Though it hasn't made its way to me from eBay just yet, I finally snagged a 1400, and had a few questions (hope it makes it...). Sorry for the deluge of questions.
hey, I think I was bidding on that, I casually wanted an active display, and was going to sell the rest. But I got sidetracked near the close.
Anybody know a cheap place for a G3 upgrade short of eBay? Looks like the Sonnettech 466 MHz G3 is the only one commonly available, and that's $270+!!!
umm... using the product configurator on the www.sonnettech.com site, that is the only one left from the mfr. Ebay might turn up some of the 512k/250 or 300something G3s though, for around $150. But 1400 stuff seems a little scarcer recently. Or you could email Sonnet and ask if they have a refurb or a return.
Didn't see much about 1400's and G3s in the list archives. Without something cheaper, it looks like it's going to cost me $110 (battery) + $50 (second 24 meg RAM chip) + $20 (802.11b drivers) + $300 (G3) + $100 (1400 itself) = $580 to get me where I want to go, and that's a bit steep. Might as well have gotten a clamshell/I'll be using the 117 MHz 603e for a while.
well, yah :) and you left out the 20gig HD. But I'll buy the TFT display from your for $70 :) (the price of the last BIN active display) :) If you look you should find a G3 card on ebay for a lot less than the 466, maybe search the past auctions and see what the prices ran.
Anybody with an upgraded 1400? Are Sonnet's claims of "30% more battery life with upgrade" close to accurate? That'd be a pretty neat fringe benefit
It might be a little longer life, but most people didn't post about anything like 30% that I ever saw. I have the 400/1M accel. and get about 40 min on my old battery (I need to replace the cells, sometime).
Any place particularly good (or bad) for PB batteries? I'm a little afraid of ordering a battery some place has had sitting around for years and would like to ensure I get a [relatively] new one.
That is a good concern. A good idea might be to get a known dead one (or use yours) and refurb it yourself, if you can find the specs for new cells, or the BatteriesPlus people can do it for you.
Any recommendations for a USB PC card?
There is not a USB solution for 1400's or 5300's. USB 1.0 (and 2.0) cards need cardbus (32 bit PCMCIA) and these models cannot do that. A recurring thread here has said that maybe once there was a USB card that was not cardbus but if it ever existed, then there's the issue of MAc drivers :) anyway USB will not happen on these model laptops.
Also be aware that they are not SCSI manager 4.3 compliant which affects CD-R authoring and some other SCSI stuff.
Anybody try the IOXperts drivers for "generic" wireless cards? (http://www.ioxperts.com/pr/2003/0320.html) I've got a Speedstream I could steal from a WinXP box, and for $20 the drivers sound like a pretty good deal.
That might have come up, checked the archives for IOExperts? I recommend the Orinoco Gold, works well with my 1400. You might have to use a slightly older version of the drivers from their web site, I'm not sure where the new releases are at.
Any other general pointers? I've owned a PB 150 and now have an iBook 500 (which I'm selling soon; thus the 1400 purchase), so I suppose I'm just looking for general 1400 pointers.
I like my 1400, the G3upgrade and the 20 gig drive make it nice for portable MP3, digital photos, and Word etc. for my take-home stuff. Plus I have a SCSI zip and Cd-R drive for it. With the G3 and the big HD (and 60 RAM) I can even lightly tweek digital images, although the nicer display than my cs would be helpful here. And the wireless is super nice. Perhaps think about getting it toys like wireless card, big HD, etc that you can pull out and put in a newer laptop later. If you have the 12X CD-ROm drive, you can google for a list members web page- there's a model of Toshiba CD-R that will fit in that (and only that) CD model, although perhaps best results occur with Toast 3.5 rather than 5.x.
It's handy to get a $15 to $19 CF or Smartmedia PC Card adapter to offload images from digital cameras, and that's something else you can use elsewhere, too. You can use a cheap 3COM 589 series PC card ethernet, with a patched Farallon driver, for cheap ethernet (that card should be about $15 max).
And be aware that buying a 24meg stackable RAM card might not work with your current 24 meg card, there can be different specs and for stacking with predictable success people often buy them already paired (the 48 meg single modules are rather spendy, if you can find even them). Oh and if you want external video, you have to buy a special internal (non-PC Card), and only the Apple 8 bit card is compatible with stacked RAM, the 16 bit Newer card takes up one stackable spot.
HTH. Sorry it's not all sunshine.
Brian --
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