"Market" for old macs?

[Cameron Kaiser]

> Well, a local FreeCycler in my area is giving up a working mac 
> powerbook 5300 series (trying to find out if it is the better/more 
> loaded 'ce' version). I'm thinking of picking it up since it also 
> comes with power supply and spare battery that the owner says is good.
> Can anyone tell me their experiences with such a machine? I believe 
> it meets the 10yr rule (or is close to meeting it) as the 5300 line 
> was out in 1995. Does it take standard PC (PCMCIA) cards or does it 
> take mac variant PC cards? What is it's upgrade path? Can the OS be 
> upped to something more recent/stable (as I've been told it started 
> off with an OS 7.2.x version that was horrible)? Would Linux be a 
> better choice over mac OS 9.x/10.x on it? Just looking for first hand 
> experiences/knowledge.

Ah, the 5300. I had one for a few months which was supposed to be my backup
laptop, but I got an iBook instead and my 1400 is now my backup. I ended up
finding the 5300 a new one and the owner is very happy with it.

It takes standard 16-bit PCMCIA. NO CARDBUS! Drivers are required, however.
For my 5300 I used an EtherLink III PCMCIA card and the driver I maintain
here: http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/mac/enet3c589/

It has no real upgrade path, unlike the 1400 that can be upgraded all the way
to a G3. You can upgrade the RAM with a single proprietary stick, and there
are still occasionally used sticks or NOS sticks for sale.

The OS can be maxed to 9.1, but I don't recommend this -- too slow on the 603,
and you will need a "lot" (read: at least 32MB) of RAM. Plus, you'd need to
turn VM on even with the RAM near maximum, and this slows it down more. On
the 5300, I wouldn't exceed 8.1.

It won't ever run OS X -- not possible. The NuBus machines aren't supported
by it. For the same reason, it cannot run NetBSD -- it *may* run NuBus Linux,
but its hardware support may be spotty. When I had my 5300, I ran 8.1 (and
it had 48MB of RAM).

It's a nice little PowerBook, but be aware of its limits. The 1400 is my
favourite of that range, because it has a G3 option, a fantastic keyboard,
stackable RAM slots, CD-ROM and (1400c) a wonderful active matrix screen.
Nevertheless, the 5300 is still very capable within its operating range.

-- 
--------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ ---
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Maybe this world is another planet's hell. -- Aldous Huxley ----------------