Apple Powerbook 5300CS

Preamble

I’ve assembled this laptop from 2 non-working ones that were sold on ebay very cheap (<$50). One was quite smashed on arrival, I don’t know if it was delivery issues or it was like this from the beginning, but the hardware was working perfectly. I’ve used another laptop that was fully dead, but the casings were in very good condition, so that’s how I got this machine.

Hardware

I think back in ‘22 I didn’t finish recapping stuff that is inside of the display; might be that’s why it started showing some vertical lines on the top half of the screen.

Apart from this issue the laptop was quite nice to use.

I also got a Farallon PCMCIA ethernet card that was somewhat tricky to use: it only supports 10mbit networks and cannot even negotiate a connection on 100 or 1000mbit LAN at all; so I had to hook it to the laptop that was set to provide only 10mbit connection and worked as an internet bridge essentially.

┌─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CPU         │ PowerPC 603e @ 100 MHz                    │
│ GPU         │ yes                                       │
│ RAM         │ 32 Mb                                     │
│ Display     │ 10.4" 256 colors 640x480                  │
│ Storage     │ Hard drive, floppy drive, 2 PCMCIA slots  │
└─────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────┘

Software

Macintosh System Software 7.5.2 installed, I think I even did a fresh install in ‘22.

I’ve used Wallops for IRC

Screenshots

Photos