Finding a use for a PowerBook 190

We have a 150 and it is no use within a school environment anymore, to us it is a museum piece. It looks cool on display next to a 2008 iMac.

As for tickertape, the only thing I can think of would be to play a movie or a slideshow with text scrolling across, but I am interested to hear what anyone else has to say.

Another thought, According to MacTracker, the PowerBook 190 can run Mac OS 8. Maybe upgrading to that would give enhanced functionality?

I'm not certain to what use you can find for the old warhorse but have included a URL to a site with old and not so old software for older machines. Ralph

http://mac.oldapps.com/

They still work very well as a basic word processor. Put something like Word 5.1 on it and it will still work very well. I would hate to try and do statistical analysis on it, but for 75% of non internet uses around the house, a 68030 or 68040 machine still has plenty of horsepower and there are some fun old games out there if you look just a little bit.

I love the old machines.

Don't use them for parts. They are beautiful. And a great reminder of how technology used to be. Just think, what you are using right now will be considered junk in 10 years...

The real old ones like the Powerbook 100, should be kept; eventually people will throw these old computers away and then there won't be that many left.

Even though they aren't that useful, it's fun to fire them up and remember how it was. Or for some people who never used these "state of the art" machines back in the '90's... it's a reminder of how far we have come.

They still work (maybe after you change the capacitors)... and do whatever we did on them years ago.

About ticker tapes, and such, I suggest using some sort of screen saver, you can use it for all sorts of stuff.

Or you can just scrap for the parts. You could also probably make some insteresting stuff from the parts.

paperweight?

coaster?

If you pry the keys off the keyboard and drill small holes in them you can make cool earrings for women with some cheap parts, as well as keychains.

If you're willing to dive deep enough into the bowels, RAM chips and circuit boards with holes drilled in them can make cool keychains as well.

It’s kinda like the old stationary engines they made, cos those things are considered old but still can make chicken feed.

my 190cs is a nice vintage Mac, the very last powerbook with a 68k CPU..of course you could say you can't do anything modern of use even with a PPC Mac, even with a G3 it will be very limited. Basically they are writing machines. I think the most useful usage is that they are very capable bridge machines, lets say in a server/networking space with old Macs. A PB 190 then natively can talk to them while still portable and small.