I kicked off a new E-Waste Wednesday format because I was bringing home more finds than I had time to turn into full episodes, and the pile in the garage was getting out of hand. The idea was simple: if something came home from e-waste and mostly just worked, I could still give it a quick look without waiting for a full repair project.
Here is what I found that day: a box of floppy disks, a Macintosh PowerBook G3, and a Sharp pocket computer. I left the price tags on where I could, since that is part of the fun with this kind of haul. The floppy disk box also had a couple of bonus items tucked inside, including an unopened Imation TR-3 cartridge and a Motorola Cingular phone.
I went through some of the disks to see what was there. A few were labeled as backups, and there were also disks marked for Italian and German diction software, along with several numbered backup floppies. These old disk lots are useful because they often turn up install sets, drivers, or odd software that still comes in handy when working on older machines.
The PowerBook G3 was marked at $20 and came with the important part of the power adapter, which is often the hardest thing to find with older laptops. The machine itself was a 333 MHz PowerBook G3 with 512K cache, a 4 GB hard drive, 8 MB of video memory, a CD drive, and 64 MB listed on the case label. Around the outside it had the expected late-1990s assortment of ports, including VGA, modem, S-video, SCSI, Ethernet, USB, audio, and a PCMCIA slot, plus a battery with a built-in charge indicator.
I didn’t have the wall cord for that adapter, so I grabbed a compatible supply from another G3 system I had nearby. Aaron gave a good reminder here that Apple used two similar barrel-style plugs around that period, and they are not interchangeable. When I connected the substitute supply, I first saw a brief green light, then opened the machine and powered it on. It gave the startup chime, the fan spun up, and the display came up dim at first before gradually brightening.
Once it finished booting, the laptop loaded into Mac OS 9.1 and the touchpad and buttons worked normally. It threw a date and time warning because the clock had reset to before 1973, but otherwise it was responsive and usable. I checked around the desktop a bit, found Microsoft Word, Netscape Communicator, RealPlayer, and Internet Explorer 5, and also tried Age of Empires, which launched but required the original CD to actually play. The system information showed 192 MB of built-in memory, so it had received a memory upgrade at some point.
The Sharp pocket computer was tagged at $10 and came in a very clean case with the printer dock, power adapter, paper, overlays, and reference sheets. There were handwritten notes and program sheets dated 1983, including game references for tic-tac-toe, blackjack, and hangman. The unit was a Sharp PC-1500, which is the same machine sold by Radio Shack as the TRS-80 PC-2.
When I plugged it in, the printer powered up and the display came on with a memory check message. I was able to clear that and confirm the computer was alive, but I didn’t get far with programs during the quick test, and the printer reported Error 78. The PowerBook booted and ran, and the Sharp powered up but still needed more work on the printer side.
— Aaron
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Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
02:34 – Floppy Disks
05:28 – Macintosh PowerBook G3
15:06 – Sharp Pocket Computer
20:14 – Wrap Up