I recently hauled out this little gem. it is my only vintage PB that holds a charge in the battery, and it's keyboad (sans the stick ;/: key) is a joy to use. However, it is really slow, especailly on the net.

it has an upgraded 3gb HD, and only 40mb of ram. there is a 16mb card I have as well, but it does not cooperate with the 24mb card in anything except 7.6.1.

the machine is running Mac OS 8.6, Appleworks 6, iCab 3.0.3, Newton Connection stuff, iTunes 1.1, and a bunch of other stuff.

I have stripped out all unnessicary extensions, such as USB and firewire, but can't think of anything else. It runs all my games fine, however.

any thoughts? it's the 1400c/133 model.

-digital

Well, the first thing you could do is increase the RAM to maximum.

Another thing you could possibly do (depending on which ROM you've got) is upgrade to a 166 MHz 603e CPU from a 1400/166. Of course, a G3 upgrade would be much better.

The 1400 has a slow bus speed. At only 33 MHz, it will never be very speedy, but a G3 would be much better even at that speed.

Oh, you could also upgrade the hard drive to something a little faster.

In the end, though, I'm not sure there is much you can do to really improve the performance of a 1400 other than installing a CPU upgrade like a G3. The video card and bus speed will really slow you down when doing things like web browsing.

You could try downgrading your OS to 8.1 (but if you need CarbonLib 1.6, you'll need to stick with 8.6).

Absolutely make sure Virtual Memory is turned off. VM will seriously choke that machine. If you MUST use a VM system, make sure it is only set to 1 MB greater than your installed RAM (41 MB).

Does anybody else have any ideas?

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

I have ram doubler 2 installed, set to triple the ram to 120mb. should I disable and delete it?

I really need carbonib 1.6, and would like to run iTunes, so 8.6 is the minimum. I am not getting a G3 card. This is not a hot rod project, just a "make sure I don't have enough time to make a pot of coffe while the web page loads" type of thing.

I have been contimplating upgrading all the way to 9.2.2 using OS 9 helper, as I have heard the 9.2.1+ really improves finder performance, even on non G3s.

And the hard drive has been upgraded as far i I can. the original was a super thick 1.3gb. the 3gb is held in place with duct tape, since the screw holes are custom on the stock HD and bracket. Besides, I still have 2.1gb availible even with all my apps I need for a good GP machine.

-digital

Having tried PB1400c/117,133,166, and Sonnet G3/333, with various memory sizes from 32 to 64MB I agree completely with the previous comments from direct experience. MacOS 8.6 is as far as you want to go! On 56K dialups just by watching the data transfer modem activity indicators I can see that both data transfer time, and periods of pure CPU page rendering time, both contribute to the considerable wait for loading a page. With ethernet or wireless connections the CPU page rendering time becomes dominant and faster and cached CPUs really help. The Sonnet G3/333 with 64MB memory is really pleasant to use on the net. A 166 MHz with 48 MB memory is okay on simple pages but can be a bit slow on the more complex ones, like eBay.

RAM Doubler is for making stuff fit at all, it adds overhead but you may want to keep it until you get more memory, depending on what browser memory you require. For my uses I need to run a browser and have enough memory to open PDF files concurrently, so on some systems I retain either Ram Doubler set to double only, or have Virtual Memory on but set to 1 MB over physical memory size to allow file mapping but not encourage thrashing.

The browser choice depends on your browsing habits, and in my case one of my free ISP's use of javascript driven advertising banners. I've tried IE (5.1.7), Mozilla (1.3.1 WaMCom), and iCab (3.0.3). IE requires the least memory and is the fastest for me but does not render certain modern pages. (11.7 MB download, http://www.download.com/Internet-Explorer-Classic-/3000-2143_4-10217338.html )
_________________
SE30, PB1400, PMG3DT, PMG4

Put in a faster hard drive. Every little bit helps. Turn off disk sleep, at least when on mains power.

Check the House of Hardware Hacking Horrors

Another way: get the fastest Compact Flash card or IBM Microdrive you can find, and put it in a PCMCIA adapter. Then use that as your virtual memory/RAM Doubler scratch space, and/or a boot disk.

Having scratch space on a separate drive from your OS and apps should theoretically provide a speed boost. If this is the only use for the drive, it doesn't need to be large. A 64MB CF for VM should do nicely

Having a CF boot drive would make your battery last longer too. You could even replace the internal HD with a CF if you can source the right adapter. Mmmm, silence ....

Ooh! The CF boot card trick!

I've built two digital picture frames (one out of a 5300, the 0ther out of a Wallstreet), and both use 1 GB CF cards as boot disks. It's very neat and very quiet.

There's just something about not having any moving parts that is so darn cool. Don't expect a huge speed boost from that, though. I've found that my 5300 performs decently when booting from a CF card, but oddly the system slows down when accessing files on the card. I notice better perfomance when using the CF card for VM.

Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!

There are quite large speed differences between one CF card and another too, or so I hear.

One other argument for a G3 upgrade is, if the machine is needed for something serious, that third-party daughter cards circumvent the designed-in throttling of the 1400 to 32-bit transfers by having their own inbuilt 64-bit data paths.

de
_________________
(60x) 13DT + 3PB + PTPro; (G3) 7DT/MT; (G4) 3T + PB. System 8.1 to OS 10.5.8

I'm going to grave-dig this a little.

My 1400 currently has a c display, a 466MHz G3 (yes, the last of the Sonnets), 60MB of RAM, RAMDoubler (doubled to 120MB), Apple 8-bit video out card, and a much faster 4GB disk. I don't trust the CF trick -- I'm always leery of write cycles pooping (boy, that's a conservative cussbuster) out when you least expect it -- and anyway both slots are occupied, one with an EtherLink III and the other with a modem card. It runs 9.1.

This wasn't cheap to put together, but the machine really runs pretty well, considering. The only gaffe is that the 466MHz card looks like a 233MHz card to Apple System Profiler because of the bus multiplier (the Sonnet extension essentially double-pumps it: think 68040), so it's clearly not getting the full benefit, but it is still at least a bit faster than the 333MHz (best shown when it's playing Quake). With all that in there, it runs Classilla surprisingly well and more than a few games. This laptop is rather special to me because for many years it was the only laptop I had.

I think there were G3 upgrades for the 603 based Powerbooks, but the real limiting factor is the maximum RAM and slow bus speed. A G3 upgrade would really be wasted in those machines even if you could find one and pay the high prices they command. You'd spend less for a real G3 Powerbook and be getting a far superior machine.
Of course, G4 TiBooks are getting down in price to where even the G3 Powerbooks aren't a good choice if you need to replace an older Powerbook anymore.

As for OS choices, 7.6-8.1 would be much better than 8.5-9.2.2 which are resource heavy on those older machines.

From my experience using a 603e and a G3 in a 1400 the difference is quite obvious. I was lucky enough to pickup a 1400c with a Vimage 233mhz G3 upgrade complete with 64MB RAM (for $25 with a spare logicboard). I have since upgraded the 2GB HD to 10GB and installed 8.6 and it flies. I have a 1400cs with 8.1, stock 133mhz 603e and 48MB RAM and it is nothing like the G3 233mhz.

Now the price may not really be worth it in most cases, but if you are lucky enough to find one for the right price I would definitely pick it up

I think Quadraman is making the point that, even if cost were equal or better, a 1400 with a G3 is not going to be competitive with a real G3 laptop. Certainly on paper my 1400 is faster than my 300MHz iBook, but as far as "teh snappie" the iBook leaves the 1400 in the dust because it has a faster bus and better video, neither of which the 1400 can better. This isn't to say that the 1400 might not do better on a CPU benchmark, but the 1400 will certainly *seem* slower, and the memory ceiling really hurts.

That being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the G3 is night and day in the 1400. I could never go back to the 603 -- this machine started out as a rock-bottom 117MHz, for crying out loud! Augh!