(This page was updated 99-06-09)The PowerBook 500 series Fan Club Page
Okay, okay, it is not the fastest one around the block. No internal 33.6 or even 28.8. It's heavy. But it looks GREAT (and it does not look like anything else, and definitely not like any Wintel machine) And still, it is the PowerBook that you could take out in direct sunlight, turn off the backlight and use with low battery consumption! (with 9.5" gray-scale active-matrix LCD, do not bother to try that with a color LCD)
PowerBook 5x0 series 040 to PPC upgrade
We had the opportunity to upgrade several PowerBook series 500 to different versions of PPC, ranging from Apple sneak model to the best there is, Newer Technology 167Mhz.When doing this we rotated different versions of the upgrade on one PowerBook. The benchmarks look like follows. (The measurement was done with MacBench v3.0)
As we were at it, we also installed the PowerFPU v1.2, (now in version 1.3) and look what happened!
The feel of speed improvement going from 040 to PPC 100 is limited, compared to go all the way to PPC 167 that really feels much snappier. If only Newer would cram in some Level 2, that would really do the trick!(Of course they did , for a short time I think they really did produced a 183Mhz versions with a Level 2 cache but we newer had one to test)
How to install the upgrade, step by step by jcrisotope@aol.com
(Some related benchmarks on a 5300 comparing 7.5.3 and 7.6 done by Chin Weng Keong
OK, so what does NOT work when going from 040 to PPC?
CPU v2.05, this great little utility from Connectix for handling a lot of different things. This control panel crash at boot if the driver is set to load (not necessarily on) for inverted screen or screen saver. Same behavior goes for the Instant Wake function. Anyhow, it seems to be a dead product, like the great little CDU v1.0.5 as it does not work with OS 7.6. This is what Connectix web-pages says; 'At this time Connectix does not have any updates planned for CDU or CPU'.
As one of the great things with CPU is the possibility to invert the screen when working (easier for the eyes in low light situations) this incompatibility is a great problem. The Apple Close View works fine but what is the great idea to draw a black frame on the screen in 1:1 mode? If anyone out there knows a way to inverse the screen (9.5" gray-scale active-matrix LCD) please tell us. Thanks for all answers, Dan Frakes and Dan Berger reminded us abot the gamma control panel (preset definitions for Gamma 2.01). I also found an very old FKey that did the trick (faster, but not always so nice colors)
The little but useful control panel AltWDEF 1.6 or v1.5.3 control panel , great to minimize the space Finder windows waste, crash ungracefully and has to be removed.
Do not forget to upgrade GlobalFax with PP500Duo 2.5.5 Update.
We do not use any of the system patches from Newer, not NUpowr Backlight Fix v1.0.1 nor NUpowr System Update v1.1, nothing bad has happened so far. (Still running 7.5.5 OT v1.1.2 and PPP v1.0)
A note from a reader;
You might want to add some information on the PCMCIA expansion bay for the 500 series. The expansion bay works quite well. I've used it with System 7.5 through 7.6.1. There are three revisions of the bay; revision A, B, and C. Revision C is required for use with a PPC upgrade card. Otherwise the computer locks up when booting. Revision C will show icons of PC cards when they are inserted. Revisions A & B will not, and therefore require use of the PCMCIA Eject control strip item or control panel for removal of cards. The Revision C PCMCIA bay had trouble working with Speed Doubler 2.0.1 & System 7.5.5 w/a PPC expansion board, but seems to work OK now that I've upgraded to 7.6.1 & SD 2.0.3.
John Feinberg ITU Macintosh support, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. john.feinberg@roche.comPowerBook 500 series IDE disks
As one of our clients wanted a large hard disk for his 540 we ordered the brand new Apple 1GB 2.5" IDE (12.5mm) converted to SCSI (Service Part 661-1298). We took the opportunity to compare this bastard with a IBM 1GB from APS Technology. Our suspicions were right, the conversion card slow things down, considerably.As usual there were some problems with sleep and with SCSI-drives other than Apple Drive Setup v1.2.2. The FWB Hard Disk Tool v2.0.5 could not handle sleep and FWB SCSI Configure hung the system on setup 'Probing unsupported drive...'. You could easily forgive HDT this considering how new this IDE-SCSI 'sandwich' converter magic is. As we still choose HDT as THE formatting tool to use it still fails with sleep on the older IBM. We are forced to use APS PowerTools v4.0.9 with their 'backward working' password scheme for partitions :-(
HDT IBM SCSI (No sleep)
HDT Apple IDE-SCSI (No sleep)
And finally to be sure that Drive Setup did not use any hidden feature too speed things up we reformatted and tested Apple IDE-SCSI again (Sleeps OK)
Probably these figures would apply as well to the MonsterDrives 1.08 to 1.4GB from ArtMedia. It is too sad that this IDE-SCSI solution seems to be the only way to go...No, wrong! It seems that there are some help out there;
4 and 6GB 2.5" SCSI hard drives. These are IDE drives with a 3rd generation converter card. These new converter cards are extremely fast. They work faster than the SCSI bus and thus they cause no slowdowns. And since these new IDE drives are also extremely fast, with 512K cache etc, you end up with a drive that is faster than any true 2.5" SCSI drive. It is truly amazing to have a PB500 with a 6GB drive inside! Price is $399.00 for the 4GB and $479.00 for the 6GB. In stock at Mac Components Engineered, info@powerbook1.com.
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(And, yes, the test were performed on a 9500/200, in a external case on Hammer PCI card. We did this because 1. it was much easier 2. we did not believe that the bottleneck was in the bus regarding the kludge IDE-SCSI. (Confirmed by real life tests))
Another great place to be for PowerBook fans is O'Gradys PowerPage
