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The graphic is wrong! The 190 only came with a passive matrix grayscale or colour screen.
 

The last of the 68040 PowerBook line (codenamed 'Omega'), the PowerBook 190 was also one of the best. Designed as a budget -but not cheapskate - model for the value-conscious buyer, the 190 offered many of the features of its more powerful sibling, the PowerBook 5300. It superseded the PowerBook 500 series but was not designed to replace it.

What's available

    The 190 comes in three models:
-    190 4/500. 9.5" grayscale
-    190 8/500   9.5" grayscale
-    190cs 8/500 10.4" passive matrix colour.

The 4MB model may be upgraded to 36MB RAM while the other 2 models support up to 40MB. All 190s have 66/33 MHz 68LC040 processors, 2 PC card slots, a 3.5" expansion bay (occupied by a standard ATA floppy drive), a 500MB IDE hard drive, tappable trackpad, stereo 16-bit (CD quality) sound, stereo output, an NiMH battery, 12 F-keys, SCSI port (supports SCSI disk mode), a serial/modem port (57kbps), tiltable keyboard and indicator lights for the Key Caps and floppy bay. No internal CD ROM drive is available due to the 3.5" expansion bay size.

Upgrades and options are extensive. The 190 can be upgaded to a 5300 or optioned purely  to suit the owner's needs. All 3.5" modules manufactured for the PowerBook 3400 and the first generation G3 ('Kanga') work in the 190. These include DMA hard drives (DMA does not function but the drives, in large capacities from firms such as VST, work fine). VST also manufactures a Zip drive which has an ATAPI interface and is faster than an external Zip. Fujitsu also produced a 3.5" MO drive although these may be hard to track down.

The PC card bays give the 190 owner a wide variety of cards to choose from. The 500 series had an option PC card bay but it is exceptionally difficult to find. However, the 190's PC card bay is only 16 bit; thus, ethernet on the 190 will not run as fast the on-board ethernet supplied with the PB500. However, internal modems are much faster for the 190. The 500's modem maxes out at 19.2kbps, while 56K modems are widely available. Ensure a PC card works with the 190's generic driver though, or make sure it comes with a Mac driver. Many, such as Netcomm's, work with the Mac even without a driver.

As the 190 (like the PB150) shifted the Mac PowerBooks over from SCSI to IDE hard drives, a great many more choices are available. As long as the drives are 2.5"x17mm, the standard IDE interface will support drives of any size, providing the PB190 is running at least OS 7.5.5. 4, 6 or 8 GB drives are freely available and you can easily transfer them to another PowerBook.

Below, left -> right: PowerBook 190cs; PowerBook Duo 2300c; PowerBook 5300c

 

What OS versions run on the 190? What's the best one?
 

Anything from Mac OS 7.5.2 to 8.1 will work fine. PB190s upgraded with a PowerPC logic board can run 8.5 (and OS 8.6 most likely). 8.1 is the last system which supports the 68040 processor.

OS 8.1 is the most stable on the 190, while OS 7.5.2 is a little dodgy being the original and somewhat rushed original system software release. Run OS 7.5.5 at least (Note: to upgrade to 7.5.5, you must first install 7.5.3 and then install 7.5.5). 7.5.5 is a particularly useful OS release as it incorporates a 'universal' system folder which can boot anysystem earlier than the PB190/5300/2300 from the Mac Plus onwards. This is important if you need to boot 68000 or 68020 systems like the Classic or LC. Creating an external hard disk or Zip with OS 7.5.5 makes a handy system boot disk for that time the hard disk crashes (and it will). Put a copy of Norton's and Disk First Aid on it and this will make disk diagnostics far less painful than using boot floppies.

Judging from feedback on comp.sys.mac.portables, OS 7.6.1 is the fastest system. But it doesn't include a number of OS 8.0's features such as contextual menus and the pseudo-Copland 3-D appearance (as well as greater stability). Various versions of Kaleidescope provide some of OS 8.0's interface enhancements. My personal preference is for OS 8.1. To use SpeedDoubler 8 or RAMDoubler 8, OS 7.5.5 is the minimum requirement. However, earlier versions of SD and RD (1x) work fine on pre-7.5.5 systems, although I find SD's Speed Emulator to be improved on the 8x version. Use of SD 8.0 requires RD 8.0 as SD's Faster Network Copy function requiresboth RD 8.0 and AppleScript. Ensure both AppleScript and OpenTransport are loaded if you want to take advantage of faster file copying across your LocalTalk or Ethernet network. This is especially useful if you quickly want to grab files off a server or backup before you take off with your PowerBook.
 
 

What are the must-have utilities for the 190/5300/2300?

The list below is not exhaustive by any means and many of these utilities work on later and earlier PowerBooks. They have not necessarily been tested on the many and varied hardware/software combinations, so use them at your own risk.

Page up/Page down - Extension which turns Control-Up/Down arrow into page up/page down (works in all applications and Finder windows. You use Control-Up Arrow or Down Arrow to navigate in any Finder window or application. NOTE: If you use this on a PowerBook runing anything less than 8.5, place a space in front of the extension's title; this forces it to load earlier. Otherwise, it will conflict with the WindowShade feature in OS 7.5 and later. In OS 8.5 and later, Page Up/Page Down can load in the normal alphabetical feature.
Fat Cursors - Control panel. Enlarges the cursor so you don't lose your mouse on passive matrix screens.
MyBattery - Tells you battery time remaining, time used, internal temperature and a host of other useful functions.
Control strip modules - whatever you want them for, they probably exist...
PPP Menu - Launch FreePPP, ARA, OT/PPP and applications from the menu bar. Comes with the FreePPP 2.6.2 installer package available from www.rockstar.com
Battery Recondition - Free with Apple system software. Use it periodically to rejuvenate your NiMH battery.
Mt Everything or SCSI Probe - Permit mounting of SCSI devices on the desktop.
ClickPad II - For the PowerBook 5300 (or PowerBook 500 series). Enables tappable trackpad like PB190 and Duo 2300 and later PowerBooks.
Location Manager - Free from Apple. Manages different internet configurations. Especially useful for Road Warriors darting from country to country.
OtherMenu - Control panrl that provides an additional 'Apple Menu' located next to the Finder in the menu bar. Probably handier than control strips as it doesn't get in the way. Provides shortcuts to recent folders, documents and applications, as well as changing sound volume, video resolution and a host of other commands.
BeHierarchic - An alternative to Apple Menu Options control panel. Apple Menu Options is buggy and in versions earlier than 8.5, overwrite/patches native system calls wtth 68K code (a no-no on PowerPC Macs). Get it off your system nowand get something else.
MenuChoice - Much the same as BeHierarchic above but faster as it doesn't draw icons. Hasn't been updated in some time but doesn't seem to have any conflicts with 8.5.1.
Keyboard Launcher - Now this's a doozy: works a bit like KeyQuencer or QuicKeys I guess. You can set key combinaions or single keys to perform certain functions or launch applications or AppleScripts. For instance, I'm far too lazy to pick up a mouse, so I hit Option-R to restart and Option-S to shutdown, or F5 to launch Word 5.1. Usas only @ 60K of RAM. Doesn't work on the PowerBook 100 as it doesn;'t appear to run on 68000 CPUs.
EjectDisk - Particularly useful for PowerBook users. EjectDisk ejects floppies, Zips, Syquests, CDs - almost anything. "So what?" you say, "What's so special about that? I can do that by clicking on an icon and selecting *-E or *-Y. But on a PowerBook, you frequently can't see the icon to select it as it's covered by a window. EjectDisk resolves this. It permits you to eject any removable by using a key combo in the Finder or in any application. Very useful solution. You can customise it so there're different key combos for ejection of floppies, Zips and CDs.
Strip68K and StripPPC: Removes 68K or PPC code from 'fat binary' applications. Hard disk getting to full? Strip the native code on your 68K PowerBook or the 68K on your PPC PB. WARNING: Make sure you work on a *copy* of an application. Some, say, 68K code may be necessary got the application to run. You can potentially save megabytes of space using this. FatTrimmer does the same job. Want to check whether something is 68K, PPC or fat? Use I Love Native to find out.
TyoeItForMe - Control panel which lets you store frequently used phrases (like email signatures). For example, if you use the phrase 'PowerBook' frequently, you simply set it to write 'PowerBook' by typing 'pb'. Excellent for students citing frequently used bibliographical references, or scientists/engineers who use long technical descriptions. So every time you type 'NiMH' you'll get 'Nickel Metal Hydride'. It works in every application.
CopyPaste - Permits up to 100 different clipboards. Unregistered copies are restricted to 10 clipboards. Incredibly useful piece of software.