[Madison]

Hi all,

I have a couple questions regarding the Titanium Powerbook, 400mhz, that my sister gave me.

1. Does the RAM have to be installed in pairs? I see that RAM for this thing is pretty cheap.
2. The optical drive doesn't work. I think it's a combo drive, which is what I'd like, any suggestions? Cheaper is better
3. Will any notebook 2.5" drive work in this thing? Is it IDE or ATA??

Thanks for bearing with a notebook newbie.

Tom

[brassplayersrock²]

1. no, a 512 plus 256 or anyother combo is okay
2. look on ebay (thats the best way to do it)
3. ANY and i repeat ANY notebook drive will work. im using a 100 gig seagate in my 1ghz ti right now without a problem

[amazing]

Well, the Ti won't take any SATA 2.5" drives. Also, you'll be better off getting a 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm 2.5" drive...Seagate and Hitachi are the most recommended.

Best improvement for the Ti-400 is a PMCIA wireless card. If you get a card that uses the Broadcom chip then no drivers are needed, the chip is supported natively in OS 10.3.4 or higher. The range of the built-in airport card is absolutely atrocious. If you search for suggestions in the networking forum, you'll get lots of advice. I used a Buffalo card in my Ti-400, the improvement over the internal card was enormous.

I revived the combo drive in my Ti-400 three times by fiddling with the cable to the motherboard. Try it as you're putting the HD in.

If that doesn't work, best thing is to assemble an external firewire drive from newegg.com, about $45-50 for the case, $34 for the drive. You'll get much, much faster burning than any superdrive, and you'll get dual-layer support. Plus you can keep it for when you get a newer laptop.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by Madison

...regarding the Titanium Powerbook, 400mhz, that my sister gave me.

The TiBooks are nice laptops and still viable, but 400 MHz is pretty slow. I would keep the upgrades inexpensive and your expectations reasonable and it should be great. I am typing on one now.

-Allen Wicks

[tooki]

Warning! The 400MHz TiBook does NOT use standard laptop optical drives! A special mounting bracket is needed to mount a modern laptop drive in it, and only drive resellers are willing to sell you one -- together with an overpriced drive.

Unless on-the-road optical drive use is essential, I'd just live with the dead internal drive and get a FireWire external DVD burner for around $100-150.

tooki

Edit: macsales.com seems to have internal DVD-R drives for 400-667MHz TiBooks for a lot less than the last time I checked: $180.

[shabbasuraj]

Go external drive.. faster... cheaper, and you will be able o use it on future machines..