The Apple Powerbook was a series of laptops made in the late 80’s through the mid to late 90’s. They all feature either an old Motorola 68030, 040.. Or a PowerPC CPU. Apple was known for a number of innovations resulting from the powerbooks over the years. Including power eject PC-Card slots, and CD-Drives.
This PowerBook 1400cs is the world’s first production laptop to include a CD-Rom drive. It was actually removable and could be interchanged with a floppy, zip, or secondary battery.
Here is the actual 1400 in my collection; see below the video for original specs and other info.
Excerpt from “lowendmac.com”.. Click on the “PowerBook 1400” link below to be taken to a page with lots of additional information about these ancient machines:
The PowerBook 1400 was available in several different configurations, including two screens (dual-scan and active matrix) and three processor speeds (117, 133, and 166 MHz). Only the 117 MHz version merits a Road Apple rating, and then only because Apple left out the Level 2 cache. How much the L2 cache helps a computer depends on three factors: how fast the logic board memory path is, how fast the processor is, and how large the processor’s cache is. For PowerMacs, a 256 KB L2 cache usually provides 30% more speed, with 512 KB bumping that to about 65%, and a 1 MB cache roughly doubling cacheless performance vs. a cacheless design. The 1400/117 was already 13-14% slower than the 1400/133 based simply on CPU speed. Add in the L2 cache on the 133 MHz model, and it was 25-30% faster overall. On the other hand, using a slower CPU and leaving out the cache did let Apple sell the 1400/117 for less than would have been possible otherwise, so we shouldn’t be too hard on it. In fact, if you install a processor upgrade (such as the Sonnet G3/333 with 512 MB cache), you gain a level 2 cache and remove the Road Apple stigma from the 1400/117.
