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Macintosh Portable
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2010-04-13 22:17:58
3.5" IDE hard drive, home-made SCSI cable, 2400 baud modem card and RAM card.
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2010-04-13 22:48:53
Time to re-cell the battery pack!
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2010-04-15 19:03:58
Seconded on the carry case, and I wouldn't mind having a set of manuals either.
Actually, the black carry-case I've got! I was talking about the Case Plastics and a Numeric Keypad for . . . :🙂

. . . you guessed it . . . 😉 . . . another HACK! :approve:

Posted by: ClassicHasClass on 2010-04-15 19:49:44
I've got the RAM card and modem card also. Tomorrow when I'm out of town I'll try to get that new PS and see if I can resurrect it.
Posted by: Bunsen on 2010-04-16 01:50:51
Gee, that LCD is nicer than I expected.
Posted by: Paralel on 2010-04-16 03:07:12
Yeah, you have to admit, considering the time period, it's a pretty good looking screen.
Posted by: H3NRY on 2010-04-16 22:01:05
Supposedly that's the industry's first active matrix LCD. It certainly beats the B&W LCDs Apple shipped in the early PowerBooks. It also represented half the cost of the machine. I would be interested how it compares with Apple's first LCD, the one which they sold for the Apple IIc. I've never seen one of those except in pictures.

That is a nice looking Portable. Mine need the space bar retro-brighted, too. It seems Apple's space bars yellow worse than any other part of the case.

Anyone have a fix for the little rubber foot inserts becoming brittle?
Posted by: Anonymous Freak on 2010-04-16 22:32:33
I find that my 170's LCD looks just as good as my Portable's. (Well, they did three years ago, anyway; the last time my 170 was out of storage, and the last time my Portable worked...)

The IIc Flat Panel Display was terrible. REALLY low contrast, insanely difficult to see. (Yes, I used one way back when it was new. My high school computer instructor had one to go with his IIc with battery pack; he later upgraded to a Macintosh Portable!)
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2010-04-17 07:58:24
Yeah, I paid something like $500 for the privilege of owning a 2c FPD and I think within an hour or two, I had already yanked off the clear plastic lens which made it a bit worse. It was best in full sunlight but would quickly overheat, so this wasn't a very practical solution. I recall Zenith having the first of the new-generation LCDs which were both reasonably priced and had good contrast. They called the technology Supertwist something-or-other and you can identify them by their greenish-blue hue.
Posted by: ClassicHasClass on 2010-04-17 22:54:16
H3NRY's suggestion was right on the money. After a bit of fiddling, Akane the Portable comes right up. The magic numbers were 9V and 3A. Hard disk was initially recalcitrant, but seemed to overcome its stiction and boots 6.0.8 like a champ.

Akane is mute, however, which makes me think some caps are blown anyway. But she is working.
Posted by: digitalrampage on 2010-06-19 04:55:50
Interesting thread..

I've got close to 2 dozen mac portables, I'm lucky to have more then 2 of these running concurrently. My poor 5126 just died, after years of service. I opened here up after her last service in 2007 (some new caps) to find she was leaking :disapprove: Cleaned her up but still getting a 03001300 00001FFA Sad mac 🙁 8-o

I'm going to try and replace all the surface mount caps with tantalums in the hope thats the end of the woes.

As for the mac portable with the IDE Hard disk, has this got a scsi ide adaptor on it, I dont get how you got it working?
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2010-06-19 19:59:35
As for the mac portable with the IDE Hard disk, has this got a scsi ide adaptor on it, I dont get how you got it working?
Yes, SCSI-to-IDE bridge card and home made 34-50 pin SCSI ribbon cable. Hard drive is an official Apple service part and came with bridge card already attached to the drive. Actually any 750M+ 2.5" SCSI drive you find is probably just such a beast. The hardest thing to find was actually the 2.5" -> 3.5" SCSI adapter bracket.
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