Home Page | Running off a Flash Card | Powerbook 3400 MP3 Jukebox
 This old Powerbook 3400c is nearly 10 years old. Still works, and does MP3s.
I bought this Powerbook 3400 laptop computer from someone off the Low End Mac Buy and Sell Mailing List. It was the first laptop I ever owned until I got a used Macintosh iBook G3 700 last year. The Powerbook 3400 was pressed it into service shortly after my last 680x0 Mac, a Centris 650 was decommissioned. The Powerbook originally came with OS 9.1, which I found to be a little sluggish. I downgraded the OS by totally erasing the hard drive and doing a clean install of OS 8.5. The Powerbook is spunkier with a less demanding operating system which is great for what this laptop was originally used for -- internet browsing, email and word processing whenever I was away from home. It ran Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x, Eudora 5.1, Nifty Telnet and Telefinder 5.7 for a variety of internet tasks. On the word processing side, Clarisworks 4.0, WriteNow 4.0 and Microsoft Word 5.1 are the word processors of choice. For plain text processing this book packs BBEdit Lite 4.1 and Apple's SimpleText prorgram. There is a built in 4GB hard drive, which for about 3 years ran well on the Powerbook. In late 2003, the hard drive started to flake out. I bought another internal drive, but after finding out how difficult it was to self install the thing, I lost my desire to use the Powerbook and stored it away in my closet for slightly more than a year. I later bought the iBook and never bothered with this old Mac until I read an article about running a Powerbook off a compact flash memory card. So earlier this year I brought out the Powerbook and got it up and running using a compact flash card as its primary "hard drive". You can read up on how I did this by clicking on this link. Regardless this Powerbook 3400 is maxed out with 144 MB of RAM memory and contains the removable CD ROM, floppy drive and Zip disc modules. I also have 2 PCMIA cards that hold compact flash for using the Powerbook with my dedicated compact flash drive. The second card is used for storage and file transfer. The Powerbook is now running Mac OS 8.6. Today I still use the Powerbook 3400 for word processing (I love WriteNow 4.0 and this is one of the Macs that can run the program), simple internet tasks and as an MP3 music jukebox. You can read about the jukebox at this link. All in all, this is a cute little laptop that is snappy enough for basic, daily use. Powerbook 3400 Hardware Set-up (updated)
Hardware Vendor: Apple Computer, Inc.
Hard Disk: 4 GB Peripheral Devices
Macintosh Powerbook 6x CD-ROM Module Software
Mac OS 8.5 upgraded to OS 8.6
 Mel's Macintosh Universe
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