If you read my
earlier PowerBook 100 article, you know that the hard drive in my
PB 100 wouldn't work, so it loads
System 6.08L into a RAM disk.
Well, not anymore. Sure, 6.08L is great and fast, but I needed
System 7. And I also needed better portability. It's bulky to carry the
external floppy drive around - and the floppy drive is noisy.
So I decided to get this PowerBook running.
Low End Mac's PowerBook 100
I started with the battery issue. The switch was not a big problem;
I simply removed it. So now I could have the battery again.
Next, I went for the hard drive issue. I once again tried the drive
from the dead PowerBook with no luck. Then I saw a big card next to the
RAM card. I never took "PowerBook 100 Guts 101", so I don't really know
what it was, but I guess it was the processor card or the cache card.
Anyway, I pulled this card from the dead PowerBook and put it in the
working one.
Now the drive didn't rattle like before, so I booted from a
Utilities disk. No luck. I put the old drive back in. Still no
luck.
So I put in the drive that didn't rattle and did a PRAM zap. I then
booted from the Utilities disk again, and to my surprise, Macintosh HD
showed up on the desktop!
I formatted the drive and put in the Installation disk.
10 minutes later, my beloved PowerBook was running 7.0.1 with
incredible speed. It has a stunning 4 MB of RAM and a huge 20 MB
hard drive. Not much, but it works. And I love it.
I tend to like the "oddball" Apples. Sure, my PowerBook 150 is
great, and that
Indigo iBook with 320 MB of RAM and AirPort is nice. But still, I
prefer my PowerBook 100 and the stock Graphite iBook over these
machines.
The PowerBook 100 is similar to the MacBook Air in many ways. There
were three different 'Books at that time; the midrange PowerBook 140 (MacBook) and the high-end
PowerBook 170 (MacBook Pro). And
finally the ultraportable PowerBook 100 (MacBook Air). Both need an
external drive to install software; and they also lack some ports. The
100 had no modem port, just like the Air lacks FireWire and built-in
ethernet.
Still, I love them both. If I could choose between a 17" hi-res
MacBook Pro and the Air, I'd go for the Air. Why? Because it's so
unique. It's cool. It sticks out from the rest of the Apple notebooks.
It's in a class of it's own. (I'd get the SuperDrive, though - I can't
live without an optical drive!)
If you buy a PowerBook 100, upgrade the RAM to 4 MB, pronto!
2 MB is not enough under System 7.1. With 2 MB of RAM, you
can only run 6.08L and possibly 7.0. 4 MB is such a huge difference, at
least under 7.1.
Just like the PowerBook 150, the 100 is fairly limited. Still, it's
an excellent notebook. And it's cheap too. I got mine for free, :
)
So what's my conclusion on this one? Well, it's very very tiny, and
it's cheap. Oh, and did I mention it integrates just fine with the
other Macs in my
Vintage Mac Network?
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