68kMLA Classic Interface
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| Click here to select a new forum. | | PB 170 | Posted by: juan123 on 2008-04-15 08:58:26
Specs: 80mb HD, 8mb RAM, OS 7.6.1 .
I'm wondering, what uses can this laptop be used for? What do you guys use your laptops that are this old for?
| Posted by: JRL on 2008-04-15 09:07:52
I would:
1:wipe the drive and install 7.1: IMO it's not going to be very enjoyable in 7.6.1, which can at some points, be very resource intensive for a '030.
2:install Ram Doubler.(optional)
3:install Copy Doubler.(optional)
4:install Disk Doubler/Auto Doubler.(optional)
5:install After Dark/Pyro/Moire/Dark Side (screen savers)(optional)
6:install Macintosh Drag n' Drop.(optional)
There, you've got a very useful machine.
For games, you can go to the Macintosh Garden
I use my PB 160(12 MB RAM, 120 MB HD) for playing Deja Vu, typing with MS Works 3.0, ClarisWorks, and Word 4.0D, drawing with MacDraw II, and (slight) programming with True BASIC 2.5.
| Posted by: equill on 2008-04-15 09:32:33
I have a PB 160, in similar trim to JRL's: 12MB RAM, 120MB HDD, but with a customized System 7.1.3 (trawl the forum for discussion), which is happier on a 25MHz 68030 than on a 68000 Mac.
I have also a PB 180: 14MB RAM, 500MB HDD and OS 7.6.1, judiciously pruned, and which runs quite satisfactorily with the 33MHz '030 CPU and an FPU.
What you make of the middle PB 100 series depends on your taste. JRL's recommendations make sense, but my PBs are writing machines, kept mostly as representatives of their era rather than as web crawlers or Mathematica tablets, and because the 160 was the first PB that I owned.
de
| Posted by: JRL on 2008-04-15 09:40:20
My other PB 160 also runs 7.6 with 8 MB of RAM, but like equill, I would strongly recommend trimming the unneeded sections of 7.6.1 (ex: Cache Switch). Also, Mac games and apps (ex: Word 5.1) are more commonplace these days on eBay. Likewise, Ram Doubler and all of the other doubler stuff are optional, but if you are interested in better performance here, you should consider the doublers.
| Posted by: juan123 on 2008-04-15 10:27:24
yeah....i do have speed and ram doubler installed......they help a bunch
| Posted by: tomlee59 on 2008-04-15 17:18:28
The 170 can handle slow web browsing (the text-only wannabe68k is perfect for this task). Shufflepuck is wonderful on the 170 (the active-matrix screen does wonders), and word-processing is similarly a pleasure. Low-end compressed audio is also possible, using SoundApp (for example) to create IMA-encoded tracks from CDs. At 4:1 compression, the quality is surprisingly good, and at 8:1, still quite acceptable.
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