Second Class Macs & Road Apples

PowerBook 150

one

Dan Knight - 1999.09.18

Second Class Macs are Apple's somewhat compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs that didn't meet their full potential. (On our rating scale, the more brown apples, the worse the hardware.)

For the most part, the PowerBook 150 is a very nice computer. It was the fourth and final model in Apple's economy series that started with the PB 140 in October 1991. The 140 ran a then-decent 16 MHz 68030, shipped with 2 MB of memory (expandable to 8), and had a 20 or 40 MB hard drive.

The second generation was the PowerBook 145, introduced in August 1992. It replaced the pedestrian 16 MHz CPU with a 25 MHz 68030. Apple also included SCSI disk mode (which lets the PowerBook act as an external hard drive for another Mac), dropped the 20 MB hard drive, and added an 80 MB hard drive option.

About a year later, in June 1993, Apple quietly replaced the 145 with the 145B, which was almost the same computer with a few cost-cutting internal changes.

The PowerBook 150 came out in July 1994 with some advantages over the earlier models - and one seemingly insignificant drawback.

The 150 ran at 33 MHz, twice the speed of the PB 140, had a 4-bit grayscale display (earlier models had been strictly 1-bit b&w), and shipped with a just reasonable 4 MB of memory, which could be expanded to a whopping 40 MB. Hard drive options were 80, 120, and 250 MB. The screen was 640 x 480, not 640 x 400 as in earlier PowerBooks, and it was one pound lighter than the models the preceded it.

The one little drawback, and the only reason the PB 150 merits the Road Apple label: Apple eliminated the ADB port.

Big deal, you may think, so you can't attach a mouse or external keyboard. If that was all the ADB port was good for, the 150 wouldn't be a Road Apple.

The problem is, that ADB port is sometimes used to power peripherals, such as the PowerPrint cable that let's a PowerBook in the field work with almost any parallel port printer in existence. And the impressive Farallon EtherMac and EtherWave adapters that managed to triple bandwidth on the printer port and let older PowerBooks work easily on ethernet networks.

This in no way impairs the core functioning of the PowerBook 150, which is an excellent computer in every respect but one. We considered ourselves fortunate to have purchased a brand new PB 150 in late 1995 for under US$950, a record low price for a PowerBook at that time or any other.

Of course, a lot of us didn't discover the missing ADB port until we tried to use PowerPrint or EtherWave. By then, it was a bit late to discover this was Apple's only PowerBook (before 1999) without ADB.

Details

introduced July 1994 at $1,300; discontinued October 1995
requires System 7.0.1 to 7.6.1
CPU: 33 MHz 68030
FPU: none
ROM: 1 MB
RAM: 4 MB, expandable to 40 MB using a single Duo RAM card
display: 9.5" 4-bit 640 x 400 passive matrix
80 MB, 120 MB, or 250 MB IDE hard drive standard
ADB port: none
serial: 1 DIN-8 RS-422 port on back of computer
SCSI: HDI30 connector on back of computer
proprietary modem slot
Size (HxWxD): 2.25" x 11.25" x 9.3"
weight: 5.8 pounds

Other Resources

The 10 worst Macs ever built, Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac, 2001.08.06

Join us on Facebook!

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Macintosh IIcx, introduced 1989.03.07. The first compact modular Mac, essentially a 3-slot Mac IIx, was a big hit.
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2012 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.

Custom Search

Follow Low End Mac on Twitter
Join Low End Mac on Facebook

Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler 11 is now in the Mac App Store!! -- Special Introductory Price of $59.95!! -- To Buy From The Mac App Store Click Here Now!! Or buy direct from Strider Software.

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker and Mac Casino applications in minutes.

Affiliates

Amazon.com
The Apple Store
The iTunes Store
PC Connection Express
GainSaver
Parallels Desktop for Mac
eBay