PB 5300c

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PB 5300c

I just ordered a PB 5300c off wegenermedia.com for $50. I read about it at Lowendmac.com, and they were saying it sucked, so what's you're experience with those? Shall I trade it in for a duo 280c?

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PB 5300C

A lot of people have claimed that these are crappy machines, and I think a big load of them were, but of course, most of those are long dead or scrapped for parts by now. Wegener is really good about offering good things (I think I saw these and they've been refurbished?), which means it's probably going to be fine. I bought a barely-used one off Ebay for a little less than fifty bucks (of course, it hadn't been refurbished), threw an ethernet PC card and a wireless PC card in it, and have used it ever since without a hitch. I got mine mostly to work in the living room on the wireless network and to take on the road when I need to work/research. It will never be a web speed demon or be able to run high-power software (newer versions of photoshop, say). That said, it will run Office 98 and appleworks 5 (I think that's the one) without a problem. So if you're going to bop around on the web a little and word process, even a little email, you'll be just fine. I think the bottom line is (and I think most of us agree about this) is that the vast majority of us don't need a dual-processor G5, as much as we like to think we do. It's a great machine, and if it's just been refurbed, it should be just fine. They're also easy to work on and parts are plentiful. Have fun.

jt
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I got one too . . .

. . . and it most certainly doesn't suck at all, classic cars and cameras don't suck because they don't have all the current technology, they still work and can be a lot more fun to play with too..

The 5300cs screen isn't so good, but the 5300c's is great. I lucked out and have one of the 16MB versions with a full Meg of VRAM from somewhere or other.At the full 640 x 480 x 16 bit it's just drop-dead gorgeous. So's the 5300c with 512k of VRAM in letterboxed 640 x 400 x 16bit, just like my 2300c's, except larger.

A lot of that RoadApple nonsense is about mid & high end machines not being what "power users" thought they ought to have been offered, just like the griping about Apple's products today. There were some real fruitcake moves that Apple made at the low end though, to cripple machines intentionally to meet some "price point" without stealing sales from higher profit margin products.

Like everything else, take the stuff on LEM with a grain of salt and enjoy your new 'Book. Is it your first?

jt Wink

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Love mine

The only falts I have with mine is the weight (not that I have anything better at the moment) and the sleep/battery problem (3 days of sleep rather than 3 weeks) I've had to go in and fix the power port on it a couple times but its an easy fix for a durable 'book.

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Yes this is my first powerboo

Yes this is my first powerbook, and my first laptop. I'm not really concerned with speed, as long as it's not torture to go online with it, but I was more concerned with that screen hinge issue and the chipping plastic, and also the operating system. I beleive it will have 7.6 on it, because it only has 8 mb of ram. But 7.6 is still compatible with 9.1, right? Installing a new os would be somewhat tough since it only has a disk drive, but I guess I could network it.

Does anyone know any good resources for system 7/8 programs like web browsers and appleworks 5 and maybe PERL or C++? I'd also like to upgrade the ram, but it cost $70 at wegenermedia, so is there a cheaper alternative?

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http://home.earthlink.net/~ga

http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/mac_software.html and http://www.pure-mac.com/ for all your software needs. The rest of the Gamba site includes lots of useful info, like which browser to choose for example.

There's sort of a cheaper alternative to proprietary RAM - Compact Flash card in PCMCIA adapter, format it as a hard drive, then go into Memory control panel and define it as your Virtual Memory drive. RAM pretending to be a HD pretending to be RAM. Crazy but apparently it works. Have a search through these forums, and the older ones (linked from the front page) for more information.

But there's no cheap alternative for genuine RAM, barring eBay. Like a lot of older laptops, the memory was specific to that model. I'd imagine you could do better than Wegener's price on ebay if you looked.

7.6 and 9.1 are basically the same, but there is some new stuff in 9, so some programs written for 9 won't work in 7. Please excuse me if that's totally obvious.

jt
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It should have the FDD too . . .

. . . but I'm confused, did you order a 5300c as your posted or a 5300cs listed for $49.99 on wegenermedia.com? IMHO, the extra $20 to get the active matrix LCD of the 5300c would be well spent. If the 5300c 16MB/1MB VRAM model is available, I'd seriously consider spending a little more to get one of those.

jt

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HAHA

I ordered a PB 5300c, but they made a mistake and sent me a 5300cs! I'm pretty happy with the CS, the screen is not bad, plus, they refunded the $25 dollars of difference, and I might just buy a duo with it! (Even though it doesn't come with a battery!)

they also forgot to send driver software for the ethernet/28k modem! right now I'm trying to figure out a way to put a web browser on it. Would anyone know a good browser that would fit on a 1.4mb disk? I don't really care if it's text based.

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iCab is a small lightweight b

iCab is a small lightweight browser for most Macs. I don't know that they ever fixed the support for CSS, but other than that it works fine.

jt
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Still need the drivers?

Let me know and PM your email to me if so. They forgot to send it to me too. It was a little annoying, but you can't expect a few folks with a real warehouse of old Mac goodies to be as efficiently set up as MacWarehouse!

I got my 1400c up on my 10baseT network with that card/driver and online (VerizonDSL) using enternet classic, there's a thread about it here or in hacks . . . or in 68k . . . dunno.

jt Wink

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I'm sending it back

I've decided to send the CS back for a C, mainly because the battery is dead. It only charges enough to make the startup sound and the happy mac. Thanks for all the links, I found some great software and I can't wait to use it with my new 5300"C". I've got to find some cheap RAM though. I wonder how much would be sufficient... 16mb + 8mb? That would only be $30.

jt
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Get a 5600c16MB/1MB VRAM . . .

. . . they owe you that much for making you return the wrong 'Book, that way you can do 640x480x16bit and already have the mobo banks full up.

The 8MB 5300c only does 640x400 at 16 bit.

jt

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umm

Just my 2 cents... internet on that will be unbearable. I tried it with a 33.6k Global Village modem on my old 1400cs... haven't touched a pre-G3 since. Beee

But I'm looking at getting an old PowerBook for business purposes(some basic email/spreadsheet/database functions), can anyone tell me if there ARE any "fast" browsers for old Macs like these(ie MUCH faster than explorer, ala Safari)?

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There are fast browsers

I've downloaded some good browsers that would be nice and fast, like Mosiac and MacWeb. Both are mostly text based though. Explorer would be SO slow, it uses so much memory. Both of these browsers use only a max of 7mb or ram.

Also, I'm not using a modem with it, although I have one. I have T1 or cable through a ethernet adapter. So it should be pretty fast, right?

alk
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IE 5 (despite prior comments

IE 5 (despite prior comments to the contrary) runs just fine on my 5300s. Fast enough, anyway.

Remember that this is a cacheless 100MHz 603e on a 33MHz bus - throughput and rendering are very slow, so even if you had the most svelte browser out there, it would probably still be slow.

You're connection speed isn't the browser's bottleneck - it's the render speed. If the page is complicated (lots of graphics or nested tables, for instance), it will take a while to render. If it's just text, it'll be faster, of course.

Anyway, IE 5 is acceptible on a 5300. Beats the pants off NS 4 for compatibility, too. AF 2.0 takes a while to draw, but it works.

Download speeds are plenty fast.

Peace,
Drew

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I have a 5300cs on it's way,

I have a 5300cs on it's way, and I want to use a wireless card in it too. What OS are you running, and did you have any trouble making the card work. The PB I am getting has OS 8 and I am getting a waveLAN card. Will this work, in your experience?

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Ethernet trouble

Yhesss! I got my 5300c in the mail today. I installed the Global Village Powerport PC card driver and it seems to be working except I can't set appletalk to use the PC card. I tried connecting it to my friends DSL, and it didn't work, so I think I've got to find a way to set appletalk for ethernet. Any ideas?

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