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| PowerBook 540c - Did a thing (OS 8.6) | |
| Posted by: frontein1 on 2025-12-17 15:00:42 Although I like to stay true to my 68K roots, I recently acquired a PB 540c with the Apple 603e 100MHz upgrade card. So decided to take this up to OS 8.6, because why not? 🙂  | |
| Posted by: croissantking on 2025-12-17 15:10:01 Although I don't have much interest in running PPC on a Blackbird, seeing 8.5+ on one always seems so exotic. Why not try 9.0.4? I'd be interested to see some benchmarks with Norton System Info 3.2, I guess performance is going to be even less than a PB5300/100 considering the 16MHz peripheral bus (vs the 5300's 25MHz). | |
| Posted by: jmacz on 2025-12-18 00:24:17 Yeah that looks pretty cool. I also finally got a PowerPC card but I am still running 7.6.1. I think I will always be a System 6/7 person. | |
| Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2025-12-18 00:34:16 Does the bus-speed make the PB540c noticeably slow? Try running Marathon and see how that goes. | |
| Posted by: twelvetone12 on 2025-12-18 00:50:46 I had (and still have) a 520c with the nupowr 117, and boy it is slow with 8.5+! The original '040 with 8 feels way faster! | |
Posted by: croissantking on 2025-12-18 03:38:38Does the bus-speed make the PB540c noticeably slow? Try running Marathon and see how that goes.It would be the same 33MHz CPU bus as on a PowerBook 5300, 1400 or Duo 2300. So RAM and ROM access should be identical clock for clock. According to the Dev Notes for these models the 16-bit ‘030 peripheral bus runs slower on the 500 series (16MHz) vs on the PB190 or the above mentioned PPCs (25MHz). So, I’d expect Marathon to run slower than on a PB5300/100, for example, since it wouldn’t be able to push as many pixels out. | |
| Posted by: frontein1 on 2025-12-18 14:56:19 I am interested in pushing this to 9.0.4 next. But can certainly say it is noticeably slow with 8.6, which isn't a surprise when considering the slow bus speeds. I think maybe what I want to see is if it would be possible to watch a YouTube video somehow on a Blackbird. I haven't actually done much research to see if anyone has tried this with WowTube, or a more modern browser, etc. Anyone have experience with this? | |
Posted by: croissantking on 2025-12-18 14:58:25see is if it would be possible to watch a YouTube video somehow on a BlackbirdYou’re bonkers! You’re off your rocker! | |
Posted by: frontein1 on 2025-12-18 20:36:57always seems so exotic. You’re bonkers! You’re off your rocker!Yes and Yes to all this @croissantking! Here it is now with 9.0.4. Taking baby steps.  | |
| Posted by: jmacz on 2025-12-18 23:03:07 🤯🫣 | |
| Posted by: volvo242gt on 2025-12-19 03:28:12 Next, take it to 9.1, then use OS 9 Helper to upgrade it to 9.2.2. | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2025-12-19 10:41:28 Then sit it beside a Mac Mini running System 7.0! 😀 | |
Posted by: frontein1 on 2025-12-19 20:09:17Next, take it to 9.1, then use OS 9 Helper to upgrade it to 9.2.2.Yep one step at a time. Up to 9.1. Now moving on to 9.2.2. For no particular reason but the fun of it 🙂  | |
Posted by: volvo242gt on 2025-12-20 10:46:49Yep one step at a time. Up to 9.1. Now moving on to 9.2.2. For no particular reason but the fun of it 🙂Nice. | |
| Posted by: tr3nch3d on 2025-12-21 15:03:31 What kind of medium are you using to upgrade each time? All I had to upgrade from 7.5.5 to 8.0 was the built in Floppy drive and it was quite the headache 😅. | |
| Posted by: finkmac on 2025-12-22 10:19:42 presumably scsi | |
| Posted by: frontein1 on 2025-12-22 10:36:59 Yes 100%, go with BlueSCSI v2 if you can. Makes doing stuff like this just so much easier. Then on macintoshgarden.org, you can easily get all the install media up through OS 9.2.2. | |
| Posted by: croissantking on 2026-02-04 19:31:00 Did you hack 9.2.2 onto it @frontein1 ? | |
Posted by: frontein1 on 2026-02-04 20:53:23Did you hack 9.2.2 onto it @frontein1 ?I made progress but then got distracted by other shiny objects 🙂 I'll pull it out this week and see where I left it. I am determined to make it happen! | |
| Posted by: CC_333 on 2026-02-07 17:22:26 Even more radical would be to get some sort of early Mac OS X running on it. One of the DPs, perhaps? And 40 MB of RAM isn't necessarily a problem; Mac OS X 10.0 and 10.1 officially required 128 MB, but could install and run on 64. I once ran it on my Rev C Tray Loader iMac with 32 MB of RAM. Yes, thirty two megabytes. It was slow as h*** and thrashed the hard drive so hard I was worried it might die, but it actually worked! Granted, this was on a Mac with a 266 MHz G3 running on a 66 MHz bus (compared to 100 MHz on a 16 MHz bus(!) ). c | |
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