[NTLK] OT: Vintage Mac Resources

[Alan Grassia]

Hello Michael and Newton Friends,

My PowerBook G3 Wall Street / WallStreet 266MHz laptop came to me used.  It wouldn't turn on when I received it.  I replaced the Power In/Sound board (PN 820-0986-B, CK8212NC9Y0A) and my Wall Street was working well for a couple of years.  When it failed after having been repaired, I was going to junk it, but then COVID-19 lockdowns happened and I decided to keep it and try to get it running again.

When I started working on it again a few weeks ago, the Apple OEM hard drive that was originally in the unit failed. I replaced it with another Apple OEM disk drive.  I also installed a 'new to me' Power In/Sound board bearing the same PN as my original.  When I plug in the PowerBook, the Power LED comes on briefly and then goes out. While plugged into the power brick, when I press the Power button, the lights come on and the fan spins up briefly and then goes dead.

I uploaded a short video of the issue to YouTube: https://youtu.be/pRBwtuF_6c0

A couple of items to note:
1. I pulled out the primary Lithium Ion battery pack.  It doesn’t hold a charge.  I loaded an Apple OEM G3 Floppy Drive Expansions Bay Module into the battery port so the device still looks period accurate.
2. While replacing the Power In/Sound board the second time (most recently), I also pulled out the PRAM battery.
3. There is no difference whether or not the floppy drive (left) or CD ROM drive (right) modules are loaded into the Mac.

In my opinion, there is no need to leave these batteries inside the G3 and waiting for them to fail and damage the unit further.

In reading a thread on 68kMLA.org (https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/powerbook-g3-266-wallstreet-fan-starts-with-any-power.32162/), there were a number of possible causes for this issue, including a bad PowerPC CPU board, bad RAM, or a bad hard disk drive.  I am considering swapping in another IDE HDD or IDE SSD and RAM modules to try and isolate the cause.  I also purchased a 'new to me' power distribution board that connects the system board to the modular bay ports on either side of the trackpad.

I had a very similar issue with the Power Macintosh G4 Quicksilver that I restored early this year.  I ended up having to buy another as-is nearly-working Quicksilver on eBay to use for donor parts.  I'm thinking I might need to do that again to get a supply of parts to get my Wallstreet up and running again.

Cheers,
Alan Grassia
 
-------------------------------
OMP, MP 2000, MP 2100, eMate 300
 
Website: http://blog.smartphonefanatics.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alanmgrassia
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alangrassia
 


On 9/10/21, 10:49 AM, "NewtonTalk on behalf of Michael Sheflin" <newtontalk-bounces at newtontalk.net on behalf of sheflinm at gmail.com> wrote:

    What's the issue?  I've personally found that maybe 55% of the time, posts
    on these sites will result in someone else tangentially describing some
    issue they once had and resolved or bragging about their collection without
    necessarily addressing the concerns of the actual poster?