I acquired a working PowerBook 2400c/180 from a friend a while back and thought it might be a good project for the PowerPC Challenge for 2024. It has to be something small enough that I could take it with me on Summer holidays (yes, it is Summer in January in Australia) and tinker with it in the few free moments you get whilst holidaying with children.
With some last minute packing I was able to fit the cute little PowerBook 2400c/180 into a vintage Apple laptop carry bag with a few bits and pieces. The bits and pieces were a Newer Tech NuPowr G3/240 accelerator, 64MB RAM card, Billionton RTL8139x CardBus 100MBit Ethernet Card, Farallon PCMCIA Ethernet card and 32GB CF card with PCMCIA adapter. I was hoping to get the Billionton card working in preference to the Farallon card as it was 100Mbit vs 10Mbit and has an RJ45 socket as opposed to a dedicated cable.
I will admit to a little cheating here in regarding to the timing of my challenge entry. I did start early (12/27/23) and installed the accelerator and RAM before I left for holidays as I couldn’t take some of the tools I needed with me on the plane. For some really good information on the accelerator and installation check out @actionretro’s YouTube video
As you will see if you watch the video, installing RAM and an accelerator in this thing wasn’t easy however I managed to accomplish it at the 11th hour before holiday departure. After a quick startup to check that the installations worked it was into the laptop bag and off to the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland.
Fast forward to January 5 and the holiday festivities had settled down enough for me to reacquaint myself with the 2400c. In my haste to leave home I didn’t install any of the software needed for the NuPowr accelerator. Therefore at startup I didn’t get the familiar addition to the bottom of the startup splash screen. Instead I got an error message complaining about a corrupted cache. Once the NuPowr software was installed all was good. Next was RAM, the About Box showed the full 80MB I was expecting so it was mission accomplished on the internal upgrade surgery.
Now for Ethernet and more storage. Here is where things got a little weird. Let me explain. The PowerBook 2400c was considered a Japan only machine however that is not the case. It was sold in the USA in limited numbers and there are slight differences between the two. For obvious reasons the keyboards had different layouts but on a more fundamental level the Japanese version supported the CardBus standard while the US version only supported the older PC Card standard even though both types of cards will fit in the PCMCIA slots. It is possible to modify the US version however. This link goes into more detail on how to do the mod.
I started with the Billionton CardBus Ethernet card but could not get it to function under Mac OS 8.6. It would work with Mac OS 9.04 so I knew the card worked. I wanted the system to run Mac OS 8.6 as I already have a clamshell iBook running Mac OS 9. So a downgrade to Mac OS 8.6 was necessary and the Farallon card worked just fine. As for the bigger storage capacity I chose to use a 32GB Sandisk CF Card in a PCMCIA card adapter. After formatting the CF card with FWB Hard Disk Tool Kit I was able to copy software onto it with a modern Mac with CF Card adapter. As a bonus the 2400c booted from the CF Card as well.
So that was pretty much mission accomplished. I now have a Powerbook 2400c G3/240 with 10MBit ethernet and a 32GB Solid State drive.