I have a PB 160, in similar trim to JRL's: 12MB RAM, 120MB HDD, but with a customized System 7.1.3 (trawl the forum for discussion), which is happier on a 25MHz 68030 than on a 68000 Mac.
I have also a PB 180: 14MB RAM, 500MB HDD and OS 7.6.1, judiciously pruned, and which runs quite satisfactorily with the 33MHz '030 CPU and an FPU.
What you make of the middle PB 100 series depends on your taste. JRL's recommendations make sense, but my PBs are writing machines, kept mostly as representatives of their era rather than as web crawlers or Mathematica tablets, and because the 160 was the first PB that I owned.
de
I have also a PB 180: 14MB RAM, 500MB HDD and OS 7.6.1, judiciously pruned, and which runs quite satisfactorily with the 33MHz '030 CPU and an FPU.
What you make of the middle PB 100 series depends on your taste. JRL's recommendations make sense, but my PBs are writing machines, kept mostly as representatives of their era rather than as web crawlers or Mathematica tablets, and because the 160 was the first PB that I owned.
de