Thread

Powerbook G3 3500/"Kanga"

· Hardware · 12 posts · Oct 14, 2009 — Nov 11, 2009 View original thread ↗

#1 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 00:50

Hi,

In my quest for the "best" of each Powerbook generation made (which I will knowingly never attain, but having fun in the process!), I won a Powerbook G3 "Kanga" off eBay, hopefully to arrive next week.

I'm a big fan of the Powerbook 3400 with it's solid look and feel, and the best sound quality in any laptop I've come across. The clincher is packing a 250Mhz G3 in there - which I believe makes it about 2 - 3X faster than the 240Mhz 603e in it's predescessor! All that for just 10Mhz more!

Upon arrival I've some parts in waiting, perhaps some RAM, and two known working batteries.

I think it's a relatively rare machine in that it only sold for a few months until the Wallstreet G3 came up, it was kind of a placeholder until that time. Either way, it's not for show, I will quite enjoy using this one.

JB

#2 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 02:54

Good job. I hope you did not pay too much for it. Regardless I have been trying to find one of these for a while but apparently everyone holds on to them here. I've only been able to find a couple of Powerbook 1400s lately.

#3 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 04:11

Great score...the 3400 and the Kanga are two machines I've always wanted. Hope it serves you well

#4 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 05:01

Cost: $61 AUD, which is a bit to me but should enable me to offload some other Macs as I hone down the collection

Seems OS X is a difficult prospect on these machines - some sort of 256-colour only bug under 10.3, but OK under 10.2.

Will report back when it actually arrives.

JB

#5 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 11:24

How many macs do you have?

#6 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 11:57

I think about ten desktops and ten portables - most working

Culling is good.

JB

#7 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 - 12:41

Nice! Which models?

#8 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 - 09:31

Kangas seem to be thick on the ground here for cheap on the local CL. seen 3 in the last six months for >=$50. There is one on there right now for $35. I was thinking of snapping that one up, as I have it's immediate predicessor, the 3400 that somehow blew it's ADB bus, both internally and externally so it's basically useless; but has immaculate casing including the rear port door and ADB port door. Might transfer the motherboard from the 3500 to the 3400, unless the casing it in great condition.

#9 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 - 16:30

the 3400 that somehow blew it's ADB bus, both internally and externally so it's basically useless

Quite possibly you have blown an ADB fuse on the logic board. This could be an easy fix. 1:1,000,000 times that you hot-plug an ADB device, you will blow a fuse, probably from static discharge or some such random event.

#10 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 - 18:14

Well, it was like this since I got it. It might be that, I don't know.

I don't even know if it's worth saving, as the CD-ROM drive is dead and the floppy drive has a disk stuck in it.

#11 Mon, 2 Nov 2009 - 06:24

Report back on how your XPostFacto install of 10.2 goes! I've been really interested in getting a Kanga to turn into an OS X machine, but haven't known anything about how easy it would be to install OS X.

Great find, and I'm pretty sure that is a good price you paid! I know a few years ago I looked into getting one, but they were on Ebay for close to $120USD

#12 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 - 03:23

Tiger can run on it, even if it only has a 250mhz G3 and 160mb RAM. It still can run on Kangas.