Macintosh
PowerBook 2400c

The 2400c was one of the smallest PowerBooks Apple ever made. It has quite a following in Japan where it was released with a 240 mhz processor. Like the original PowerBook 100 the 2400c does not have built in floppy or CD drives and like the 100 it has a dedicated plug in floppy drive.

The 2400c is a bit trickier than some PowerBooks, to get to the memory slot you have to uncover two screws near the hinges, once removed gently pry up the cover plate and set aside.

Once you remove the top plate there is a very thin secondary trim piece under the hinges which needs to be removed. Pry up and pull back to remove. Next slide the trim piece containing the trackpad forward to unclip it. Do not move this piece far as it it attached to the motherboard with a ribbon cable!

Once you move the trackpad remove the 6 screws holding the keyboard in place. It slots into the metal cover at it's bottom left. I usually flip up the keyboard as it is attached to the motherboard up top by a ribbon cable.

Once the keyboard is flipped over remove the metal cover on the left side by removing the two screws holding it in place. Not that it clips at the bottom. Under this cover is the single memory slot. BEWARE that this PowerBook DOES NOT work with standard SO Dimms which are found in later PowerBooks such as the Wallstreet, Lombard or Pismo! You must use EDO memory. A hard drive replacement requires digging down under the motherboard.

I have had very mixed results purchasing memory for my 2400c, I would strongly recommend buying memory that is clearly marked for this PowerBook such as the Kingston strip on the right above. The strip on the left although supposed to be for the 2400c will NOT work even though the companies online ordering system recommends it. With the wrong memory installed the PowerBook will chime but freeze up on a black screen. Reinstalling the correct memory will solve the problem.

What you should see if you have the correct memory installed!

Replacing the hard drive on this PowerBook is not for someone who hasn't dismantled a PowerBook before. If this fits you, you might want to stop reading now as I'm not really going to give you a blow by blow take apart guide. Even Apple doesn't include the details in the service manual.

The best way to replace your hard drive is to remove the motherboard which will require removing the display as well. If you don't want to do this I would not recommend just lifting up the bottom left corner as there are three connectors that must be properly seated in order for the PowerBook to boot up. These are the two white plugs in the photograph. These mate up with connectors on the lower boards and if they are not making perfect contact you will get GLOD (Green Light Of Death) so I highly recommend that you remove the screen so that you can dig out all the circuit boards!

Here is a comparison of the old (left) and new (right) hard drives. The original was only a 1.3GB drive while my replacement was a 40GB from my Lombard which I bumped up to 120GB. I suspect you should be able to go as large as 120GB. Apple was smart and gave you two sets of mounting holes for the hard drives so newer ones will fit. One thing I have discovered is that OS 9.2.1 will not run on my 2400c so the newest OS I can run is 9.1. Even though it is not needed I added a small strip of foam, just don't cover the breather hole.

This is what the assembled motherboard looks like with the lower boards attached. Note that you don't have to remove all the screws you find, but you will have to hunt for a few, for example the one hiding under the IR sensor board. On a strip down as complicated as this one I like to take reference photos and lay out the screws in the order I take them off, helps to insure that I don't wind up with 'spare parts'.

The left side houses the speaker and microphone jacks.

From left to right, the rear panel houses an ADB plug, power (which is compatible with the later UFO AC adaptors), serial/printer port, reset button (top), dedicated floppy drive connector (bottom), external monitor, square 50 pin SCSI connector, infra red port and twin PCMCIA slots. So far the Wavelan silver turbo card has worked quite well accessing our wireless network, I tried the Aerolan card but so far I couldn't figure out a way to configure the software it can deal with our wep password but since the Wavelan works properly doesn't make sense to troubleshoot it. I've also used several large compact flash cards in PCMCIA adaptors though I ran into some problems with system installations.

As mentioned above, some of the PCMCIA cards can be hit and miss. So far neither the Adaptec or Belkin USB2 cards I own function properly with the 2400c. Both will lock up the PowerBook during bootup. I'm using a very old 4x Apple SCSI external CD rom for loading system and other software. Currently running OS 9.1 with no problems.

Overall the 2400c is still a fairly useful computer, I use it to surf the web, read and reply to email using FirstClass software and even listen to internet radio using the OS 9 version of iTunes. With a big hard drive it could make a pretty good MP3 jukebox.

Comments? Feel free to e-mail me at kevino@newsroom.net.