[rescue] little SCSI hard drives

Mike Free rescue at sunhelp.org
Tue Oct 30 22:48:29 CST 2001


I saw through something the other day that the 500 series battery is a
"smart" cell, with circuitry on flex strip; if you can open the battery
without damaging the circuit then you can get a 9.6V RC car pack, nicd or
nimh as the original batteries require, both are available; swap the
polarity on the top two cells and install the thermistor between them and
you're ready to go with something like a 1.5 hour battery.

I have (loosely, it's on loan) a 520... watch carefully your top hinges,
though they're repairable if you don't mind 4 screw heads poking through the
back of the screen, as the plastic bosses crack away from the metal hinges
they can be drilled out and cross-bolted.

Great ittle machines, though AFAIK the flavors of linux and BSD do not work
for them because of the lack of a coprocessor and some circuitry changes
over a regular mac. YMMV. I ran OS 8.1 on mine and it was nice and speedy, I
could even run a quicktime movie, looked terrible though, 4 bit greyscale.
external SCSI works well with a $30 adapter and an ACTIVE terminator.

last but not least, do some studying on the PCMCIA adaptor's revision or
serial numbers, back when I was looking for one I found there are two
revisions of those, one's quite flaky. This is information from roughly 14
months ago, so again, your mileage may vary.....

Mike Free
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Hatle" <shatle at nfldinet.com>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 11:31 PM
Subject: [rescue] little SCSI hard drives


> That's right, looking for little SCSI hard drives - little as in small -
> 2.5 inch laptop jobs, and in capacity- <500 meg would be OK.
>
> Old SCSI Powerbook hard drives would be ideal, since these will be _for_
> old Powerbooks. The other day I asked for old PB stuff, and now I'm the
> proud owner of 7 Powerbook 500 series (5 540c's, 1 520c, and a straight
> 520).
>
> However, all are missing hard drives, most of the batteries appear
> hatched (though most have two each, so I have more to fsck up trying to
> fix them <grin>) and I only got one A/C adapter for the lot.
>
> They all check out OK otherwise, so needless to say, if anyone needs a
> parts machine, let me know!
>
> I know, I know- this isn't an Apple list- however, I know there are some
> cross platform folks out there, plus- I trust you folks! I promise not
> to harp on the Apple stuff.  .  .
>
> Oh- one machine did have the apparently almost unobtainium PB5xx PCMCIA
> expansion bay, so if you need that before it becomes "RARE- as Seen on
> Ebay", let me know <grin>
>
> Steve
>
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