are high, but sometimes the trim part prices are not too bad. This part is I believe interchangeable with all the 5300c/5300cs/5300ce cases.

This port door was a bad design - they break again, even when you are careful with them. I have a 5300 that was never out of my office and one day the right side just went when I gently opened it. So...you might just remove the taped part and live with the exposed ports...

 
I am not worried about the door, I'll probably never even use this machine. The price I was asking is what would one expect to pay for one of these if they wanted to buy it. When I said I looked on ebay, I meant there wasn't any 190cs computers on there, at all. I know they aren't very rare or very good, but I have no idea what they are in value. I know I wouldn't pay more than $20.

 
Biz - I saw a 5300cs go for $120 on eB the other day, with some software and extras. Wegener was selling 5300s for about $50 for a long time, they may still be. I would say a good condition 190 with a battery and power supply would go for between $30 to $60, generally. But that 5300 price may signal that these units are getting rarer and hence more prized.

I have seen a lot fewer 1400c models on eBay of late, too. Glad I did my buying when I did.

 
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Happy?

 
Very. good to see a computer in such a good shape. When I bought my 190 back in 1999, I had so many issues with the DC Jack. I didn't know how to repair/replace them at the time so I had to depend on my dad to keep re-soldering the jack. You need to watch that btw.

I got so ticked with my PB 190 when it broke, I threw it across the concrete shattering it. Then I realized that the hard drive contained my homework for the last 5 days that I had to turn in. Talk about a bad realization. And with an IDE HDD, no USB adapters at the time, and my other machine was either an iMac (my mom's) or a PowerMac 7200 that I bought for $200 at that time, I didn't have a way to get the work back.

I was able to stay up all night on saturday (I was in the last of my junior high days) and I did about 3/4ths of the work over, but when it came to sunday, I slept all day, and monday I had to hand in what I had.

I almost didn't go to grade 9 because of low grades. That screwed me over.

I have a question, and maybe someone can help me with the part. My Powerbook 540 is showing an image, but the top half the screen is fine. The bottom half, maybe every 5 pixels, a line starting halfway on the screen stretching to the bottom is like a solid white.

is that a cable issue, or do I need to replace the whole screen?

I can sometimes get it go away, but the screen also has control issues. I sometimes have it increase in contracts, and I really gotta mess with it to where it's usable again.

I have an older grey-scale screen I can put on it, but I have had many issues with the machine. Hopefully i can fix it. It's a nice powerbook

 
DC connector is a non-issue because as I said already in this thread, I am not going to actually USE this machine.

If someone wants it, offer me a trade of something more useful (to me). I'd probably hang onto this if I had ethernet but I am not going to invest any money in it with any upgrades.

 
I paid $30 for a 190 in pristine cosmetic condition last month. This was an eBay find and was in perfect working order except for the battery. If I recall it has 40MB RAM (haven't really played with it as much as I would have liked to yet).

What OS is on your 190cs? (I installed 8.1 on mine).

 
I installed 7.5.2 (original build it shipped with). It's the only thing I have floppies for. The guy actually gave me three sets of those discs so far. I haven't been through all the floppies yet so there could be more.

 
What's more amazing is that all those install floppies were still good. Out of my nine sets of 7.1 and 7.0.1 disks, there are at least four that have one bad disk out of six/seven.

I had to use an AppleCD 300e via the SCSI port (hopefully you got that adapter) to install 8.1.

I'm not sure if it really existed, but I heard once they were trying to develop a mini-CD to put inside this series of PowerBook. Of course, minidiscs never really took off anywhere, but I seem to recall these PBs being designed for future expansion like that.

 
The first set I tried the first floppy was bad so I didn't bother with that set and went to the next one. That set worked fine.

 
If you take good care of the disks its definitely possible for them to last this long. All the original system and application install disks from my LCIII are all still good. I've even come across disks from the 1980s that are still good.

 
I agree with LCIII. I still have my System 7.1 install disks (with the original box/manuals) and they all worked perfectly when I upgraded my SE from System 6.0.8, in addition to a load of old 5.25" Commodore software/boot disks, which all seem to still work. Floppies, like any other magnetically-recorded sources, are a hit, and miss.

 
Sorry, I meant LCGuy. Just make duplicates of any floppies you get (especially if they are original Apple disks, and you will be alright). :beige:

 
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