PowerBook 3400c

The Macintosh PowerBook 3400c (codnamed "Hooper" and sometimes just called "3400") was a laptop computer in the PowerBook line manufactured by Apple Computer from February to November 1997. It was, briefly, the fastest laptop in the world. Using the PowerPC 603e processor running at speeds of up to 240 MHz, this PowerBook was the first to feature a PCI architecture, memory, and a  64-bit wide internal bus. Although quickly overtaken by computers such as the PowerBook G3 series (the first model of which, the "Kanga", was heavily based on the 3400), it did offer users a portable computer comparable in speed and versatility to Apple's own desktop range.

Features
The PowerBook 3400c series was issued in three different models, distinguished primarily by their processor speed. The base model ran at 180 MHz, and the two higher end models ran at 200 Mhz and 240 Mhz. Thus, the different models were referred to as the 3400c/180, 3400c/200, and 3400c/240. The 3400c/180 model was usually sold with only a built-in modem and a floppy drive; all 3400c/200 and 3400c/240 machines came with a built-in modem/Ethernet combination port and hot-swappable 1.4 MB floppy disk and CD drives. The largest available hard disk was 3GB, which supported SCSI Disk Mode.

All models featured the same active matrix color screen (the first time this had happened within a single, multi-model PowerBook range) and came with a standard installation of 16 MB of RAM. Like all Apple laptops since the PowerBook 500 series, they featured a built-in trackpad as the pointing device.

Industrial design
In terms of the PowerBook 3400c owed a lot to the earlier PowerBook 5300 series. There were some key changes made though, including the larger LCD screen; a wider removeable drive bay allowing the use of CD readers; and a curved display housing that allowed for the inclusion of a second speaker for stereo sound.

CardBus support
Like the PowerBook 5300 series, the 3400s came with a pair of PC Card slots, but whereas those on the 5300s were strictly 16-bit device compatible, those on the 3400s were, in theory at least, compatible with 32-bit CardBus cards being based around the 32-bit PCI1130 PC card controller. In reality, the PC card slots were designed to physically accept only 16-bit cards, though many users have managed to get a variety of CardBus cards to work with them. Using CardBus cards allows 3400 Series PowerBooks to be used with, for example, USB devices like printers and FireWire devices such as iPods.

Articles

 * Classic Macs #1: The PowerBook 3400 by Neale Monks at MyMac (2005-05-06, archived 2005-05-17)