The PowerBook 1400 is a good and sturdy machine with a set of unusual characteristics. Bear in mind that this may or may not apply to you. There is a chance that my PowerBook has a non-critical logicboard problem or it is simply a side effect of the combination of my many modifications.

This section is different from the rest of my website. I have a table of contents with a code next to each entry. Use your browser's find function and the codes listed to quickly locate the entries. Sorry iPhone users, you'll just have to look closely.

[sclck] Speaker click
[sintf] Unknown interference
[cdpsh] CD drive
[btslp] Batteries and sleep
[75btn] Mac OS 7.5.3, display controls and enablers.

[sclck]
First and foremost, when the computer is turned off and plugged in, the speaker is on. When the computer is turned off and unplugged, the speaker is off. Simple enough. No major power is lost.

When the speaker turns on or off, the speaker clicks slightly. It resembles the sound of plugging a pair of headphones into a device at full volume with no sound playing: just *thunk* and that is it. Still no big deal.

When the battery gets full, it begins to trickle charge and occasionally cuts off power coming from the brick as it compensates. This results in the speaker turning on and off every five seconds. This will happen intermittently for about an hour, especially after running off batteries for a while. As long as it is off, no harm done, right? You aren't using it.

But I usually plug it back in just before I go to bed. Thunk thunk...thunk thunk...thunk thunk. It drives me nuts sometimes. Just a nuisance. I have not extensively tested the effect of using a pair of headphones to cancel the noise, however.

[sintf]
Also relating to speakers, whenever large amounts of data is pulled off my CF card, it makes the speakers squeak just quietly enough to be noticeable. If headphones are plugged in, it will play through the headphones. It doesn't happen with my PC card adapter. I have yet to find an explanation for this aside from one unconfirmed hypothesis. When I installed the adapter, I had to trim off one of the ground pins to make it fit. The ribbon in my 1400 only had space for 43 of the pins. A pair of scissors later, it was trimmed and installed. It seemed to work, which was good because I no longer have a 90-day warranty due to the modification. I think that ground pin helped contain stray radiation in the 60 Hz range, of the type that copper wire will pick up.

Take a cell phone, for instance. If you've even left one next to a pair of speakers that use regular copper wire versus optical channels (if you don't know if you have these, you have copper), you will have probably noticed that the speakers buzz for a few seconds randomly. That is the result of the cell phone sending information to the carrier with some overflow into the 60 Hz spectrum. I suspect that because the signal cannot be contained and it is literally two inches from my speaker, which leads to the sound board, also connected to the headphone jack and microphone, it causes interference. This may not even be close, but it is the only answer I've got.

[cdpsh]
The CD drive is actually quite ridiculous. I am the second owner of this PowerBook. The original owner included a very nice 8x CD drive, but the door snapped off and it was behaving like it was dying. Indeed, it rapidly deteriorated until I ordered a second bare TEAC CD-48E from some company that specializes in old technology for $15 plus a criminal $10 shipping. At the same time, I ordered a CD door from a different company ($10 shipped) and went to install the two. The drive fit my enclosure nicely and was much cleaner. The foam hadn't been splattered across the side of the drive by moving discs like the other one had. Anyway, I went to put the door on but realized that they forgot to tell me that screws were sold seperately. I paid the $7 for four screws and a week later I recieved screws for the 12x model. As they wanted shipping both ways paid for an exchange, I just said "Forget the door!" and left the floppy drive in most of the time because it looks prettier.

That was a mistake. They probably won't let me exchange it now (I know it's only $7, but it is more the principle than anything else), so I have to find a clever way to keep tension on the door. There is a reason for this. If no pressure is applied, the drive makes a disturbing clicking noise and refuses to spin up. If pressure is applied, it works fine 95% of the time. The other 5% is because it needs even pressure. This makes things difficult but usually not impossible for the patient. Except system installs, in which case I usually install it to the CF card from a Wallstreet PowerBook with a flawless 20x CD-ROM. I should probably just wedge some paper underneath the CD tray to generate some friction, but I'm really not sure if it is worth it.

[btslp]
In a modern world, people rarely turn off their computers. They just go to sleep for a few hours and are quickly ready for use when they are next needed. Back in 1996, people turned off their computers much more often for various reasons, one being that sleep mode wasn't always supported. On the 1400, sleep is supported, but it messes with the battery a bit.

If you leave a fully charged battery in a 1400 and put the computer to sleep, it will siphon just a small amount of power off the battery to make sure that critical parts of the system (the RAM especially) remain in stasis. But if it is plugged in, it also trickle charges the battery to compensate. Only one small problem.

The battery, unless removed in which case you destabilize the power manager, gets really hot. Now bear in mind that my battery is refurbished using the cheapest 3800 mAh cells I could get my hands on ($2.37/piece with solder tabs and a bulk discount!) plus a soldering iron, so this might not represent a normal battery. For the record, the originals are 3500 mAh 4/3A NiMH cells. I have no answer besides that the constant throughput of power might not have specific control code built into the power manager. It doesn't seem to be a problem when unplugged.

[75btn]
I have not experienced this, but Apple released an update for the PowerBook 1400 and the default OS, 7.5.3, in which the contrast and brightness controls were inverted. So if you were to turn your brightness down, it would actually go up. Same with the contrast. It is easy to find through Google. If you are running 7.6 or higher, it isn't a problem. Oh, and one minor oddity is that for whatever reason, the 1400 cannot run Mac OS 7.5.5. Reason unknown. Upon request, I can probably host stuffed versions of the PowerBook 1400 minimal and full enablers to allow installation of a plain copy of Mac OS 7.5.3 on floppies and hard disks, respectively. The files aren't big. Of note is that they are not available for download anywhere that I know of alongside other enablers.