PB 540C - two questions

Hi, welcome to the boards.

One other possibility is to get a CF to PCMCIA card reader and use an inexpensive Compact Flash card to dump your data onto.

Or get a PCMCIA to USB adaptor to use with a thumb drive.

If you get an AAUI to RJ-45 then you could possibly set up for filesharing though it might depend on what other Mac you are trying to hook up to so this might not be my first choice.

Kevin

USB is not an option for the 540, it's just way too old. In order to use the PCMCIA and CF option listed above you will need the PCMCIA bay adapter which fit into a battery slot and is very rare. If you have access to a floppy drive for your newer machine that would be your best bet, but if not I would look into the ethernet option.

Ben Sivertsen wrote:
USB is not an option for the 540, it's just way too old. In order to use the PCMCIA and CF option listed above you will need the PCMCIA bay adapter which fit into a battery slot and is very rare. If you have access to a floppy drive for your newer machine that would be your best bet, but if not I would look into the ethernet option.

Hi Ben, the 540c has a PCMCIA card slot therefore you will not require an adaptor.

Belkin made a PCMCIA USB 1 adaptor for this generation of PowerBook. They turn up from time to time, the newer USB2 cards made by Adaptec do not work.

Ethernet can be hit or miss depending on the OS' involved that's why I'm hesitant to recommend this route. Now if he had access to a fileserver or perhaps a FirstClass server sure as that is what I use as a bridge between ethernet and appletalk.

Kevin

Correction, I am wrong. I just checked my 540c. It does have a PCMCIA slot but it is an adaptor.

Sorry.

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Yes, the PCMCIA Expansion Module was sold separately. A manual for one of the versions can be found here. If available, I agree, using a CompactFlash card (in a PC Card adapter for CF) through the expansion module is a quick and simple solution for most file transfers.

With an AAUI to RJ-45 transceiver (e.g., the Apple Ethernet Twisted-Pair Transceiver, Model No: M0437), TCP/IP software and an appropriate web browser, Brad should not have a problem connecting to the Internet (typically, connecting via DHCP).

For example, the downloadable System 7.5.3 (the US version here) contains a TCP/IP control panel (active once the Network Software Selector has been set to Open Transport networking). The individual system software files are small enough to fit onto 1.44 MB floppies.

Jan

No worries, I haven't actually seen a 540, just guessed offf the form factor of a 520 (look similiar in the photos). Interesting that the 'book can have USB but later machines (1400, and 5300 models) cannot. Perhaps it has to do with the speed of the ports.

Hello, brunzel.
For smaller files, you could use floppy disks. Many modern PCs still have floppy drives, so you could transfer the files from the 540C to a PC on a floppy disk and from the PC to any modern computer on the USB thumb drive.
Note that some files (especially applications) may be corrupted when using the PC to copy them in this manner because of the way files are stored on older Macs. However, you can get around this by using compression software (such as DropStuff) to compress the files and encode them as BinHexed (sometimes called ".hqx") files. BinHexed files can be transferred in this manner without being corrupted.