Adventures of the eBay PowerBook 3400C

[Project Alice]

Well, this one isn’t going to be as good.

Here’s the right corner which was destroyed in shipping.

I pulled it apart to get the HDD out and found a couple other issues. Firstly, the keyboard. It would power on (and it did actually chime I’m not sure why I thought it didn’t) when I would plug the power in. But from there the only thing that would happen is I would hear the hard disk spinning up and down. This ribbon cable on the keyboard was broken, and I’m positive it was like that before I took it out. I was hardly pulling on it and I noticed it was ripped. So that could explain partially of why pressing the power button didn’t seem to do anything.

This next part is pretty bad.
As you can see the battery full on exploded. And it’s hard to see in this picture but there appears to be some slight corrosion around the keyboard ribbon cables as well. So one of these days I’ll get around to pulling the entire board out.

The board looks pretty okay other than that. But I’ll still be taking it out, and especially examining the bottom. The power board even looks okay besides the connector.

I did get the HDD out, and it’s clearly not the original. Actually bigger than the one that was in the Lombard.

 

[Doq]

Wait a minute....

Is the power board required to power a 3400c on? If so.... I may have figured out why the one I picked up recently doesn't turn on.

 

[Project Alice]

Wait a minute....

Is the power board required to power a 3400c on? If so.... I may have figured out why the one I picked up recently doesn't turn on.

I have no idea. I know it runs the battery.

Also just a little update. I can't seem to figure out what is on that drive at all! From what I can gather, it's formatted using "Apple UFS Server". So far no version of OS X I've plugged it into knows what to do with it. I'm going to try using 10.0 - 10.2 on my next days off to see if they will since they still included more UFS support. I have a feeling if the partitions on this thing are readable at all, it's something weird like PPC Rhapsody or a very early OS X preview.
I don't know if its bootable at all, I stuck it inside my 1GHz TiBook which won't boot anything earlier than 10.2. I then put it back into a FW enclosure to screw with it on my Pismo since it'll boot older versions. The boot picker on the Pismo hung for like 10 min with it plugged in, so if it is bootable, it might not be over FW.

 

[Doq]

I have no idea. I know it runs the battery.

Seems so, at least according to this resource: https://macdat.net/macintosh/powerbook/3400_home.html
Which is a shame, mine was completely wrecked from corrosion so I ended up tossing it thinking it wasn't required (and the main logic board was perfectly clean).

Also just a little update. I can't seem to figure out what is on that drive at all! From what I can gather, it's formatted using "Apple UFS Server". So far no version of OS X I've plugged it into knows what to do with it. I'm going to try using 10.0 - 10.2 on my next days off to see if they will since they still included more UFS support. I have a feeling if the partitions on this thing are readable at all, it's something weird like PPC Rhapsody or a very early OS X preview.
I don't know if its bootable at all, I stuck it inside my 1GHz TiBook which won't boot anything earlier than 10.2. I then put it back into a FW enclosure to screw with it on my Pismo since it'll boot older versions. The boot picker on the Pismo hung for like 10 min with it plugged in, so if it is bootable, it might not be over FW.

This definitely reeks of a Rhapsody disk.

There is a specific Startup Disk control panel on the Mac OS X Server install medium that may help identify what it is-- the regular one that ships with classic Mac OS has no idea. That said, I can confirm that 10.1 can at least detect a Rhapsody disk. Unsure if it'll actually mount and be useable though.

 

[Amethyst1]

I can't seem to figure out what is on that drive at all! From what I can gather, it's formatted using "Apple UFS Server".

Have you tried a Linux box?

I can confirm that 10.1 can at least detect a Rhapsody disk. Unsure if it'll actually mount and be useable though.

Not sure about Apple_Rhapsody_UFS volumes but Jaguar can use and boot from Apple_UFS volumes created in its Disk Utility.

 

[Project Alice]

Have you tried a Linux box?

While I had it in my TiBook I booted that up from a Debian 16.04 Live DVD, it ended up freezing when trying to do anything once the desktop loaded. Then I booted a FreeBSD live DVD. I didn't attempt mounting it but I was able to view what it said the partitions were. If I don't have success with Jaguar I'll figure out a way to hook it up to my FreeBSD desktop box.

 

[Doq]

Not sure about Apple_Rhapsody_UFS volumes but Jaguar can use and boot from Apple_UFS volumes created in its Disk Utility.

I fired up Puma on Belfast and the disk I dedicated for OS X Server 1.2, formatted as Apple_Rhapsody_UFS, showed up and is readable, including the root volume being browseable in Finder.

Should work on Jag as well but Belfast is a Rev 1 Beige and Jag panicks at the sight of the onboard graphics chip, thus I can't check that.

 

[Project Alice]

So Jaguar doesn't know what to do with it either. I got kinda busy the past couple days I had off, so I didn't screw with it much beyond that. And I ended up running into issues on my Pismo anyway. I am trying to install Mac OS X Server 1.2v3, but it won't recognize any drive (and drive setup freezes up). I do have a Mystic G4 which is officially supported, but nothing shows up there either, I'm thinking the Sata card I have in that is screwing with it. I put in a HDD on the IDE bus (It's usually empty, I only use SATA on that Mac). The OS 9.0.4 that the installer boots to seems to be pretty finicky. It won't show my SATA install of Leopard in start up disk either.

 

[Project Alice]

I purchased another 3400c for what I would say is a steal. $99 shipped (I watched it and the seller sent me an offer of $80, after shipping and tax it was just under $100!) I just couldn’t pass that up.

This thing is absolutely pristine as far as 3400s go. There’s some scuffs, and someone wrote on it with a marker. But not a tinge of broken plastic, even the spring loaded feet seem okay! It has 48MB of RAM, and a 200MHz 603ev. The apparently original 2GB hard disk happily started up to Mac OS 9.1 to my surprise. I removed the PRAM battery before even plugging it in.



I would love to get this up to 144MB of RAM, but all I can find are 32MB cards which this one, and the other one, already have installed.

I attempted to use Xpostfacto (I know it would be un-usably slow but it’s to see if I can not if I should) Boot 10.2 on this thing, but ironically XPF complains stating OS X requires 96MB when I know full and well Jaguar will happily boot with 32MB albeit slowly.

Nonetheless until I figure that out this is a very cool machine, that runs 9.2 much quicker than my 1400 runs 8.6. I’m gonna have a lot of fun with this thing!

 

[joevt]

I attempted to use Xpostfacto (I know it would be un-usably slow but it’s to see if I can not if I should) Boot 10.2 on this thing, but ironically XPF complains stating OS X requires 96MB when I know full and well Jaguar will happily boot with 32MB albeit slowly.

Maybe older versions of XPostFacto support booting from 32 MB.
Source code is on GitHub.
There's a commit "Disable Mac OS X booting when less than 96 MB RAM installed. Fixes bug 1922." that adds the RAM check.
There's an earlier commit "Update BootX to BootX-55.1. Fixes bug 1004." which shows why the required RAM was increased from 48 MB to 96 MB (see the sl.h file).
There's an earlier commit "Move the file load area above the 32 MB mark." which increased the required RAM from 32 MB to 48 MB. This happened after version 2.2.3 of XPostFacto.

I suppose it would be nice to have a version of BootX that can adjust the memory map based on the RAM installed.

 

[Project Alice]

Maybe older versions of XPostFacto support booting from 32 MB.
Source code is on GitHub.
There's a commit "Disable Mac OS X booting when less than 96 MB RAM installed. Fixes bug 1922." that adds the RAM check.
There's an earlier commit "Update BootX to BootX-55.1. Fixes bug 1004." which shows why the required RAM was increased from 48 MB to 96 MB (see the sl.h file).
There's an earlier commit "Move the file load area above the 32 MB mark." which increased the required RAM from 32 MB to 48 MB. This happened after version 2.2.3 of XPostFacto.

I suppose it would be nice to have a version of BootX that can adjust the memory map based on the RAM installed.

I can’t seem to find any version other than 4.0 unfortunately. If anyone has an older version that wound be great.

 

[joevt]

I can’t seem to find any version other than 4.0 unfortunately. If anyone has an older version that wound be great.

You could try getting the source code from GitHub, then check out one of the earlier commits, and compile it. I guess you would use Code Warrior Pro 8 in Mac OS X 10.2 to build the XPostFacto app and Xcode to build the kernel extensions. I'm not sure what version of Mac OS X is required to build the kernel extensions. It maybe depends on what version OS X you want to run them on. You'll need a version of MacApp to compile the XPostFacto app (it can be found on the internet).

Or use the download links at https://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto.html

XPostFacto up to 2.2.3 should work with 32 MB of RAM.
XPostFacto 2.2.4 to 3.0a4 should work with 48 MB of RAM.
XPostFacto 3.0a6 and later require 96 MB of RAM.

 

[Project Alice]

You could try getting the source code from GitHub, then check out one of the earlier commits, and compile it. I guess you would use Code Warrior Pro 8 in Mac OS X 10.2 to build the XPostFacto app and Xcode to build the kernel extensions. I'm not sure what version of Mac OS X is required to build the kernel extensions. It maybe depends on what version OS X you want to run them on. You'll need a version of MacApp to compile the XPostFacto app (it can be found on the internet).

Or use the download links at https://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/Framework.cfm?page=XPostFacto.html

XPostFacto up to 2.2.3 should work with 32 MB of RAM.
XPostFacto 2.2.4 to 3.0a4 should work with 48 MB of RAM.
XPostFacto 3.0a6 and later require 96 MB of RAM.

I was able to find 2.2.5 on the Wayback machine. Curiosity it states 10.2 doesn’t work on 603s. Which, we know is false.
I haven’t tested it yet though

 

[Project Alice]

I decided to install Rhapsody instead. I don’t think I’ve ever ran it on real Apple hardware before. A little slow but otherwise it seems to run fine.

I need to put a bigger faster HDD in here. I’ll get around to it one of these days.
I got it online too. Turns out it doesn’t have DHCP? I just set an IP address manually and everything seems to be working.