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Outbound Notebook

Submitted by Tom Owad on May 18, 2004 - 12:50am. Computers | Macintosh, 68K | Outbound | Documents

Outbound Systems is the only pre-PPC clone manufacturer to actually receive Apple's blessing. Not coincidentally, the Notebook is the most plentiful clone, and Outbound Systems the most successful clone manufacturer.

The Outbound Notebook's processor, RAM, and ROM are all stored on a removable daughtercard. This is very fortunate, as the rest of the system is nearly impossible to get apart. Access is easily provided to all componets that the user may want to swap out.


Mac SE ROMs, top; Mac Classic ROMs, bottom.

ROMs from both the Mac SE and Mac Classic (and others?) can be used in the Outbound Notebook. In order to make the Notebook functional, Apple ROMs had to be installed. If the user already owned a Macintosh, pulling the ROMs from that unit was the most cost-effective way to go.

The Outbound Notebook uses generic video-camera batteries, an incredible advantage over other laptops. Batteries for the Notebook are cheap ($30 at Radio Shack) and plentiful. Compare this to Powerbook 100 batteries, which must be specially ordered through an Apple Authorized Dealer for $80 (now, no longer available at all), and are often depleted beyond recovery on arrival.

The hard drives are IDE. I'm note sure what the reasoning was beyond this move (probably cost), but the drive works well enough. If it dies I could be in trouble, though.

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G4from128k's picture

Outbound Hard Drives

Submitted by G4from128k on June 18, 2004 - 1:39am.
Tom Owad wrote:
The hard drives are IDE. I’m note sure what the reasoning was beyond this move (probably cost), but the drive works well enough. If it dies I could be in trouble, though..

Yes, I fear that too. I've been trying to add a new IDE drive to my Outbound 2030E with absolutely no success. None of the disk utilties (Disk First Aid, HD Setup, APS Tools, or Norton) want to acknowledge that the new drive is even in the machine (it does spin up). I don't know if the drive is incompatible (its a 800 MB drive from an old ThinkPad) or if I lack some special Outbound-provided utility that can recognize an IDE HD on a Mac Plus ROM system.

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did you wire it correctly, ca

Submitted by dennu meets sour on November 2, 2004 - 11:26am.

did you wire it correctly, cause if the hdd doesn't spin up, then it probably doesn't get any power (i think)

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I just stumbled upon this thr

Submitted by dtuomi on May 16, 2006 - 7:24am.

I just stumbled upon this thread. Although its a year old, I do have some suggestions.

The 800mb HD might be too large. Some early PC's had trouble recognizing drive geometries over 512mb. Although I know of no Macs to ever have such a problem, you never know. You might want to try a hard drive from an Amiga 600. These were 2.5" laptop style IDE drives that were 40mb.

Also, try prepping the hard drive by partitioning and setting up on an IDE 68k Mac like the Quadra 630. It might be that once the hard drive has the partitions and is formatted that it just works without having to worry about the necessary utilities on the Outbound.

Anyway, better late than never. Good luck.

David

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jman's picture

this is cool

Submitted by jman on May 16, 2006 - 2:05pm.

I like it

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one year member of applefrtter





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