Building a Perfect PowerBook 540c (PowerPC Upgraded!)

[@Fred_Raimer]

I just had to comment on how hard I laughed at the "CENSORED" super while you were applying thermal compound, Sean!!!! LOLOLOLOL

[@MichaelAStanhope]

That was hilarious. Loved it!

[@milesraymond2360]

wait... why was it censored...?

[@KnuckleHunkybuck]

@@milesraymond2360 I'm not sure, but I think it's because of how geeks freak out when someone uses a method they deem to be inferior from their method. There are a few different patterns you can use to apply thermal paste, and I think it might be a fairly controversial topic among people with the dangerous combination of too much time and anger.

[@EsotericArctos]

@@milesraymond2360 I thought he just didn't want us to see his hands :P. More seriously, likely to stop troll complaining about the way the compound was applied and how they can do it better.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Looking at those benchmark gains, it would be like Apple today selling the M1Max as an add in card for your Intel machine

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

Which… just imagine if that were made possible. I hate planned obsolescence.

[@orestes1984]

@@PuffyRainbowCloud Apple hated obsolesce back in the day also. I.E. you could run a 6100/66 on OS 9. If you were on a Beige G3 you could run all the way up to OS X 10.4 without upgrading to a G4 processor card, and 10.5 if you did.

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

@@orestes1984 I know.

[@windowsxpnt2347]

@@orestes1984 officially speaking, you can only go up to mac os 10.2 with a beige g3. i do understand you can get to 10.4 with xpostfacto (and even though a g4 upgrade would let you run leopard, why would you want to unless your upgrade card was better than the required 867mhz g4)

[@MrArmadaskier4123]

Can I just take a moment to say how well done and professional your videos have been from day one? No other tech tuber that I’ve seen started with the amount of production value you did. I appreciate all of the work you do ❤️

[@ActionRetro]

Thank you :)

[@rickkarrer8370]

So just some back story: I got this off Craig's List from a guy who was trying to convert this into a wall clock, but he gave up half way though. It came with parts of a 2nd 540c with a 68LC040. I put the 68LC040 in my 520c, and kept this with the intent to rebuild it. I had it booting off a CF card via a CF to PC card, but I also use that PC Card for my 520c, so I kept it. I don't think I ever got the CPU to run over 88MHz, but can't remember. It runs really nice when you compare it to another 500 series. I ran 8.1 off of it, and loved it. I think you may be able to get 9.1 to run off it using OS9 Helper, but I don't see their compatibility matrix anymore. You could reach out to OWC to see if they still have it.

[@sokoloft3]

Blue loctite on those hinge screws would hopefully prevent them from backing out.

[@tommc3764]

Use purple loctite!

[@fsfs555]

Nice work. I didn't know about 8.7; I'll have to give it a look. The 5x0 series PPC upgrade is arguably the best value PPC upgrade, mostly because the 5300 series was so compromised (and the 190's PPC upgrade was a joke: they just do a logic board swap to a 5300). Honestly if I had the choice between a 540c w/PPC or a similar 5300c for about the same price back in 1994/5, the 540c would be the better deal. Essentially, once the PPC upgrade is installed, the two machines are nearly identical (and even share many of the same chips) but the 540c has double battery, optional built-in modem, standard Ethernet, standard video output, and stereo speakers. Really the only clear benefit of the 5300 is the higher RAM ceiling (up to 64MB); the other stuff (IR (some models), ATA hard disk, audio input jack (some models), 3.5" drive/PDS expansion bay) has limited utility and some (notably PC card support) can be added to the 5x0 series with an expansion bay module (and since it already has more features built-in, it's hardly a necessity like it is on the 5300). Plus the 5300 can't get any CPU upgrades while the 5x0 can get up to a 183MHz processor which includes a 128k L2 cache, a clear advantage.

[@LovelyAlanna]

I'd go back to an older system, it seems infuriating that the windows it draws don't go away

[@3rdalbum]

Why can't you go to 9.1? Doesn't it run on the 603e? It runs on a 604.

[@MattExzy]

@@3rdalbum Yeah, I swear 9 could run on all PowerPC machines with enough RAM.... 8.1 or 8.6 might be the sweet spot. But then again, I'd never even heard of 8.7 - for a machine that probably won't see daily use, that novelty is cool.

[@GGigabiteM]

@@3rdalbum Because 9.x is bloated. There's hardly any software that explicitly needs 9.x, you can get along just fine on 8.1 or 8.6.1, which have far better performance on older more limited PowerPC machines. Apple did optimize the OS by converting emulated 68k code to native PowerPC code, but this was negated by all of the bloat they piled on the OS by the time 9.x rolled around. You needed a G3 or better with at least 128 MB of RAM for it to be usable. I've run 9.x on older PowerPC machines with 601, 603 and 603e chips, and it sucked. I just go with 8.6.1 if I need compatibility or 8.1 if I want more speed.

[@pyeltd.5457]

@@GGigabiteM Mac OS 9 is just Mac OS 8 with Mac OS X elements splattered everywhere.

[@dennisud]

I saw your 1st video on this, so I was highly anticipating this video. I actually had a 520c and was my daily driver for a few years when I was teaching.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

Beautiful machine. Still blown away by the sheer beauty of the 540c screen, even today its still got beautiful color!

[@missiondemolition]

15:26 "Illegal Instruction" is actually an error from the code of the M68k exception handler.

[@organiccold]

Ahh another great video. The CENSORED made my day.

[@phreapersoonlijk]

I still hate talking hands, but for some reason I love yours !

[@michaelhill6453]

The pixelated thermal paste gave me a good chuckle.

[@paulmuaddib451]

Love the TDNC shoutout. They're wonderful and so are you.

[@Chriva]

The "censored" part gave me a good laugh. Thanks man :)

[@amyworrall9246]

I have a 540c with PPC upgrade. I bought it on eBay a few years ago, in order to give a conference talk. I didn’t know it was PPC upgraded, and I was quite disappointed, because I wanted an old machine with system 7! Getting it to talk HDMI for the projector was a fun experience. As was giving a live coding demo on a machine where a bad line of code would crash the whole system.

[@ActionRetro]

Woah cool!

[@cathrynm]

Hand-acting always on point.

[@TheBasementChannel]

The real amazing thing about this channel, is the amount of upgrades you manage to get your hands on for these old machines. Ive got a nice 540c but I can’t imagine ever finding an upgrade card.

[@kasaneinsane]

7:46 maybe you could try some thread locker, i think that might work

[@shawnstillman736]

I love the old Mac's. Its not a Pc its a POWER PC!!! Its DIFFERENT!

[@Astinsan]

Simple technology is a aftermarket company that made memory storage devices. Most based around PCMCIA. Home base was Irvine California near the Ricoh printer plant. They have changed hands many times but now are owned by HGST under the sTec name.

[@minty_Joe]

PCBWayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! Because PCB stands for, "PowerBook Computer Broken"...

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Great Transplant of Parts Sean Wow that Power PC Processor upgrade card A mega boost in performance it future proofed Now

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

This is the kind of inspiration I need to take the plunge and start refurbishing the MacBook Pro 2015 I just bought! Needs a new screen assembly and possibly new battery. Was a bargain at $280 US and I've put a 1 Tb nvme SSD in it with an adapter. Lol, I had such good times with ResEdit back in the day!

[@TheBasementChannel]

Got so excited for the back flap

[@ActionRetro]

Hahaha

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Upgrade! Upgrade it all!

[@sleveee]

i noticed you put too much/not enough thermal compound on that processor :D

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

Nice transplant. You may try putting a drop of threadlock on those hinges screws.

[@GGigabiteM]

The reason your 117 MHz 603 upgrade is only 17% faster than a 60 MHz 601 is because of architectural constraints of the Powerbook 540c. Before even getting into converting the 68k bus to PPC, you have the 33.3 MHz bus of the original 68k processor, which is half the native bus speed of the 603 CPU. The 603@117 has a native bus speed of ~60 MHz, cutting it in half destroys memory access times. The bus conversion back and forth also likely introduces a bit of additional latency for a further performance hit. Having some L2 cache will help with this, but only so much. According to specs I can find online, it unfortunately doesn't look like the 117 MHz NuPower board has any cache on it. These problems were widespread with virtually every Mac upgrade to exist, you have to work around the limitations of the original architecture and accept the fact that any upgrade that is made for them is going to be performance limited to some degree.

[@MattExzy]

'Congratulations! You're upgrade was successful. You can now single-handedly stop alien invasions with your PowerPC-equipped PowerBook...'

[@systemchris]

When the fat lady sings!

[@fryke]

The rough TrackPad is the original one, the other is either so far used that its surface has more or less gone away or it's some shoddy 3rd party article. So I'd definitely go with the "rough" one. That's what it was back then.

[@rickkarrer8370]

I was hoping you or Mac84 was going to buy it at the show. I was going to reach out to you guys, but been too busy to really do much of anything these day. I may sell my Portable at VCF 2022.

[@UpLateGeek]

Hmm, it's not the bus speed holding it back, I just checked Mactracker and the PM6100/60 had a bus speed of 30MHz vs 33MHz of the PB540c. I'm wondering if it's the cache not enabled, I remember on some of your other upgrades you needed the special control panel to switch on the cache. There was that extra chip on the card which looked like an SRAM, so it's possible this thing has external L2 cache as well as the increased L1 compared to the original 68K processor. Enabling that would definitely give it a speed boost!

[@johncate9541]

It's the fact that the 6100/60 has a 601 processor instead of a 603. The 601 was a better performer, clock for clock. The caching on a 603/603e/603ev is sort of brain-dead anyway, an inefficient split-cache design instead of a unified one. This was fixed in the G3.

[@sdgx0]

god i love these intros

[@cgecastro]

I had one with 9.2.2 installed. If i remember correctly i had made a hacked CD that would boot and install and have resedit to be able to make the system bootable. Also installed a apple scsi disk cage but never found a PCMCIA rev C card cage

[@eDoc2020]

2:10 With two hot-swappable battery bays tehre's no need to limit yourself to "up to 4 hours" of battery life. You can swap in others and keep it going continuously on battery indefinitely. You could accomplish the thing with a large power bank, but then you need extra cable clutter.

[@ast3663]

to get the plastic hinges to work smoother I recommend applying silicone spray in there..works well and you dont have to disassemble..btw what is that nice external FW/USB-Case with different OSX on it?..cheers

[@Sevenfeet0]

I still have one of these with the PowerPC upgrade in a box somewhere.

[@3rdalbum]

Great video. I never knew Mac OS 8.7 beta was publically available.

[@lanatrzczka]

This was really fun, thank you. Any possibility of doing some more Apple II stuff? A2 Desktop is really coming along...

[@MorpheusXTRM201]

Have you though of putting medium thread locker liquid for those screws that hold the hinges?

[@alextirrellRI]

PC Card slot in the battery bay -- I wonder how many cards would even work in there, seeing as many used dongles, pop outs, antennas and such on the end.

[@DarkkLestat]

I had a PPC upgraded 540c that I was using when I was a kid. Wish I kept that thing around.

[@kj1544]

I have one of the plastic covers from a 520 you could have if you wanted both machines to be complete.

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

Nice to see it up and running! Do you plan on creating replacement plastic parts for the second 540c? Might as well have 2 functional systems!

[@thefoetoid]

I know this is an older video, just wondering if you tried 8.6 and saw the same visual artifacts... Reason I ask is that I just bought this card for my 520c. And I'm debating whether or not to buy the PCMCIA adapter for it so I can plug in an Orinoco card and do the Airport hack + DAVE so I can be "that guy" out in public editing documents on my NAS from the diner....

[@jwoody8815]

More like this please.

[@baconfister]

I’m confident that the upgrade was downclocked to 88MHz so that it could run software from November 1955.

[@EriolGaurhoth]

That 32MB RAM card is crazy difficult to find. I see them pop up on eBay from time to time but they cost hundreds. Take good care of that thing!

[@lozahe]

Loctite on those hinge screws might help from it loosening up.

[@photolabguy]

I suggested blurring out the thermal compound a long time ago. Hopefully he took the idea from my suggestion? Lol. People get so bent out of shape over how people apply the compound. Maybe this blurring will spread to other tech channels!

[@bramvandenbroeck5060]

I remember that my dad had this background retaining issue with a beta of macos 9, there whas a patch for it, i think i have it on a disk somewhere, if i come across it, i will upload it to mega, the patch came on a magazine cd-rom

[@mlmmt]

Something amuses the heck out of me about using a raspberry pi as a SCSI disk emulator... its like "here, this thing is several times as powerful as the computer it is connected to, but so cheap we can use it to do all sorts of silly things because the real deal is more expensive (and less reliable)"

[@eDoc2020]

Since SCSI is so versatile, I came up with a crazy idea. It might be possible to use the Pi as some sort of coprocessor. If the interface is fast enough you could watch KZbin videos on this thing!

[@andresbravo2003]

That PowerBook has PowerPC in it? Well, cool!

[@Kyle-xv5kv]

Censoring the paste application gets me every time. Does it help? legit question, I've got a G3 in bits at the moment and I was toying with the idea. I've overclocked it by relocating some resistors to raise the frequency.

[@josephfrye7342]

i always wanted to use mac os 8.7 after mac os 8 though so just to make sure thinkin things is running on iso though.

[@rickkarrer8370]

That hinge snapped while I was making sure it was working right before the show lol

[@fox.9879]

whats the oldest mac that can sync with a ipod

[@steveg5122]

I would say, back in the day, the PowerPC card would allow it to be a better 68k machine since a powerPC running the 68k emulator in the OS can actually run 68k software better than a 68k can

[@414RadioTech]

I had a 540C at one time before I graduated high school I was given one of their old laptops and it had a weird SCSI Ethernet adapter that I was not too impressed with us and on top of that I didn't care for the black and white display and the mouse was hard to manipulate even with an external one

[@chezsnailez]

You'll probably get rid of the no clear background -bug- feature if you 'downgrade' to OS 8.6.

[@EirikrTinkerTries]

Just for fun, can you use the MacSales/OWC OS 9 Helper to Install Mac OS 9.2.2 just to see if it is possible? (And from there, run Final Cut 3 jUsT BeCaUsE?)

[@jorisw_]

Couldn't you switch MacBench to use the original 540c as the '100%' reference?

[@squiddobutboy]

yo Action Retro... once I get my hands on a bunch of 540Cs, I'm going to find every PowerPC Upgrade I can to make the ULTIMATE 540c. plus after I'm done, it may be able to run MacOS X Sorbet Leopard! imagine a 540c, running OS X 10.5.9 (or 10.20 Sorbet). so crazy.

[@DonaldTubbs]

With the 68k processor can you run A/UX on this?

[@fmlazar]

I believe you tried to install OS 7.5.2 a PPC upgraded 540c requires a minimum 7.5.3 version OS.

[@wannytiggah]

I assume that the "censored" part is because the CPU doesn't quite *need* thermal paste?

[@orestes1984]

For the time it did. You could upgrade all the way up to OS 9 once you had a PPC Mac and run any Mac software for literally decades. The same with the Beige G3s being basically future proof at the time... and to an extent they were, especially with a G4 upgrade which had basically the best case for expansion that ever existed at the time. The limitation at the time with the 540c really was the low resolution, passive matrix screen. If you install the Nupower control panel I believe you can overclock it from the control panel itself....Why not just install OS 8.6 that can run anything on? 8.1 is really limiting as you can't run the latest OS 8 software. Not that it makes a huge difference today... But back in the day if you were trying to jam Word 98, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop 7 or something of some such on a machine like that... It wouldn't run on 8.1

[@JoeSteele]

Has anyone compared the official Apple PowerPC upgrade vs the nuPowr and Sonnet upgrades? I just got my hands on the official Apple one and I am crossing my fingers that the compatibility is better with some of the software.

[@TheTamaranch]

Makes me wish I had my 540c working...

[@damianisel3598]

Excelente 💻💻💻👏👏👏👏👏🇦🇷🇦🇷🇦🇷

[@Bennett.R]

I know this might sound kind of crazy, but can't OS X 10.0-10.2 run on a 603e? There's gotta be something I'm missing here, it sounds too ridiculous to be possible, right? Right?

[@milesraymond2360]

OS X requires a PCI-based board. Every PowerBook before the Kanga was Nubus-based. I think you can find more info in the XPostFacto information.

[@sparksfly13]

I know this is a really dumb question, but since it's running on a PPC chipset now couldn't it run like 10.0..? I know it's a stretch, but would that be a possibility..?

[@tensionjunkie]

10.0 will only run on G3 or above, not ppc. PPC and G3,G4, andG5 ran different architecture. OSX was designed to work only with the newer processors, even though NeXTstep (the basis for OSX

[@tensionjunkie]

Ran on PPC.

[@johncate9541]

No. Mac OS X needs a PCI bus, and this doesn't have one. The motherboard is still based on NuBus. You can make old versions of OS X run on a PB 3400 (I once installed 10.1.5 on a 3400), but not on a 1400 or an upgraded Blackbird.

[@_malfunction]

always feel reminded of Stan from Monkey Island when watching your Videos ^^

[@_malfunction]

i thought i should not forget to mention that i like your videos ;)

[@TheBasementChannel]

Great comment 😂

[@pedrofelck]

Imagine being able to drop a M1 SoC on top of an Intel processor

[@lepidotos]

God if only.

[@wojiaobill]

hey! that was too much thermal paste! :D

[@ReavenZero]

There is only too little thermal paste, never too much :D

[@_._shinonome_._]

@@ReavenZero verge

[@leontechtalks]

It'd be cool to run tiger on it lol

[@johncate9541]

Won't work. OS X requires a PCI bus and this doesn't have one. The oldest PB you can do this with is a 3400, and I don't think it can run anything past Jaguar.

[@allalphazerobeta8643]

I believe the reason the 68k to PPC upgrade was frowned upon back in the day is that most software wasn't PPC but 68k. Which meant you were using the emulator to run 68k software on the PPC. So the performance gain wasn't realized in real world applications. As this situation improved so did the apparent the speed of PPC upgrade on 68k machines. Actually emulating the 68k was probably slower than using a fast 68k. For Example, Power Pete, supposedly wouldn't run fast enough on many early PPC machines until apple's software tech support provided a PPC optimized RAM to Screen copying algorithm or Blitzer. I might look through the Dark Art Of Mac Game Programming to see what it says since, I think that's where I read it. Keep in mind most of the Mac OS doesn't go 68k native until version 8.0? or was the 7.5.6? So you could defiantly have a slower experience running PPC then 68k. Also, the 68k emulation might have gotten better later on. I believe there was at least one third party 68k emulator for PPC that was supposed to be faster than APPLE's own.

[@ActionRetro]

Very interesting, thank you

[@3rdalbum]

Ahh, that must be why Power Pete runs so poorly on emulators.

[@MaxOakland]

Mac OS 8.7!?

[@3rdalbum]

Fun fact: Mac OS 9.0 had at least one preinstalled application where the engineers forgot to bump the version up from 8.7 to 9.0!

[@MaxOakland]

@@3rdalbum Ha! Now that's funny

[@MaxOakland]

Apple should’ve made Intel macs you can upgrade to M processors

[@BilisNegra]

You can't even replace same for same without Louis Rossman grade equipment, so go figure. Apple has reached the point of absolute non-upgradability these days, as extreme as in a phone, you can not even replace the goddam SSD! Sorry for me ranting like this.

[@MaxOakland]

@@BilisNegra Yeah I don’t like that either. I miss being able to add RAM and upgrade hard drives. I want them to go back to that

[@Pickle136]

im a pc guy and have no real idea what those benchmarks meant. Maybe you can show what this computer is capable of running now, what pushs it to it limits?

[@jimi-w]

I'm kinda sad I don't have my Pismo G4/1GB/40GB any more

[@kirishima638]

Those PPC 603s were the worst. You would think that a higher number was better right? No. They were cost reduced, low power, crippled versions of the 601 which was a superior chip despite being much older. And without an L2 cache, they were DOGS. That's why you only got a slightly better performance score over the base 6100 despite the newer chip and higher clockspeed. Terrible marketing by Apple. The 603 machines underperformed so badly that they almost bankupted the company. The true successor to the 601 was the 604.

[@SteveChisnall]

the real issue with the early PPC PowerBooks is that their CPUs lacked L2 cache. That's why they were dog-slow. Only the 183 MHz CPU upgrade for PowerBook 500 series had any L2 cache, and that one actually *did* perform well.

[@Tovvvija]

10:57 it's a snap in the nose of thermal paste shitwarriors ? :D

[@christophernelson175]

Apparently if you're a very strong fan of this kind of thing, there's a nearly 40% chance your name is Chris, haha.

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@justthen]

You are trying to use your hand to talk or what?

[@KnuckleHunkybuck]

Thing from the Addams Family got really into old Macs and started a KZbin channel.

[@KabelkowyJoe]

13:00 And here it comes traditional dongle. Apple should be renamed to Dongle Inc or as you called "Conversion Technology Inc" everywhere you go, always get your dongles with you everywhere you go.. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l5ibiZaDfJZ4jpY Crowded House - Weather With You

[@TheDc1984dc]

I get the joke. However don't let people that have only built one computer in their lifetime tell you you're doing it wrong. Usually the ones that point that out are constantly doing it wrong themselves.

[@dbhansen]

@21:05 LOL

[@robsquared2]

What would you do if you had a million dollars? 2 batteries at the same time.

[@ActionRetro]

I appreciate this reference greatly

[@jericoba]

Poor hinge design, sure, but that is why you never should open, close, and adjust the screen holding it one the side - like you did here. 😏

[@reedreinfeld3737]

Censored LOL🤣😂🤣😂

[@ActionRetro]

😂

[@Superglucker]

Looking in my magic glass ball... you've put inappropriate amount of the thermal compound despite hiding your filthy moves with "censored" pixelation. 😝 Actually ROFL'ed at this point.

[@TheLukemcdaniel]

built in 1994, and now worth about $19.94...

[@skagon_]

Mate, I really like your vids, but this constant hand dance is really annoying. Especially the index finger jab. There's so much of it I can take, and 20 mins is 19 minutes 30 seconds too much.

[@thomass3462]

Just seeing the hand pointing and flashing on the screen all the time, makes the video uninterresting.

[@TheDc1984dc]

I get the joke. However don't let people that have only built one computer in their lifetime tell you you're doing it wrong. Usually the ones that point that out are constantly doing it wrong themselves.