PowerBook 550c

I finally acquired a Macintosh PowerBook 550c. This machine was the fastest 68k PowerBook ever made. It featured a full 68040 33 MHz CPU. This was also the only 68k PowerBook to have an FPU built-in. Without the FPU (like the 520 and 540 series), it is harder to run NetBSD/mac68k and impossible to run OpenBSD/mac68k.

There is one problem with the PowerBook 550c that I acquired which makes it impossible to run either NetBSD or OpenBSD. It has been upgraded with a 100 MHz PowerPC 603e upgrade card. Unfortunately, the original owner could not locate the 68040 CPU card. Now, I am looking for an original 68040 CPU card. That is the hard part. I found a 68LC040 CPU card from a 520 or 540 series PowerBook but that does not help much.

I may have some positive news soon. I will post an update over the weekend.