Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Mercury On-The-Go FW800+USB2 up to 1.0TB. Bus Powered, no external power supply needed. Macworld ‘Editor’s Choice’, CNET ‘Very Good’ Starting from $99.97, 500GB $159.99. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Classic Macs in the Intel Age

Bringing a PowerBook 100 Back from Nearly Dead

- 2008.04.09 - Tip Jar

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .

If you read my article about my vintage Mac network, you probably know that my PowerBook 100s won't work well.

PowerBook 100
Low End Mac's PowerBook 100

Well, I've come a long way. It seemed that if the battery was in, a little switch was pressed and the screen started flickering to later crash. I simply took out the battery, and the unit powered up and booted from a System 6.08L floppy. A funny thing about 6.08L is that it identifies the 100 as a Macintosh Portable! System 7.0.1 wouldn't do that.

When I opened HD SC Utility, the program told me that it "Could not access the disk because the disk refused to respond." Weird.

I now turned the 100 off and plugged in the other PowerBook 100. The computer made some clicking noises and then stopped. The previous owner told me that one didn't work; he suspected an internal power failure. After plugging it in again and pressing Space a few times, the "Bong" actually came, only to be followed by a Sad Mac a few seconds later. It hasn't powered on since.

I figured the problem on the working 100 had to be the hard drive, so I took the drive from the broken PowerBook and put it in the working one. Same issue. I couldn't swap logic boards, because the other one obviously had a problem.

I then took the drive out and put it in a PowerBook 165c. It booted System 7.1 just fine.

Luckily there was lots of space left on the 6.08L startup disk. About 400 KB. So I put TeachText in there and got a great idea.

My PB 100 now loads 6.08L (with TeachText) into a RAM Disk, so I can take the floppy out and put another one in. There's lots of space left in the RAM, since I have a whopping 4 MB! I also managed to hook it up over LocalTalk to the printer and the other Macs on my network, and it can now access the Quadra 610's "huge" 450 MB drive (plus the 200 MB system disk)!

I emailed the guy who gave me the Macs, and he said he'd make a list of all his Mac stuff and send it to me. He's just happy they will get a good home! He also had an external SCSI drive and an adapter to make it work with the PowerBook.

This PowerBook is really silent now. The only noise is when the floppy reads into RAM. Afterwards, completely silent. Like the good old Compaq thin clients at school - except that this is actually a good machine!

Conclusion: a PowerBook without a hard drive can be as good as a PowerBook with a hard drive, if you spend a little time working on it.

But this isn't the end of my work on the Vintage Mac Network. Next time: Getting Ethernet on the Classic II and trying to connect it to my network of G4s and G3s.

Discuss Carl Nygren's articles on Info-Mac.

Go to the index of articles by Carl Nygren.

Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.

Recent My Turn articles

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.