>I have been looking at a 1400cs to buy. The video is very pale and hard to >see. Does anyone have any idea what it might take to fix it. I tried >adjusting the brightness and contrast, but that didn't help at all. First >place I think it is too high, she wants $500. It's a 1400cs/133 with 16MB >ram and a 1 GB HDD. Any ideas????
wow . I'm going to guess (based on experience) that this is the original owner, they paid a TON of money for the Mac powerbook when it was new, and they haven't checked the values of used powerbooks in years. First, you should be able to adjust the brightness/contrast toggles on the display and get a fairly decent image- but you need to be indoors for sure, the cs displays are pretty much unuseable outdoors. Is there any change at all when you toggle the switches? Try resetting the PRAM, that always worked with a 5300 I had that would occasionally "forget" where the contrast should be. But the cs models won't ever look super bright and crisp, just "acceptable" at best. Currently, for $500 to $600, you can get the nice models of Walstreets (>14" very nice display, 256 megs RAM, big HD (10 to 20 gig), CD-ROM included, and often more). There is a exponential difference in the performance and capabilities of the two models....even if you get the 233 MHz G3 Walstreet with no L2 cache, about the poorest you could do with a G3). Look at Ebay; there's a 1400 with 60ish RAM and a 333MHz G3 upgrade, 3 gig drive, maybe more in the bundle, that was at $350 last I looked (OK, I looked again, it finished out at $420). The most vanilla 1400cs I found on ebay completed auctions had 775meg HD, 36 RAM, and went for $117. The cs model in any of the powerbooks is your last choice in terms of video quality; cs models have "passive" displays, the c's or ce's have much nicer active matrix screens (brighter, clearer, and faster refreshes). I have a 1400cs myself and I got it despite the cs display as it came max'd out with RAM, and some other extras, that I wanted. It was much less than half of the price you quote above, via ebay. For what I use it for (mostly genomic analysis and checking email) the display does not bug me. If I want to get a nicer display I'll have to pony up $80 to $130 more on ebay. Which is hard to justify. How much you want to pay is up to you, but IMO that is a rather anemic 1400, (the only thing that could be lower end with it, would be if it were the 117MHz model). You can check ebay for some finished auctions yourself and get an idea of what these older laptops go for on good and bad days. Not that I'm against anemic laptops, I have a couple myself, but I paid very little for them, and don't expect much from them as they're just too minimal (a 5300cs, 24 megs RAM, 1 gig HD) and a Powerbook 100 (68000cpu, 6 megs RAM). They do get used though. Depending on your intended use, minimal could be just fine. Click on "search" then click on "completed items" at ebay, you don't find finished auctions otherwise, and maybe make an offer based on the prices you see on ebay for comparable equipment. I suggest around $100 at most, maybe less if you are suspicious of the display. A replacement cs (passive scan) display will cost you $50-80 on ebay, and more if you don't install it yourself. You should really be able to find, for that same $100, a system with better specs if you search ebay for a couple weeks. In terms of shopping for older laptops, and adding bits to them: Keep in mind that any useful size of RAM expansion for any of these non-Walstreet powerbooks is going to cost way way way too much ($79 for 32 megs or so, give or take a little, new, suprisingly not much better used). RAM for newer models of Powerbook can often be $50 for 256 megs, new, as a comparison. Usually it's worth it with older laptops to get a laptop bundle that includes the RAM (although savvy people sell the RAM separately from the laptop on ebay, sigh, and make a lot more $ that way). Hard drives are dirt cheap ($55-80 for a new 20gig IDE is possible without much looking) and if the laptop comes with a drive that's 5 yrs old or more, I'd swap it out just for peace of mind and the speed and storage increase you will achieve. Also, you can get a lot more CD-ROM for your $ if you buy a powerbook SCSI cable ($7) and get a NEC or other portable SCSI CD-R or CD-RW ($40-80) rather than getting an old, slow, but internal Apple CD-ROM module (assuming you have Toast or similar drivers to make it work). Other peripherals: Mac friendly PCMCIA ethernet $20-50, modems $15-40, video adapter cards for external monitors $20-30. You can network the laptop to any older model of Mac via the printer port and Appletalk without buying more than just a printer cable, or via ethernet if you buy the card, but these older laptops have No Way to do USB or Firewire, so don't get one if you might need that. HTH. Older powerbooks can still be useful. 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