PowerBook 2400c

Screenshot of PowerBook 2400c running iTunes, MacSSH, Fetch
Screenshot of PowerBook 2400c running iTunes, MacSSH, Fetch
After spending all that time banging on the PowerBook 1400c/133, I was ready when my “Eleanor” popped up on eBay – a PowerBook 2400c with a G3 upgrade already installed! So that’s what I have now. (Need to move the 1400s along to a new home.)

It came already running Mac OS 9.1 on a spinning rust hard drive (want to swap that for a PATA SSD like Transcend 32GB PSD330 or (more likely the better option) the OWC 120GB Mercury Pro Legacy 3.5-inch IDE/ATA Solid-State Drive Kit (OWCSSDMXLE120), but that’s a non-trivial task).

The Cisco Aironet 350 was recognized on it and didn’t give me the pop-up I got on the 1400, but I couldn’t get it to work. The Orinoco worked just fine, so I’m using that, with a Cisco (Linksys)  WRT54G2 flashed with DD-WRT.

Moved some software onto the machine using CompactFlash cards and a PCMCIA adapter, to bootstrap it a bit.

Current stack:

To get MacSSH talking to a reasonably recent Linux box, I had to put a server up on a debug port and hammer at it until I found mutually compatible key exchange, cypher, and authentication mechanisms (and had to turn off compression on the client side). This is insecure, obviously, so I only have it running when I’m using the machine (and it’s firewalled, and I’m the only one on the LAN, and ...):

# /usr/sbin/sshd -d -d -d -p 2222 -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -oCiphers=+3des-cbc -oMACs=+hmac-md5

Fetch just works. WordPerfect just works. iTunes just works (but I had to make sure I was forcing binary mode when transferring MP3s, or they wouldn’t open in iTunes). Classilla is ... Well, it’s better than nothing (and works with macintoshgarden.org, which is all I really need it to do).

Next I need to get AppleTalk (or some other native network server setup) working, so I can save to a modern system for file exchange, redundancy, etc. I have bookmarks:

https://sourceforge.net/p/netatalk/code/ci/branch-netatalk-2-0/tree/
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.apple2/c/lkh4hXqmJbE

For information on networking the IIgs <—> Mac via Appletalk see the
November 2002 issue of _The Lamp!_ at: http://lamp.a2central.com/
Select from the files named TLMP0211
http://www.syndicomm.com/~a2.ryan/The_Lamp/Text/2002/TLMP0211.TXT


https://comp.sys.apple2.narkive.com/dcQfibEk/announcing-afpbridge
https://comp.sys.apple2.narkive.com/pcgkTPBv/apple-iigs-network-filesharing

https://www.techtalkz.com/threads/20-years-later-what-storage-options-for-iigs.435910/

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-mac-connection-networking-linux-and-macintosh-systems-with-netatalk/

https://github.com/akuker/RASCSI/wiki/AFP-File-Sharing 

https://www.macip.net/ 

Also, I really want to remap the Japanese keyboard to something more compatible with my muscle memory: http://www.sterpin.net/uk/keyboardskeysmapping.htm. Shouldn’t be too difficult:

Video still frame showing Japanese and English keyboard layouts
Video still frame showing Japanese and English keyboard layouts

Finally, I’d really like to replace or rebuild the M4271 (5876LL/A) battery (which, unlike the NiCd brick in the 1400, is at least Lithium Ion, using standard 18650 cells).

This AAL1018 DC adapter might be useful, as well (could recharge on the go with the Renogy battery pack).

Update: Out of curiousity, I used MacBench 5.0 to clock the internal hard drive (which I believe was upgraded at some point, it’s a Toshiba MK3211MA 3.2GB drive, not the 1.3GB unit Apple shipped stock), and then booted from a 9.0.4 install on a Transcend TS8GCF100I 8GB Industrial Compact Flash Card in a PCMCIA adapter, and ran the same benchmark on that. The CompactFlash setup provides about 50% the performance of the internal 4200 RPM drive: https://pastebin.com/Lzmb93zX.

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