They're most likely suffering from "sticksion" as it was called back in the day. The bearings/lubricant/whateveritis inside gooies up over time when not used regularly and causes the drives to be very stubborn when it comes time to start spinning. That's why you have instructions online like:
1) extend the back legs . . .
2) place PowerBook on a hard surface . . .
3) lift the front edge of the PowerBook up between 1.5" & 2" off the surface . . .
. . . and drop the freakin' thing right after powering up. 8-o
. . . used to work like a charm for me, but I had a an upgraded APS HDD (don't remember size or make, though 230MB rings a bell) along with the faster APS modem and a full 8MB of RAM in BabyPB. I moved all those goodies over to another PB100 a while back and started a hack on BabyPB. Just got another PartsBook 100 in the mail today . . .
. . . but the AC Adapter included was for a Duo.
If I can dig up my other adapters I'll to give 'em a whirl! [
] ]'>
1) extend the back legs . . .
2) place PowerBook on a hard surface . . .
3) lift the front edge of the PowerBook up between 1.5" & 2" off the surface . . .
. . . and drop the freakin' thing right after powering up. 8-o
. . . used to work like a charm for me, but I had a an upgraded APS HDD (don't remember size or make, though 230MB rings a bell) along with the faster APS modem and a full 8MB of RAM in BabyPB. I moved all those goodies over to another PB100 a while back and started a hack on BabyPB. Just got another PartsBook 100 in the mail today . . .
. . . but the AC Adapter included was for a Duo.
If I can dig up my other adapters I'll to give 'em a whirl! [
] ]'>