One of those cases of “Yeah, I must be crazy, but ….” and it turns out that I am the proud owner of another PowerBook. Also a StyleWriter 1200 that came with it at auction.
The 5300 series is one that I’ve always been fascinated with, ever since I saw Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. Less the uploading a virus to the an alien mothership (serious, do they run Java or something?), and more the scene outside the Whitehouse. I always thought the idea of the expansion bay was cool, and felt a bit disappointed that no one ever really created much in the way of that. But I guess, you’re not supposed to triangulate cellphone positions with a laptop even if that’s something “All cable repairmen can, Pops,” but I felt it would be cool if someone hooked them up to science equipment while exploring a jungle or working in an electronics lab. In reality of course, such use cases for laptops often had a more common answer: serial ports and PCMCIA to serial, and today it’s USB to serial. Special expansion bays pretty much died in the 1990s, and those that didn’t became quite plain in 2000s era business notebooks.
Amazingly the machine is in great shape. The port cover is missing one leg but clips on, which is still practically a unicorn in a field of four-leaf clovers. Seems the display housing is starting to split a bit, but unlike most that I’ve encountered isn’t broken to hell in a hand basket, and the frame is in great shape rather than looking like it was thrown out of a helicopter at hover. This machine feels more like a vintage princess.
Sadly the battery had begun to leak, resulting in having to clean out the battery bay. Fortunately it appears to have gone only as far as the terminals and lip area. Plus it’s a post recall NiMH, so I guess it’s a copper sulfate problem instead of oh-shit-lithium. Initial cleaning with baking soda/vinegar seems to have gone well, and we’ll go a deeper round once I’ve got time to take it apart. No sign of anything being harmed.
Ironically, the hard drive still works. I can’t tell if it’s an original or not until I take it apart, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The 8+16=24 MB memory configuration is one that Apple sold for the 5300cs, and I’ve yet to see any signs that the machine was ever taken apart or abused. The only signs of abuse I’ve been able to see are copies of Microsoft Office and Netscape Communicator, but I suppose that Word 6 on a 100 MHz “P6” chip would be less of a bear than it is on my Duo’s Motorola 68030.
One thing that I especially love is the keyboard. It’s beautiful to type on, and still perfectly smooth and limber. I can type so fast that the hard drive eventually spins down, parks the head, and then has a lag spike as it spins back up to page the file to disk. By contrast my 1992 Duo has a keyboard where the keys often stick, or need to be pressed multiple times to register.
Yeah this is a good machine. But I may be out of my mind 🤪