This epic score is an original 1999 Blueberry iBook with an extra power adapter, extra rechargeable battery and Airport Base Station. All like-new in the boxes.
The iBook came with all the original paperwork, manuals and restore CDs.
The spare battery.
It looks like the tape was never removed. Is this battery unused? Looks can be deceiving. I removed the tape and it turns out that the battery shows signs that it was used. The little plastic tab used to pull it free from the iBook is torn.
The spare adapter.
The adapter still has the plastic on it as well as the twisty-ties on the power cord. It’s clear that this was never used.
Airport Base Station.
I already have one of these, but this one is worthy of its own post since it’s mint and complete in the box.
Not so much as a scratch.
If that wasn’t enough, I also found an unused 128M memory module in the box. The seal on the antistatic bag has never been broken.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention.... the seller also threw in a complimentary copy of “The iMac for Dummies”. What a nice touch.
I can’t believe I scored all this for a mere $150. I remember about 3 years ago I scoured eBay for a cheap iBook with the hopes of gutting it to make an OS X based digital photo frame. I though for under $100 bucks I could find an old beat-up iBook. All I really needed was the logicboard and the display, so cosmetics wasn’t an issue. To my surprise, I couldn’t find one at that price. Even now, there are people on eBay still asking for $400 for a 10 year old laptop! It must be that Apple logo. It seems to always add to the price. I just couldn’t see myself spending hundreds on an iBook just to destroy it. I ended up using an old Dell that I got from an IT guy at work.
Digital Photo Frame aside, I have still been wanting an original Blueberry iBook for my vintage Apple collection. It’s been a few years and it would seem that price is no longer a problem; there’s plenty on eBay and the prices are affordable. Unfortunately, people apparently aren’t big fans of keeping boxes. There’s no shortage of G3 iBooks on eBay, but over that past year I can count on one hand the iBooks that included the box. To no surprise, they all carried a heavy premium.
That’s why I think I really lucked out with this auction. I would have been happy paying $150 for just the iBook in the box, but this auction came with the extra battery and power supply as well as the Base Station and RAM.
Surprisingly, the seller included the original invoice for the purchase. Look at those prices! $2,300 in 1999 must have been a pretty penny for a laptop.
Adapter - $89.99
Battery - $129.99
128M RAM - $244.99
iBook - $1544.00
Airport Base Station - $299.99
Who spends $250 on RAM and then doesn't install it? Wow.
OK, let’ have a look at this baby, shall we?
It’s a very clean unit. One thing you’ll notice: the “G” key is missing. I just ordered a replacement key on eBay for $1.50, with shipping.
Check out the battery. I’ve never seen that before.
“my Model No”, “i was Made in Japan”
Cute.
Needless to say, both batteries are dead and no longer hold a charge. I charged each one for at least 12 hours and neither show any signs of life.
For now, I’ll use the Yo-Yo adapter.
OS 9? Really? No OS X upgrade? How could you have a Mac in 2001 and not have upgraded to OS X?
I took a couple of screen shots. This machine has OS 9.0.2 installed. 64 Megs of RAM and a 6GB Had Drive.
The iBook started shipping in July 1999 and shipped with OS 8.6. This iBook has OS 9.0.2 installed. So it must have shipped sometime after Feb 2000., but before September. A FireWire port was added in September 2000.
It’s a good thing the seller included the invoice. I checked it and low and behold, it’s dated March 2000. So having OS 9 makes sense. I guess Apple was still selling the G3 300 after they bumped the speed to 366 MHz. After all, even the MacBook Air comes in two different speeds.
I’ll have to hop on eBay and score an AirPort card. Once I have that, I’ll install the RAM.
