Apple Computer has admitted that a startup production glitch has affected the floppy disk drives in the new portable PowerBook 140s and 170s to the point where the disk drive must be replaced. The internal floppy on some early production runs fails to operate unless screen brightness is turned down all the way, which makes the machine far less useful. Repeated rebooting of the machine sometimes solves the problem. An Apple representative told Microbytes Daily that the majority of the failures we’ve noted have been the drives in the 140 model, with a very few of the 170s affected. The affected drives are being fixed under warranty. Apple also said it will offer several more powerful versions of its Macintosh Classic, Classic II and LC personal computers. The computers are all available now with 4Mb of RAM and a 40Mb hard drive. The new Classic will sell for $1,649, while the Classic II and LC will respectively sell for $2,049 and $2,649.
