Hey people. Ive got two 1400s, a 117cs and a 166cs. Basically the 166 wouldnt boot and the 117 has a problem with the screen. But not with the screen itself. Im trying to cobble together a working mac outta the two of them just for the hell of it, and mainly because something seems so wrong about wasting them and binning them. So my problem as it stands is this:
Ive completely dismantled both macs and have it set up on a sheet of plastic to try and sort it out.
Im using the 117's mb and cpu. An apple memory chip and a 16mb memory chip aswell. I dont have the keybord or trackpad or pram battery connected, but ive got an adb bus mouse and keyboard.
Ive also got an ethernet nic in the expansion slot of the powerbook and i dont have the pcmcia adaptor on the board.
Ive got two hd's one with no os, and the other has os8.something on it.
Ok now the crappy part. Ive tried connecting both the screens and both will light up at boot and you see the little mac and the Welcome screen bizness but then they go off after about 20secs. You can push the power button when the mac is booted and it comes on for about 20 again then goes off. The screen from the 166 works better and stays on longer.
Ive tried every config i could with the hardware (all chips and cards off etc etc) but nothing seems to affect it.
Everything else works fine, im trying to install a vnc viewer on it so i can see what i left on the hd back in the day, But i would really like to get at least one screen working so i can do something like one of those picture frames with it.
Any help, ideas or anything would be great
thanks in advance.
PBs 1400 are sensitive to changes in their setup, especially swapping screens. Try a PRAM reset as well as a Power Manager reset, hopefully that'll bring it to useful life.
dan k
I had a 1400cs/166 many years ago, and sold it, but I've always missed it. I found one with a broken screen in a dumpster (along with a 140 and a 540c). It had the Apple video out card installed, and I was able to find an adaptor for it. After working out that the system worked aside from the shattered screen, I found a place selling new cs screens for $24.. got one of those in it and it works fine.
There are two connectors going from the screen module to the motherboard. You must have the right one (the one from the panel) plugged in for it to boot, but the data one for the screen is optional. Also, if you disassemble the screen module, you can disconnect the reed switch (I think I magnetized mine accidentally.. heh), it might be worth trying that.
Also, it sounds like you are running this without a case.. this could be bad. The heatsink on the chip is fairly important, and getting a good connection without the case could be difficult. Make sure you have a heatsink of some sort on the CPU. The system might be shutting off from overheating. Additionally, I found mine acted weird if the screws for the heatsink were overtightened. Also, some 117mhz motherboards won't work with 166mhz processors (but will work with 183mhz 603 ones and any of the G3s..).