I purchased my 5400/120 as a replacement to my upgraded but aging LC III not long after the Gazelle PPC was release by Apple Computer, Inc. I have always loved the Mac all-in-one (AIO) form factor, and I am still enamored with the look of this specific model. (I mean, I would love a Molar Mac, but who can find one for a reasonable price?)

The 5400 became my home workhorse machine, which I used primarily for music composing and arranging, software development, and web design. I repurposed the LC III to my classroom, as a replacement to the absolute garbage Windows PC that was provided by my employer at that time. The 5400 was my daily driver for roughly four years, until I purchased a TiBook—my first laptop.

I made a few improvements to the 5400 back when it was my primary computer, but have added several more since that time. This post is documenting those upgrades, for anyone who might be interested in learning from my mis/adventures.

RAM
The 5400/120 came with 8MB of RAM on the motherboard, with two slots for module expansions, up to 64MB per slot. Matched RAM is not required, so I have upgraded twice over the years, adding 32MB and 64MB DIMMs. This gives me a total of 104MB of RAM; while shy of the 136MB maximum, I have never observed this to be a problem.

L2 Cache
The 5400 has an L2 cache slot, and mine includes a 256KB module. I cannot recall if it was standard or I purchased it. I would love to fill this with a Sonnet G3 processor upgrade card, but they are rare and ridiculously overpriced when they pop up on eBay. Do not feed into the mania, people! The sellers will lower their demands when no one buys.

Hard Drive
The Mac came with a 1.6GB IDE drive—rather large for the time, but it was filled quickly when working with audio. I upgraded the drive to 20GB back in the day. Recently, I have tried multiple approaches to expand and improve the machine’s storage, without much success. This is honestly my only remaining point of frustration with this classic machine.

IDE to SATA Spinning
This is a common route to drive expansion in classic Macs. After researching options, I landed on the very reliable StarTech IDE2SATA paired with a 500GB WD drive—overkill, because the controller can only recognize 128GB, but there was no cost saving in going with a smaller option. Unfortunately, the replacement hard drive could be recognized by the machine only if it was placed into master configuration after the computer booted via a different option (e.g., CD or BlueSCSI). It could then be initialized and software installed, but it could never be recognized as a boot volume and, in fact, the Mac would not even chime and the power light would not illuminate with the WD as boot drive. I did some online reading and found this to be true for other users for this and a few other AIO Macs from this era. Disappointing.

IDE to mSATA SSD
A user on a classic Mac forum who described frustrations like those I detailed above had apparently come across a solution for computers of this same time period. Unfortunately, this option also did not work in the 5400. While the drive was immediately recognized, could be initialized, and software installed, the system would show the Happy Mac icon and immediately freeze upon boot attempt from the drive. Inspecting the drive with Disk First Aid showed damage to the tree structure which could not be repaired. Multiple attempts at wiping and reinstalling yielded the exact same result. Doubly disappointing. Thank goodness for generous refund policies. I am back to using my replacement spinning 20GB drive for now, which I wiped and graced with a fresh install of Mac OS 9.1.

BlueSCSI
I recently purchased a v2.0 external BlueSCSI device. This thing is a marvel; it is bootable and the responsiveness is honestly pretty good. I have updated the firmware to the most recent Beta at time of this writing, which allows file transfers from my modern Macs using a “shared” folder on the micro SD card. Setting up virtual hard drives is a breeze using tools like Disk Jockey. However, the 4GB maximum drive size can be limiting. I would certainly recommend this device for (1) generating “hard drive” images, which can be copied to a modern Mac and scheduled for another backup to the cloud, and (2) for transferring files across computers; however, I don’t feel very comfortable using the device for my daily work due to the very common and unpredictable failure rate of SD cards.

Ethernet
I purchased my 5400 with an Ethernet card in the Comm slot, which was one of the primary reasons I selected this machine. Previously, all of my systems required the use of a dial-up modem to access online services and the Internet.

Apple TV/Video System
A few years ago, I found these cards online, still in original packaging but very reasonably priced. The system includes a video input card that takes composite and S-video options, a TV tuner card, and an infrared remote. The tuner card allows access to cable and antenna television. As I no longer have cable, I am not sure this will ever be useful in the future, but it’s there. The other video inputs are much more useful, in my opinion, allowing for display and capture of all manner of video/audio signals.

External Video Connector
The 5400 motherboard includes a small slot that allows the connection of a specialized PCB with a ribbon cable and classic Mac video display connector. The onboard graphics are not powerful enough to drive multiple independent displays, but this connector allows for mirroring of the built-in display. I imagine the intention was mirroring to a classroom projector, as the 5400 was sold to education markets. I find this connection extremely useful, as I have used a small DB15 to HD15 adaptor to connect to a larger VGA LCD monitor I picked up for about $50 on eBay—so much better for aging eyes.

Sonnet Tango 2.0
The Tango fills the unit’s single PCI slot, providing USB 1.1 and Firewire 400 support (per the box). I haven’t tested this yet, but have a used LaCie Firewire drive coming, as a possible backup and extended storage solution. With these aging systems, back up options become so important.

Update: The modern LaCie Rugged FireWire 400 drive works like a charm. The Tango 2.0 recognized and mounted it immediately, and a simple Erase Disk… from the OS 9.1 Special menu had it ready for use. I’m using this 500GB drive to offload installer files and house the IDE drive’s backups (see more below).

That’s my current classic Macintosh rig. I am mostly using it for the same things I used it for in 2000: music creation and HyperCard programming.

Advice?
I’d welcome any input you might have on the following:

• Applications that run on OS 9.1 or 8.6 to do drive backups. No need for automation options, as I don’t leave the machine on when unused. Update: I’ve landed on Tri-BACKUP for this machine. I’ve used the Energy Saver control panel to schedule the machine to start up overnight on Sundays, and Tri-BACKUP to completely mirror the IDE hard drive to the LaCie FW 400. I’ve also set the software to perform an incremental backup of only my documents partition each time the computer is shutdown. I will monitor this and report back with any concerns, but fingers crossed.
• Hard drive replacement options. Finding older IDE drives is becoming challenging, and none of the traditional options to replace work with this machine.