Hankering after a Kanga

[CooperBox]

You may be familiar with the following expression, or something similar, 'You wait 2 hours for a bus to come, and then 2 come along together!'
This was on my mind this week, except for hours and bus, read years and Kanga.
This PowerBook, designed around the PowerPC 750 - or G3 as it was often nicknamed, I'd been hankering after for quite a long time.
With a very short production run between end '97 and early '98 (approx 6 months) combined with a hefty price tag of US$5.7k, not surprisingly they didn't sell in large numbers.
I'd been waiting for one to come along - for over two years in fact, and then......along came two!
I've just seen the ad for the 2nd one (which apparently is still available), and the first that came along I jumped on immediately. It was by a rather strange stroke of luck that I was able to purchase it, which I will detail in a follow-up post.
For those few fortunate to also have found one, I'd be interested to hear your comments, especially if it's fully functional and gets put to the occasional task.

Below:- PowerBook 'Kanga' alongside it's slightly elder 3400c 'sister'.

 

[eyoungren]

Your wife by now!

 

[CooperBox]

Actually it was that threatening gesture she gave from the kitchen when I realized I'd purchased one PowerBook too many........

 

[LightBulbFun]

angry wives aside

very cool to see you managed to secure 2 Kangas (plus a 3400c) they are very fun machines to play with. do you know the specs of your kangas? Hopefully yours come with nice juicy RAM cards (RAM cards for these machines are hard and expensive to come by)

BTW I recommend you remove the PRAM battery from your 3400c/Kangas, as they are very prone to leakage and ruining the logic board (on all my machines they had just started to leak so luckily i caught them in the knick of time before they leaked onto the Logic board)

Fun fact the code name for the 3400c is Hooper, being the name of one of the developers dogs at the time, so you have Hooper and Kanga

I actually managed to get 2 3400c and a Kanga much in the same way as you did, wait an eternity and a bunch show up at once (granted I dont mind waiting an eternity as one of my hobbies is vintage London Buses!) my first 3400c was sold to me as tested and completely dead, but I decided to take a gamble, once it arrived I quickly found out the DC Power Jack had broken lose from its PCB pads a Quick wave of the soldering iron quickly soldered it back into place and the machine fired up with the last owners stuff still on the hard drive, I was also happy to see that it was the top end 240Mhz BTO (still running 7.6.1 as well!)

the second machine I got was the kanga, I spotted this one as untested, also decided to take a gamble, slapped a bid on it got it for the starting price coming to a total of £20, I plugged it in and it fired right up, I was pleasantly surprised to see it had a 64MB RAM card fitted giving me 96MB total the 3rd machine was another 3400c that was basically a repeat of the kanga (but was a buy it now instead of an auction) but I did not get so lucky on the RAM card (both 3400c only had 16MB RAM cards installed giving me a total of 32MB in each) this 3400c was the mid range 200Mhz BTO.

so now we both have 3 of these machines

the Kanga having 96MB of RAM is significant since it allowed me to do this (10.4.11 needs 96MB at a minium to boot, sadly due to my 3400c only having 32MB of RAM I have I still have not been able to test my custom 604/603 kernel on a 603 CPU)

 

[CooperBox]

@LightBulbFun,
Very interesting, thanks for the feedback.
Just to correct a misunderstanding, I have just the one Kanga (see my separate post), and a 3400c. The other ad for the Kanga I've just seen this week (which apparently is still available), with the seller down near Marseille asking 300€ (£276).
I'll give some specs on my PBooks a little later.

Oh and thanks for the fun fact re the code-name Hooper - for one of the developer's dogs.
Still on fun-facts and dogs, my avatar shows Cooper our boxer-dog, named after Henry Cooper the English heavyweight boxer, especially remembered by boxing fans for having knocked-down the young Muhammad Ali. Our's knocked me down the other week, strong as an ox!

 

[AphoticD]

This PowerBook, designed around the PowerPC 750 - or G3 as it was often nicknamed, I'd been hankering after for quite a long time.
With a very short production run between end '97 and early '98 (approx 6 months) combined with a hefty price tag of US$5.7k, not surprisingly they didn't sell in large numbers.

Wow. Trailing not far behind the original, the Kanga must be one of the most expensive Mac portables in history!

 

[weckart]

I was lucky to get one with the 128MB module inside and working PRAM and main battery but haven't managed to get it to run OSX. It has run Rhapsody, though and is probably a better candidate for that. I have one other with a loose power socket. I removed that and resoldered it but the damn thing hasn't booted since. Finicky things, Kangas.

 

[AphoticD]

the Kanga having 96MB of RAM is significant since it allowed me to do this (10.4.11 needs 96MB at a minium to boot, sadly due to my 3400c only having 32MB of RAM I have I still have not been able to test my custom 604/603 kernel on a 603 CPU)

That is very impressive. Is this the lowest spec Tiger has run on? Have you had it running on any 604/603s? I spotted you were running BeOS on a 4400. Can that old tin can run OS X?

Also, is there much difference in performance between the BTO 240Mhz 3400c 603 and the 250Mhz 3500 750?

 

[weckart]

That is very impressive. Is this the lowest spec Tiger has run on? Have you had it running on any 604/603s? I spotted you were running BeOS on a 4400. Can that old tin can run OS X?

Also, is there much difference in performance between the BTO 240Mhz 3400c 603 and the 250Mhz 3500 750?

I have a couple of the 240s but never raced them against the Kanga. I vaguely remember some press complaints about the Kanga's actually being slower than its forebear.

Curious about this kernel of yours. My 3400 has 80MB in it. Probably too little for Tiger without much jiggery-pokery.

 

[LightBulbFun]

@AphoticD Sadly I dont own any 604 or 603 macs that are compatible with OS X or have enough ram to do so, but a couple close friends in the past have tested my kernel for me on there own 604 Power Macintoshes which do have enough RAM, but sadly no one has yet to test it on a 603 machine

I have tried extensively to get the 4400 running OS X (it has enough RAM) but the machine is just to buggy on a Hardware and software level to boot OS X. I have been looking for years to find a Power Macintosh 6500 or 9600 to no avail (those 2 machines being much better for OS X hackery)

@weckart https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-tiger-on-a-603-604-cpu.1908276/ heres the kernel I made to run OS X 10.4.11 on a 60x CPU If you could test it on a 603 CPU that would be greatly appreciated, you do need 96MB or more RAM to boot OS X 10.4.11 tho. (80MB might be enough to boot 10.2.8 however)

 

[AphoticD]

I have tried extensively to get the 4400 running OS X (it has enough RAM) but the machine is just to buggy on a Hardware and software level to boot OS X. I have been looking for years to find a Power Macintosh 6500 or 9600 to no avail (those 2 machines being much better for OS X hackery)

I thought as much. I remember having to contort the performance challenged 200mhz 603e(v?), Tanzania based 4400/7220 to play ball with Linux/PPC and even then, X11 was pokey when it worked. KDE/Gnome were too slow. Mac OS 9 was a dog. It was much happier in OS 8.6.

+1 for the curvaceous 6500. I always wanted one of those. I've seen them on US eBay still standing tall (on their little legs)