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Resurrecting a Wallstreet PDQ

quinterro

quinterro

68020
I bought a Wallstreet PDQ 300mhz at a thrift store last year for $35. It has a bad screen hinge, dead PRAM and main batteries. It has sat on a shelf for most of a year because I did not want to damage the display cable.

I finally ordered a set of hinges for it last week and am eagerly their arrival. I can do without the main battery for a while - my Lombard's battery works great if I need a portable Mac - but where would be a recommended place to get a PRAM battery?

 
Wallstreets in my experience are the least problematic of all my powerbooks without a functional backup battery, so long as they have a main battery. I'd advise you to put some money into a main battery and see how you get on first.

If you were to go the extra mile, the backup battery could be made from coin cells fairly easily, and much more cheaply than one could be bought ready-made. Buy some extra ones, and you have the basis for a backup battery in any powerbook.

The wiring and configuration will also almost certainly be in your machine in the form of the dead one.

 
The major issues you have with a dead PRAM is battery swapping. If you pull the charged main battery out for any reason it will not turn on again from battery power, you have to plug it into the wall and then it will run from the battery pack. I don't use my Wallstreets away from the house much so that is not a big problem to me.

The PRAM is charged while the system is plugged in (takes a day or so to fully charge a new one), so any coin cells you use need to have a diode to keep them from getting charged or they will tend to blow up. If you look on ebay long enough you will find cheap new PRAM batteries, the only issue is ripping apart the machine to install one.

 
Using non-rechargeable cells for a PDQ's internal backup batt seems silly to me since the machine can and will sleep off that batt while you swap the main one or move it from outlet to outlet.

I just ask, what is the point if it is not rechargeable? It is only useful for super quickly swapping the batt and that is it, then you have to replace it soon after anyway. Seems better to just do it properly the first time and use it like it was supposed to be used to me.

 
Who said anything about conventional coin cells?

You need VL2330 cells, which are not the sort of things you buy from camera shops and supermarkets. They can, however, be bought from specialist suppliers for relatively little, and even appear on eBay from time to time if the usual electronics suppliers do not take your fancy. They can also helpfully be found with soldering tabs if you take the trouble to look for them.

That is all there is in the backup battery of most mid-to-late-90s PowerBooks, apart from the wiring. The 2400c is a rare exception, having a different arrangement altogether, but then, it was unique in lots of ways.

Wallstreets, though not immune from anomalies related to a dead backup battery, are sanguine enough in life without one even for serious use. A very occasional power management reset can be necessary, but a Wallstreet will not give you the kind of trouble a Pismo, a 2400c, a Duo, or a 5300 is prone to pose for you without one. I used a Wallstreet daily for years with a dead backup battery, wrote a book on one, lost nothing of what I wrote as far as I recall, and thus found it virtually trouble free. Conversely, I just today used a Pismo with a dead backup battery, and lost hours of work when it refused to wake from sleep; it required a hard restart, presumably because the power management got confused. Must ... fix ... Pismo.

Unfortunately, a Wallstreet takes six of those little cells. The Pismo only takes four.

 
The PRAM battery arrived around Thursday and I installed it today. I forgot how much of a pain it was to replace it. So far it works well, but I need to take it apart one more time to make sure the cooling fan is free of obstructions. If it is powered on after being disconnected for a while the fan spins up to high speed and it sounds like something is making contact with the fan blades.

Currently it has 384MB RAM, a 10GB hard disk and MacOS 9.2.2. I'm using Classilla to post.

 
So far so good. Everything appears to work except the DVD-ROM drive does not like some CDs. I tried to put the original pressed disc for Power Pete in to install and an icon never appeared on the desktop for the disk.

Any ideas? Does it need cleaning?

 
I had this problem with my Lombard's DVD drive as well. I just had to swap with a CD drive to read them. Never found out why the DVD acted that way.

 
Could be. It's not in the greatest shape and appears to have had a rough life. Strangely enough the MacOS 9 install disc worked.

I do have a USB PC Card and an external CD-RW drive I can try.

 
CD and DVD have 2 totally separate laser diodes. they are most likely in the same diode housing though.

Reason: CDs and DVDs use 2 different wavelengths of light.

 
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