L2 cache is essential on classic Mac OS for good performance. On 68k machines, L2 cache doesn’t get flushed like the CPU cache when a 68k trap is used (basically all ROM calls). On PPC machines, the 68k emulator lives on the L2 cache.

You need to use the original heatsink on that G3 upgrade. Without it, the cache chips will overheat which causes the issues you mentioned.

Didn't the old heat spreader go over both the processor and the chips on the side? Are those the cache? If so maybe they are overheating when not under-clocked. You might be able to get it running at full speed if you put the old spreader back on / add a copper shim to those chips as well

That paper is warranty card actually, and by Japanese conventions the receipt sometimes pasted onto the box (with low adhesive tape) or slides into the edge of box.

I really would like to see you try the original heat sink plate instead of that copper shim on the G3 card. Or at least add some shims and thermal paste to the other chips on the card. Underclocking it like that significantly reduced the heat output from those cache chips. I know you said you felt it was putting too much pressure on the chip but I really doubt you’ll hurt anything, especially if you use thermal paste instead of a pad. Who knows maybe it is just bad but the symptoms you described sound very much like overheating. Can’t hurt to at least try it, right?

Probably because you didn't let the original heatsink 'press down' on the cache chips. They're not cooled now... without it. So you needed to underclock them without a heatsink and boom you had working cache. You can probably ramp it up to normal cache speeds when you put back the original head sink on those cache chips.

People are commenting on the cache possibly overheating, and I'm just amused that your zip drive has googly eyes on it

Sounds like your dislike of that huge heatsink is what’s killing your system. You can’t take the massive heatsink and fan off of a modern 3D video card and complain the card doesn’t work, you’re doing the same thing here. If it was intended that you use anything other than the stock heatsink it would’ve come with it in the box. As a tech it always killed me to find issues like this because it’s self inflicted.

Cache memory was expensive back in those days, which is why they made machines like the 1400/117 and the Wallstreet 233 without the cache. That accelerator probably has cache chips installed that didn't meet the spec they were ran at in the first place, but just barely got by 20 years ago. Now they don't, so you have to lower the speed on the cache for them to work.

"I'm Action Retro and this is my favorite PowerBook on the Citadel."

Could it be the missing cooling on the cash? Since you used only a chim on the CPU part the cash has no way to remove heat to the heatsink

Thanks for the trip down memory lane, I had a Powerbook 1400C w and an Upgraded G3 (Newtech) way back in ~1997. I was in San Jose on trip and I visited their offices and they installed it for me. It was pretty neat, and the 1400 remains a favorite of mine. I later sold it a replaced with the awesome Pismo.

not gonna lie, that package would have convinced teenage me to buy this back in the day

As most people have mentioned, the crashes are almost certainly due to the cache overheating. Put a heatsink on the cache chips and you should be able to take full advantage of the upgrade. You know she deserves to run at full speed. 😉

Did any of the other SSD->IDE or CF->IDE adapters have any master/slave jumper settings? If I recall Apple was a huge fan of using cable-select with its IDE devices.

Processor cache tends to make a huge difference to synthetic benchmarks; especially older ones that have tiny amounts of looping code that can fully fit inside. These benchmarks likely are not representative of the performance boost you would get in real applications.

hot damn, i freaking love accelerator cards. also that artwork is great, a nice tribute to pop-art and golden age comics.

Great one, lad. Now that is something fast and furious is a great one to do. You make Steve "Stephen" Jobs happy over your fast and furious upgrades.

My all time favorite Macintosh is the 1400C as well!!! It was the first computer I ever used when my mom would let me play Doom 2 on hers. And then when I got a bit older my mother gave it to me. I loved it to bits. Thanks for making videos about it! I’ve been waiting for someone to explore these old PowerBooks on KZfaq for over 12 years! And your channel provides a real service to vintage Macintosh lovers. Thanks for all the great videos!

Every time you flashed that box cover in front of the screen like that it just freaked me out! It must be that dazzling blue I guess... Yes, I remember running that XLR8 app with any of the G3/G4 upgrade cards (Newer, PowerLogix, Sonnet & XLR8) and it would detect the card and you can change the settings. Also, remove any batteries when upgrading anything in these old PowerBooks - power is still trickling through the board somewhere...

What a serviceable machine. It's easy to tell Jobs wasn't still back on board when it was designed...

The way you described the cache error, it sounds like it’s over heating.

i had an 1400cs in late 1999, who came with a g3 sonnet processor, can't remember if was 233 or 266 mhz... it was delicious. I changed the hd and put a 20gb.. who was enormous for the times. I saled it because bought a G4 Titanium. Now i have my regrets and would love to have it again. Love your videos man, thumbs up!

Dang dude i might have killed for an upgrade like this for my PB1400 back in 2001. I had a desktop beige G3/233 that was my daily driver PC but replacing my desktop with a laptop was my dream. A dream i didn't realize until 2020.

I always have regrets about recycling old macs, specifically my 1400, when I watch videos like this.

That sure is a, uh..... flashy box.

I had the PowerBook 1400c's crappier passive matrix cousin... It was my main computer through college, till I replaced it with a B&W G3. I bailed on a bike in winter, and the handlebar smashed the LCD. Bought an add in internal video card that added a VGA port to the machine. I had a strip of functioning LCD about an inch and a half tall along the bottom of the screen. After installing the card, I had to *_guess_* my trackpad movements to find the control panel menu in the apple menu, then find the monitors control panel, then when I eventually found it, move the window down to where I could see the mirroring button, and click it, so it would mirror the Internal and external displays. It took around 2 hours... The worst part, is the intersection where I bailed, destroying the LCD... My sister was in the car stopped at the light... She saw the whole thing, and had a good laugh at my expense! It's pretty funny in hindsight, but back then, there was a bank security camera that caught me swearin' up a storm when I ducked in to check the computer... Reason for going with that particular solution... I could afford it. The graphics card and a crappy old VGA monitor was in my budget... An Apple LCD repair was _not._ Later on, after I got the G3, I parted out the old laptop via ebay, and kept only the shell. Years later, I found the odd Solar Panel clip on accessory... I was into robots back then, still am, but it's been a while since building one... I always wanted to build a solar powered robot out of the gutted chassis of that old machine, knowing that weird solar panel accessory even existed. It took me a LONG TIME to find one pop up on ebay, many, many years later. I can't imagine _that_ many of them sold.

The more I stare at that box art, the more I see what looks like a Supergirl comic panel doctored up just enough to avoid copyright. An interesting choice in box art for a processor upgrade...

That was pretty cool! It’s actually getting to the point I look forward Saturday mornings for these videos. A la old school cartoon sessions on Saturday mornings, as a kid. LoL keep up the good work.

To the people saying that disliking the boxart is some "SJW stuff" or "just being prudes": PowerBook 1400s and PowerBooks in general of this era were used primarily in educational and business settings. If you want to be the one to have the talk with HR for purchasing the option that had a sexualized woman on the front rather than other options, that's all on you. Just saying, it won't be a comfortable conversation. That said, I actually really like this box. For a product type that is dominated mainly by boring white and purple boxes, it's really refreshing to see some creative and stylized art to show off in a collection. It's incredibly unique.

if you want to come back to the PowerBook 1400, I came across a page today from Matt J. Fuller mentioning that a 20X CD module made for the 190 & 5300 PowerBooks "works with PowerBook 1400-series laptops". The (sleep/)hotswappable modules typically have standard drives with a specific adapter to interface with the powerbook series. Over the weekend, my new (to me) PowerBook 1400 arrived, and it came with a floppy drive module without the floppy drive. But, I was able to put the floppy drive from a G3 series module into it and my 1400 is happily reading from floppy now. I imagine the same thing can be done with the cd drives. Depending on the internal connecter, you might even be able to work in other modules like a harddrive!

15:49 MAGIC The termal pad put itself onto the heatsink :)

Yeah that heat spreader should be on the cache chips too with paste.

questionable? nah more like iconic.

I love these. My dad had one for work and it was the only way I could get online from home circa 1997. On Saturdays I'd get a couple hours on it to browse the web and download software for my older Macs. I eventually got one when his company was getting rid of old machines and I wish I'd kept it.

I was gifted a box of PowerBooks a few years ago and at least 3 of them are 1400s. One of them is a 166mhz. I should look for this upgrade and put the box art on my wall ;)

Thank you very much for your special videos.

Interware made the best Mac accessories back in the day, from video cards to CPU accelerators. Too bad they went out of business. Don't lose that driver disk though because there is no Interware driver repository anywhere (at least, not one that's easily searchable) and the drivers are often the only way to get those awesome accessories to work.

The thing I love about these old macs is how upgradeable they are, I love old PCs, but besides the Pentium overdrive you really can't take an old motherboard and put a CPU from 1 or 2 generations later.

I just time-traveled from the year 2100 to tell you that a right-to-repair revolution has led to all repair technicians being replaced with affordable Action Retro disembodied magic hands. You can pick them up for 4,99 at Lidl, next to the checkout lines. They help you fix your old gadgets while providing a pleasant informative narration via the included disembodied voice.

no one: Japan: lewd images on a processor upgrade card box

I had one of these upgrades on the powerbook 1400cs and it runs very well at full speed caché, i never had this kind of crashes or problems yo see here, the upgrade was installed with the same ppc603 heatsink

Man, that bench comparison at the end really looks like it makes it all worth it! (Easy for me to say, I didn't sit through hours of frustration ^^;)

I have been looking for a powerbook 1400 laptop but they are not easy to find! All I own are g3 and g4 laptop's right now. I am always on the lookout for more older classic mac computers. Awesome video I always enjoy watching your channel. I appreciate all the time and effort you put in to making content.

Super! Thanks for documenting history!

You need to rebuild the desktop on your hds and zip disks. The generic application icons are bugging me. :) Just hold down apple and the key to the left of it (alt?) On startup to rebuild the hd desktop file, and hold those keys down when you insert a zip disk to do the same on that disk.

This is the greatest computer part packaging I have ever seen. 2000's GPU's with 3D-rendered waifus and monsters had nothing on this.

Thanks A Nice Upgrade We Love Are 1400,166 cs

Very cool! I was definitely expecting the cache to make a big difference, even at the reduced speed. I believe those systems use EDO RAM, which runs at the base bus speed of 33MHz, so a 77MHz cache will be more than twice as fast just in term of MHz. But that's not the only difference, there's a huge difference in latency, because accessing main memory takes a bunch of clock cycles to initiate the read/write request, then more clock cycles waiting for the RAM to retrieve the data and put it on the bus. But as usual I remain incredibly jealous that you can get these kinds of upgrades, they're just completely unheard of here in Australia. My 1400c is basically stuck at 48MB with the 166MHz 603e, unless I import something from overseas for a huge premium. It doesn't even have a CD-ROM! But I love it anyway. I have been thinking about fixing the battery with some Li-ion cells that I've rescued from dead laptop battery packs. The old battery wasn't very difficult to crack open, it was only held together in a few spots, so they were pretty easy to crack apart. I can fit four 18650 cells inside the pack for a nominal voltage of 14.4V, whereas the original was 9.6V, so it would definitely need a small buck/boost circuit in addition to a BMS and protection circuit. It wouldn't have much difference in capacity - 33.6Wh for the NiMH pack vs 36Wh with the Li-ion, although inefficiencies in the extra circuitry would reduce that a little. Or alternatively, you can get 9.6V NiMH battery packs for old power tools, although the risk with those is finding one with the right sized cells and cramming them into the battery case (there's not much room for soldering wires). A better alternative could be emergency lighting batteries. I found one that's made of cylindrical cells about 18mm in diameter, and 136mm long, and it's rated at 4.8V so you'd need two of the packs to make up the 8 cells. Anyway, can't wait to see what's next for this machine! Using it for development sounds interesting, although I can understand if you don't think people would be interested in a video about developing software on an old Mac.

Looks like cache chips are getting overheat because the OEM hestspreader is actually in contact with some other chips on the board. I have a few recommendations: 1: Is the copper shim over the CPU making contact with the heat spreader? Try putting a dab of the compound on top of it. 2: Put some thermal pads over those cache chips probably with a graphite one then an isolated copper shim then a paste on top of the shim as long as it makes contact with the heat spreader. Add: Hmmm I wonder if those thin netbook fan can fit in one of those?

It’s a proof of purchase receipt, stamped by a shop in the Laox chain, Sendai city. You fill in your information and use for warranty claims.

I also tried to use that red Renkforce IDE-mSata adapter on my 1400, it kinda worked but the mSata got quite hot and the install was unresponsive and slow. Then I just used an IDE-CF adapter and it was much better. I think this early IDE implementation wasn't that great, CF is better. The red adapter is better for newer machines like the Pismos, G4s etc.

Cache chips run hot and they need heat dissipation to keep them running normal on those Laptops. The system will lock up and spit out errors due to overheating. You need to replace the original heat spreader or make sure you mod using a heat dissipation source for the cache as well... Hope you'll do another video of that laptop with the fix for the cache chips. Long term use of the Laptop under the current state can damage the cache.

check the power draw and all caps.

its probably locking up because the heatsink isnt on the cache, its probably overheating, you should apply heatsinks to the processor and the cache. that large heatsink you didnt like, was more than likely keeping the chips stable on the original processor. running at 77.7 mhz is probably at threshold for the chips, hence why it works; anything above that is hitting over threshold and youre getting wiped out(crashing) in the process.

9:40 man I miss when macs were serviceable

That box art is so inappropriate, its appropriate!

I pre-like all your videos and I'm *never* disappointed.

I don't know... an Apple laptop you can actually work on and (gasp!) upgrade? It will never catch on, mark my words!

Booster, more like Boobster, amirite?

I had a laptop with a very similar mold, probably the same design firm. Fugitsu Livebook 735dx. A pentium machine with an LCD indicator on the hinge dust cover. Had it's own clone of the ibm nub

I like the cover arts

My Lombard G3 Powerbook is the 333 Mhz version without a DVD decoder on the motherboard, but it has a 400 Mhz processor. I tried installing a 333 Mhz processor so that I could try out a nifty DVD decoder PCMCIA card, but this processor also had defective cache memory, so I got a memory test error on startup and generally slow performance thereafter. My Lombard's 400 Mhz processor seems to have some strange problem: it runs fast and stable and the cache is strong, but I cannot reliably install or boot Mac OS X on the Lombard without it freezing...

That wasn’t a receipt… that is a customs form. It declares value and describes what it is. Japan has strict laws regarding export. For example: They won’t allow you to ship speakers or magnets via air shipping.

The interware upgrade card I have for my 2400c also crashes when I enable the cache.

The greatest CPU boxart.

im wondering if some of the small resisters are going poop and not able to help dive the speed of the cache .

You didn't put the heat spreader back on the Cache. It's just overheating. Place copper ram heatsinks on them and it will work fine at max speed.

I hope to find one of those G3 upgrade cards someday as well as the video ram upgrade

I had the same problems with my 3400. Ended up using the same SD card adapter.

Aren't you supposed to have a 4 gig partition for the startup drive?

I have an old 1400c that I upgraded with a NewerTech NUpower (?) G3, but it stopped working and I had to put the 603 back in. Does anyone know if that behaviour can happen with upgrades if the PRAM battery is bad? Or is my upgrade just dead? 🤔

I have a Sonnet G3 upgrade in my Powerbook 1400c. :) I actually ordered it direct from Sonnet in 2007, and it was the last one they had in stock (actually when I ordered they had two left in stock, but the first one they sent was defective and they had to send another to replace it).

my hard drive went out in my PowerBook 1400c what can I do to replace it with a compact flash or something even better? I have the same one you put in this PowerBook but what compact flash card do I need?

I've used 2 Dogfish mSata drives, both were trash and caused errors out of the box straight from Amazon. Not surprised you had trouble with yours either, they're trash

A Zip with eyes!!!! ;-)

Woah.. I just noticed, the processor is passively cooled right.?

I can only imagine someone at that company wanting packaging that looked American to Japanese audiences, and somehow felt pop culture comic style artwork on the packaging would catch the attention of those in Japan who were looking to just buy a new PowerBook and lose the fancy customisable lid. (8:48) I forgot there was a microSD version of that! I have a few of those, but the version that takes regular SD cards.

Could you get motherboard cashe and use that as well? Would it running faster help even more?

Overheating cache due to wrong heatsinking used.

can you try to run os x and see how well it performs? that os should not make use of the m68k emulartor (except in classic mode with the chache enabled obviously) and so it could run just fine

I had a PowerBook 1400cs/117 with 16MB of RAM back in the day. I have some not-so-fond memories of it -- it was SO SLOW

i have a 1400c running macos 8.6 japanese and a japanese keyboard layout

Overheating cache, caused by not using the heatsink.

The card is a booster, the graphic features a bustier!

How hard would it be to replace the cache chips?

Я помню как в 2000 году в старой HP Vectra VL, на работе, мы заменяли родной i486 на Kingston Turbochip (вроде бы kingston turbochip tc5x86/133).

I wouldn't be surprised if these upgrade cards were removed from retail for being faulty in the first place? Probably placed in storage for years and forgot about.

Yay, it's Saturday!

Could be overheating or a bus issue with that particular powerbook

Why did the others not work.

how do you find these all the upgrades?

Can you view the hub on it?

What are you developing?

sounds like thermal issues on the cache

What are the chips on the G3 card? Some good photo's of either side should be enough - I could get some NoS L2 Cache chips from somewhere like UTSource, and replace them for you...

Hey action retro could you please show how to set up Macintosh plus connected to a Mac beige G3 so I can browse the web on the Mac plus using the printer port connection please?

Wouldn't a stock Pismo get more performance by just existing?

Look at that floppy drive...

The cache has me wondering, could there be faulty power regulators or capacitors somewhere? Maybe they aren't getting enough juice. Maybe the CPU is taking up enough power there isn't enough power for the sensitive cache. Or maybe the cache IS overheating and it needs some thermal pads or even some active cooling of some sort. like a 30mm*30mm*4mm slim blower fan(like from the gpd win2) Edit: Also.. maybe the cache is supposed to run slower? I'm wondering if it's like.. 66mhz cache and you're actually overclocking it with the 77mhz.