Description

RARE, RESTORED & RECAPPED Vintage Apple Mac Macintosh PowerBook 100.

The PowerBook 100 was introduced by Apple in October 1991. It was a highly miniaturized replacement for the heavy, bulky and very finicky Macintosh Portable, and an unexpected commercial hit for Apple. It is considered to be the first truly portable computer sold by Apple…but this model was actually (mostly) designed by Sony. Unlike most laptops produced around the same time period, which were difficult to service, the Powerbook 100 was VERY easily serviceable. Its design was praised as being “...one of the 10 best PCs of all times.” and won many design awards. 

The PowerBook 100 was introduced at the same time as the Powerbooks 140 and 170. All three laptops were the first laptop models with a trackball centered below the keyboard! The Mac Portable had its trackball installed either to the right or the left of the keyboard and almost no other laptop manufactured during the same period featured a trackball!  

Unlike (the very few) other 100’s being sold which are sold “for parts or repair”, ”as is”, “untested”, “no power adapter”, “not turning on” etc.. This particular unit is in excellent cosmetic condition, cleaned, restored, detailed, recapped and FULLY functional. It is a complete SYSTEM. 

Almost all (possibly all) Powerbook 100s suffer from leaking capacitors on their logic board. Surface mount capacitors from the late eighties and early nineties were infamous for their tendency to leak. When they leaked, these capacitors: (1) cause the computer to stop working as intended and (2) cause corrosion on the printed circuit which ends up destroying traces and chip pins if left uncleaned. This laptop’s logic board and daughter board have had all their electrolytic capacitors replaced (“recapped”) and the printed circuit board cleaned. The computer boots up with no issues. The original SCSI hard disk has been replaced by a BlueSCSI (this is a very fast and fully solid state electronic equivalent to a SCSI disk using a standard SD card for storage). The BlueSCSI has been configured to emulate two hard disks – one of 1GB and one of 2 GB -  and has Mac OS 7.0.1 freshly installed on the 1GB disk.

The full system has been thoroughly tested. Sound, internal and external SCSI ports, external floppy port, serial port, programmer's and reset switches, keyboard and trackball: all tested and working properly. 

Included with the PowerBook is the original power adapter, the original (dead) battery -no leaks, no bulging and no corrosion, some of the original documentation and the original install floppy disks. Also included is an HDI20 floppy disk drive. The floppy drive has been disassembled, cleaned, serviced and lubricated. Reads, writes, formats and ejects disks perfectly.

Note: The original included disks have not been tested; however images of the installation disks are available on the hard disk.  These images could be used to create a fresh copy of the installation floppies.

The screen is quite bright (for a passive matrix screen) and both the brightness and contrast controls work properly. The base 2MB memory has been expanded to 4MB with a memory expansion card. 

Despite this computer having been extensively tested and found to be fully functional, it IS over 30 years old technology and as such, there is no guarantee offered, or implied, for continued functioning. This lot is being sold as-is with no returns accepted.

This is a rare, thought after, collector’s item in excellent condition and fully functional. It will make a great addition to any collection. Ready to use.