Mac PB 1400 power supply plug?

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Mac PB 1400 power supply plug?

I have a pair of old PB 1400's. Both were upgraded to G-3 using the Sonnett modules. They were in deep storage in the back of a storage building for years and I just dug them out. I know the batteries are toast and also the PRAM batteres after all this time, but I know how to bypass those to fire them up. Neither has a power supply and I tried ordering one on line. The good news was it only cost about $9. The bad is they sent me the supply for the later G-4 PB. (It is identical to the one on a 1.5 GHZ 15" PB I have.) The voltage is right and the current rating will work. The problem is the plug that goes into the back of the G-4 PB is smaller than the one for the 1400.

I need to know if the plug (a standard RCA plug fits perfectly) was a simple center pin for plus and outer shell for negative, or if Apple used a special plug with the outside shell being a shield and 2 inner rings in the center shaft being positive and negative supplies like the one on the G-4's power supply? If it is just an RCA plug, great. If it is a specialty plug, where can I find one? I just want to retrieve some old data from the 1400s and possibly open some old floppies where I have the layout and printer ready stuff for a book I had published many years back . To give you some idea of the time frame, I wrote and illustrated it on a new at the time Plus. I saved it on the optional external 20 MB hard drive, which was the biggest available at the time and sat under and had the same footprint as the Plus and then burned it on floppy for the printer.

Also is the 8x CD drive a read only that far back as I suspect? No biggie as I have an external SCSI CD rw drive and all the cables. I have more than 2 dozen older Macs. All are working, from a fully operational SE dual floppy drive model and up to my latest, a modded 12 core, dual 3.46 GHZ Zeons, 64 GB RAM and 2 GB VRAM MacPro tower. (last model before the smoke stack, but with after market tweaked CPUs. to give full 3.46 GHZ speeds and almost 4 GHZ in turbo mode.) Haven't upgraded to Yosemite yet. Want to let it be around for a bit first so that the 3rd party apps can catch up with it.

Sorry about the book here but I am a writer after all:)

PowerBook, Mac OS 9.1.x, 1400 CS

Posted on Oct 30, 2014 8:46 PM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,972 points

Oct 31, 2014 12:40 AM in response to Dall-n-Vegas

There was an adapter similar in appearance to the yo-yo looking item

that has a different connector shape on the end, it would not fit the

iBook G3 or early white G4 dual-usb; but would fit the older PowerBook.

And these, in the day, were sometimes confused at a distance; but not

interchangeable between un-intended devices since plug shape differed.

However, while looking into previous sources of information, many sites

no longer have significant specification or information any more. Those

old archives appear to mostly be gone now. There may be a few leads

among Apple User groups and vintage users; a few sites such as the

one known as lowendmac.com may still have residual info. To call such

places as powerbookmedic or wegenermedia may or may not yield results.

http://www.lowendmac.com/profiles.htm

http://lowendmac.com/1996/powerbook-1400/

And a page with several old web site links, some may not work anymore:

http://www.lowendmac.com/dealers/index.shtml

There may be a source for suitable replacement vintage power adapters,

but in the short interval of my looking, haven't found a definite source.

Someone may offer repaired used or old-stock piecemeal new, as found.

Hopefully you can find the correct original adapters, or suitable alternatives.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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Answer 2

Dall-n-Vegas Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2014 7:55 PM in response to Dall-n-Vegas

Hi all. Thanks for the response. I couldn't find anyone who could tell me about the power jack in the back of the 1400, so I took one of mine apart. The jack is a 9mm that looks like and is an exact fit for a standard RCA plug. (The G-4 power supply that I was told would fit uses a 7.5mm plug and jack.) Other than diameter, they are the same.

Inside where the plug goes are 2 contacts that touch rings on the inserted plug, so using an RCA plug won't work. The contacts are where the voltage is transferred. The outer metal shell is only a shield. Inside, as you look down at the power jack with it facing away from you, the left most of the 3 small contact pads is positive and the right one is negative.

The batteries, both main and backup are all shot, (in storage for more than 9 years! Put a meter on them and the better one had 1.24 volts!) so I did a little surgery and removed the power jack from one. I used its external opening to run the cable from the G-4 power supply to the contact pads and soldered them in place. (Removed the plug from the power supply cable first of course.) Fires right up and seems to be working fine other than the date being 01/01/1903 and the time at midnight. (OS 9.1, 64 meg of RAM, 217 MHZ Sonnet G3 upgrade card and 750 Meg HD) Then swapped out the 10 Gig HD and its 333 MHZ Sonnet G3 upgrade card from the other and restarted. Once again works fine. (64 MEG of RAM? My present 12 core has 64 GIG of RAM and half the slots are empty!!)

I can't believe we actually worked on computers this archaic and considered them state of the art. The screen is so hard to see compared to even my pair of older G4 PBs and the G4s are dim and fuzzy compared to my twin 27" Benq gaming monitors, or my wife's quad core i5 iMac. The system starts and responds so slowly compared to the new machines. It took longer for OS 9.1 to start than is does for Mavericks in my present Mac. (Of course these days I'm starting from a 500 Gig SSD ) Even my G4s running 10.5 start and run faster and smoother. The indicator for battery charging shows a red X, which I assume means the batteries won't take a charge. Reset the RAM and used the reset button a few times with no improvement. I'll leave it plugged in all night to see if anything develops.

I haven't found my ethernet card and dongle (fits in the card slot) that I used when I took one of them to Iraq back in 2004. Used it on the base to connect to the internet for email and contact with home, since the government didn't want us taking OS 10.and newer equipment into those areas. (The IT people couldn't figure out how to set it up it for connection so I asked for the TCP IP info and had it connected in a few minutes.) I also have the video expansion card with the external Focus LTV unit for using a TV as a monitor. Used it in the classroom for years while teaching. I also can't find my HDI-30 SCSI adapter. When I find that, I will connect an old external CD R/W SCSI drive so I can transfer data files. (assuming I don't find the ethernet card and simply connect into the cat-5 ethernet network that is hard wired to an Airport Base Station.)

Anyone know if you can go higher than 64 MEG of RAM? I have 2-stacked 24 Meg modules in one and a single 48 Meg module in the other. I was wondering if I could use the 48 Meg as the top stacked on top of one of the 24 Meg modules? If it would work without burning anything out, that would give the 1400 88 MEG of RAM (16 standard + 24 module +48 module = 88 MEG. That might up the speed a bit as I could then shut off VR.

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