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Restoring a 190CS

bifo86

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 4, 2015
Messages
147
Location
Virginia, USA
I picked up a 190CS from ebay a little while ago to work on as a new project, it's been a long time since I last worked on a classic 68k mac and I thought I'd like to try it out again. I had several powerbooks over the years, (140, 180 and 540C iirc) but never a 190CS and it looked as it it hadn't been fully inspected and the price was low enough to roll the dice. I received it and also bought a compatible AC adapter and discovered that it would power on and boot from the floppy, but the hard drive had of course been removed. I made several attempts to set up a DMA CF card with adapter but it wouldn't work reliably so I put in an old 18GB laptop hard drive which appears to work well enough with 7.5.3. Formats properly as one partition, install works, but I think all of these computers must have suffered from the same poor design on the power supply jack because there was very obviously a poor solder joint. I'll attach pictures below, but what a massive design flaw. I have a PB1400 on a shelf somewhere that wouldn't boot (I think I've had that one for nearly 20 years, I found it sitting on top of a recycling bin with the power supply near my first apartment. Those were the days) and I'm wondering if that isn't the same issue.

Tonight I finally got around to pulling the mainboard, which is when I took the photos and re-soldered the connections. Now the power connector doesn't seem to be fiddly with the connection but I'm worried that there might be some other connections or something else within it that are off. I've zapped the PRAM but it doesn't seem to want to stay on when I try to install from the floppy drive. The NiMH battery was leaking when I received it but I removed it and cleaned the contacts, nothing had gotten on the motherboard.

However, it still shuts down by about the time I get to the 7th floppy disk in the 7.5.3 install. The HDI-30 SCSI adapter for my external CD drive should arrive by next monday, so I won't need to swap disks then, but it could introduce further problems.

The PRAM battery is apparently live enough to cause problems when the computer shuts down but the noted procedures in the service manual, when it shuts down the power light remains on and solid and it doesn't respond to the service manual suggestion of trying to hold down the reset button for a length of time or repeatedly. If anyone has any suggestions other than leaving it unplugged and leaving the power adapter unplugged for a while, I'm very open to them. I think there might be some kind of extra transient charge going around the system which trips something over, so maybe a few days will let it discharge naturally.

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I received it and also bought a compatible AC adapter

Red flag here. By "compatible", do you mean one of those Chineseium IEDs with a black label and white text of "REPLACEMENT AC ADAPTER"? Those will kill your computer dead, or burn your house down, or both.

Alternatively, it could be something overheating or a bad connection elsewhere on the board that only misbehaves when the machine is hot. I'd check around the board with a bright light and magnifier to inspect as many solder joints as you can, especially through-hole joints.
 
Your post isn't exactly clear. You write in the first paragraph that "install works", so did it work initially?

Anyway, there's nothing software-wise that would cause the system to just shut down. This is certainly a hardware issue. Is the heatsink correctly installed on the CPU? Also, does the system really shut down? Maybe it's just the display that turns off. Run MacTest Pro 1.3 on it, it should find any faults with the hardware.
 
The AC adapter is an original 45w powerbook adapter, the 190 and 5300 seemed to have different power adapter plugs on the computer from what I remember using on the earlier 68k powerbooks and the later PPC powerbooks. It was probably short lived because of how easily it broke the solder connections on the jack by wiggling around, I'd imagine that it was a constant warranty issue at the time. The plugs they switched to after these models were the same ones they used for years with powerbooks and ibooks with the ring-ground and large center pin.

Your post isn't exactly clear. You write in the first paragraph that "install works", so did it work initially?

Anyway, there's nothing software-wise that would cause the system to just shut down. This is certainly a hardware issue. Is the heatsink correctly installed on the CPU? Also, does the system really shut down? Maybe it's just the display that turns off. Run MacTest Pro 1.3 on it, it should find any faults with the hardware.

Using floppy disks made from 7.5.3 images, the install process will begin but the system tends to shut off for some unknown reason by the time you get to disk 6 or 7 or so. My original assumption was that somehow removing and inserting the floppies was jostling the poor solder joint on the power jack but having repaired that, it did the same thing afterwards. I left it unplugged until about half an hour ago and now it won't boot at all. I pulled the PRAM battery now and I'm going to leave it for another day and possibly try to ground out the motherboard so that nothing is left in any capacitors. The system was booting and nothing has happened to it since putting it aside yesterday, so I'm at a bit of a loss now. I will definitely be taking a strong light and magnifier to have a look over it soon but for the time being I'm going to let it rest.
 
The AC adapter is an original 45w powerbook adapter, the 190 and 5300 seemed to have different power adapter plugs on the computer from what I remember using on the earlier 68k powerbooks and the later PPC powerbooks.
No, they are the same. I have one 190 and two 5300 and none has issues with the power jack. I guess it's just a matter of how users treated the systems back then.
 
I guess it's just a matter of how users treated the systems back then.

Busted laptop power jacks has been a problem since the invention of laptops. People always tripping over the cord and ripping the connector out at weird angles.

I think the mag-safe connector Apple used for a few years was probably the best solution, even though they eventually tended to melt. Too much current going through the connector that would eventually get oxidized and have a voltage drop the created heat and eventually fire/melting. Some manufacturers tried in-line barrel plugs, and while those worked for awhile, they'd eventually get loose and fall apart.
 
Must be something more common in your country then. I'm working as an IT specialist since 1997 and from the hundreds and hundreds of Notebooks I had to repair, only one or two ever had a broken power jack. Guess we take more care when laying cables in Germany so we don't fall over them as often. ;)
 
College kids are the same in any country, they treat their stuff like crap. Laptops always getting thrown around and abused.

At least SSDs are used in almost all new laptops and precludes them from getting head strikes from kids throwing their laptops in their bag while still running, or dropping it off the coffee table.
 
They were very much aimed at college students back then, but the small-barrel, big plug design of the 190/5300 vs the later 1400/g3/ibook design, where the barrel plug was more robust and much less prone to being jostled around, was a real oversight. I've decided to pull out my old 1400c to work on at the same time, I put it away years ago because it stopped booting but I'm not sure if it was a problem of the power supply or the computer itself. I've got an original power supply in the mail now so we'll see, I've also snagged another 190cs for parts because why not throw good money after bad. If the 1400c can boot then it should be particularly useful for making disks, because I will never trust USB floppy drives.
 
College kids are the same in any country
Hail to generalization.

They were very much aimed at college students back then
Yes, that's what wikipedia says. That doesn't mean that all were also actually bought by college students, given prices up to $2200. And it seems that target audience thing was mainly in the US. In Germany, hardly any student would own a notebook back then. Not one from Apple anyway.
 
Hail to generalization.

It's not a generalization. I've done quite a bit of repair work on machines owned by foreign exchange college kids from around the globe, including many countries in Europe. They all treat their machines like crap, though it's not always intentional.

That doesn't mean that all were also actually bought by college students, given prices up to $2200. And it seems that target audience thing was mainly in the US. In Germany, hardly any student would own a notebook back then. Not one from Apple anyway.

Parents/family members buy it for the students, and they spend big bucks on stuff like laptops.
 
An even broader generalization: people, be they kids or adults, treat stuff they didn’t personally pay for like crap. I haven’t dealt with college kids laptops but I’ve seen plenty of what full grown “adults” do to $3,000 corporate issued laptops. One of the more interesting cases I recall is the guy who completely trashed his PowerBook G4 after dropping it on a men’s room floor while taking a piss while holding it *open and powered on” in one hand. Hit the urinal on the way down, I think. This is not what middle class people normally do with their own laptops.
 
Parents/family members buy it for the students, and they spend big bucks on stuff like laptops.

not necessarily, most of those expensive laptop sales for education are financed by student loans. never think that apple is a benevolent company

An even broader generalization: people, be they kids or adults, treat stuff they didn’t personally pay for like crap. I haven’t dealt with college kids laptops but I’ve seen plenty of what full grown “adults” do to $3,000 corporate issued laptops. One of the more interesting cases I recall is the guy who completely trashed his PowerBook G4 after dropping it on a men’s room floor while taking a piss while holding it *open and powered on” in one hand. Hit the urinal on the way down, I think. This is not what middle class people normally do with their own laptops.

These are people who weren't raised right, and they treat everything as disposable and are probably those people who don't tip and feel righteous in doing so (american context: waitstaff and bartenders usually get zero dollar paychecks to avoid taxes). Just don't call those people middle class, unless you're english where it means something different from most of the rest of the world. They're just assholes, and that extends across class.

The power supply for the 1400c came in today, it turns out the problem with it was a dead power supply so it boots well, except that it won't accept any of my CDR boot disks so I'm going to have to install OS9 on it. (OS9 is the only version of classic macos that i have an original CDROM of). OTOH it should work well enough with 32mb, hopefully? The only spare IDE laptop drive I had available was a 60gb drive and I've got a 48mb flash pc card that I think I can use as a ram extension? Never tried it but all the old articles on google recommend it. If that doesn't work, I've still got the 1gb ATA PC card.

If anyone has a spare ram for a 1400 pm me. pm me if you just want to get rid of a pb 1400, or a 190. or any powerbook, i guess.
 
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not necessarily, most of those expensive laptop sales for education are financed by student loans. never think that apple is a benevolent company

Apple is the most anti-consumer company in the world, benevolent is the farthest thing away from describing them. Their community is an echo chamber of "yes men", shills and iZombies who are addicted to their cancerous culture and defective products. They exist as a company because their consumers are so used to being treating like garbage that they don't know any better.

Thankfully Apple has their hands full with their modern tech to leave us vintage computer enthusiasts mostly alone.

The power supply for the 1400c came in today, it turns out the problem with it was a dead power supply so it boots well, except that it won't accept any of my CDR boot disks so I'm going to have to install OS9 on it. (OS9 is the only version of classic macos that i have an original CDROM of). OTOH it should work well enough with 32mb, hopefully? The only spare IDE laptop drive I had available was a 60gb drive and I've got a 48mb flash pc card that I think I can use as a ram extension? Never tried it but all the old articles on google recommend it. If that doesn't work, I've still got the 1gb ATA PC card.

If anyone has a spare ram for a 1400 pm me. pm me if you just want to get rid of a pb 1400, or a 190. or any powerbook, i guess.

Mac OS 9 is a pig on anything less than a G3. 32 MB of RAM is also the bare minimum, and you have to enable virtual memory. I'd recommend 64 MB minimum, and 128 MB recommended. But even with large amounts of RAM, it's a pig on a 60x CPU, been there, done that. I have a Performa 6500/250 (603e) with 64 MB of RAM and OS 9 is a pig on it. It runs better on the slowest G3 233/266 CPUs, but the faster the better.

I'd recommend either OS 8.1 or 8.6, with 8.6 being a nice balance of features and performance. There were very few programs that required OS 9, and those that did are far out of the performance range of your Powerbook 1400.
 
I pulled the 190CS out to work on again today as well as the parts spare I bought and hadn't yet disassembled. The parts spare had had a massive NiMH battery leak all down the motherboard. Thankfully there was nothing of interest installed in terms of internal expansions, so I just pulled the screen, keyboard, floppy drive, screws, and the apparently delicate screen hinge covers and binned the rest since it was covered in dried battery acid. I was also able to pull the hard drive which had managed to avoid the acid as well, and I can still access it in an internal enclosure so I have a copy of a bootable 190CS drive now, with 7.5.1 which had been a huge pain trying to set up with floppies.

The 1400c is still working fine, I decided I'd try to rebuild the battery. I pulled it and used a spudger to open it up, it uses 8 of these HR-4/3AU(4.0AH) batteries. I ordered up 10 with the digikey deal but I haven't gotten around to trying to disassemble and rebuild the battery. I also used a screwdriver to open the already heavily damaged and leaked 190CS battery from the parts machine (the one in the previously working machine had a leak but was undamaged and still sealed), I believe it uses 12 of these HR-3U-2500 batteries, but basically they're just straight up AA sized NiMH 1.2v cells.

The previously working 190cs appears to fail to get power, it's exhibiting something which the service manual says should happen with 5300 models but the manual seems to confuse references to 190 and 5300 quite often. When the power connector is in, it emits a low ticking noise as if it's trying to power on but can't get power. The solution to this in the manual is "replace logic board", which doesn't help anything, so I purchased yet another parts 190cs (I already have all the cool/difficult to source bits for this model, so Hello, Sunk Cost Fallacy). This one appears to at least work despite having a damaged screen. Since I have two apparently working screens available now, I should be able to swap one on since both the 190 and 190cs had the same VRAM according to all of the documentation and no major differences otherwise, and the Focus MV-16 video board and the 16mb RAM will make it usable.

OS9 is quite a pig on the 1400, so I'm going to get around to downgrading it/reinstalling eventually but I need a working bootable image and I'd rather try 7.6.1 instead of 8. My primary OS9 machine is a ibook/800 with 640mb RAM, and I'd gotten used to it running smoothly.
 
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