5 Dec
2005
5 Dec
'05
8:34 a.m.
John Boffemmyer IV wrote:
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.
I don't believe this machine will run OS 10. I don't think it'll run
9.2 either. It's 9.1 or before. Also, bear in mind that this machine
will have a hard drive with about 500MB so you might need to upgrade.
My suggestion would be to try a newish version of OS 8. Anything better
than OS 8.6 should allow you use ~8 GB drives. Another thing to know is
that it maxes out at 64MB RAM, so don't try to run Mozilla on it. 8-)
I wouldn't bother taking it if it's not a color model, but that's just me.
NetBSD won't run on it since it's NuBus, and I don't know too much about
NuBus Linux. Maybe someone else can comment.
Peace... Sridhar