I have a crush on my PowerBook 550c and I work hard to make it happy. The screen has been unacceptably dim as the 30-year-old CCFL continues its long slide into obscurity; and i wanted the 550c to have something nice for christmas. (i hope i'm not boring with my repeated CCFL-to-LED posts, i...
I have been restoring my PowerBook 180 to its full potential, using parts from several other machines (including a dead 180 i bought from a russian kid in a parking lot in south Beverly Hills for $50... i might have agreed to become a fence for other things he finds, not sure, this is a wild...
I wanted to make a SmartPortSD for my IIc. I previously mounted a FloppyEMU in the internal drive; that project turned out fine, but precluded use of the FloppyEMU as a SmartPort device without some creepy wiring. I decided to make a SmartPortSD adapter using erichelgeson’s instructions at...
i spent a couple days building parts to mount a floppyEMU inside my IIc. (I’m on furlough waiting out the strike(s) in hollywood and need to keep busy.)
This is 100% a non-destructive edit; i pulled the original drive and set it to the side for posterity; the new pieces use only the existing...
confronted with fading light behind an otherwise lovely active-matrix screen, i am attempting to replace the the CCFL with an off-the-shelf LED strip. I have done this same mod a couple times; i finally obtained a spare 500-series inverter board upon which I could practice.
I could not find any...
I got a good deal on a PowerBook 540c "for parts", i meant to strip out a couple pieces, but the screen is immaculate and the case is good (hinges still strong!) so, of course, i set about trying to fix it. (i have a box of 500-series pieces, I figured i must have whatever the machine needed...)...
I love my PowerBook G3, and the fading CCFL was not doing justice to its beautiful 14" Screen. I have a couple "parts" machines, so i got out the multimeter to see if I could get an LED strip in there. (This mod was a quickie while trying to part out another project, but this went so fast & easy...
A friend gifted me a dead PowerBook 100. It was only mostly dead; all it took was replacing every capacitor, now it works fine.
The screen is predictably dim. As part of the repair, i took the LCD apart: the little CCFL has plenty of crusty black inside its ends, i’m sure it doesn't have much...
I am an idiot with LCDs, but this actually worked so i thought i would share.
I obtained a PowerBook 1400c, hoping to harvest the active matrix LCD, but the screen was busted. The LCD pulled from the 1400c was a SHARP LQ11S42. I have not seen a list of the LCD screens used in the different 1400...
i finally had time to turn three powerbooks worth of parts into one, solid PowerBook G3 Series (PDQ).
As part of the rebuild, i decided to move the PRAM battery—similar to my PowerBook 1400 project—to save a complete teardown in the future.
Like the 1400, this uses the existing battery pack’s...
this is old news (i got the mouse on eBay years ago), but I haven't seen anyone else throw this flex
here is my NeXT two-button ADB mouse attached to a PowerBook 550c
using TheMouse2B
the power supply in my souped up Quadra 605 died, and i am too lazy to recap it.
(Q605 is recapped with tantalum, HD replaced with SD card, pretty new VRAM, 128MB RAM, and a full 68040)
Following knowledge from a thread on TinkerDifferent I searched out a MeanWell RPT-60A, a small power supply...
I have several old PowerBooks that i adore. Okay, lots of old powerbooks. It’s not a problem, i can stop anytime.
Every single PRAM battery is dead, of course... and every one of them requires dismantling the computer to get to the battery. Of course.
I ordered a handful of new VL2330 to make...
this is my pass at a shim to reinforce the 1400’s Display Housing / Hinge.
I am not an engineer, just a hobbyist; please feel free to remix & re-share.
the complex lower profile is to fit around existing structure, using those pieces as a guide to pop into the exact right place. there’s even...
I have been fooling around with my PowerBook 520c (my first powerbook!); installed BlueSCSI, and working on a PRAM battery replacement (will post results if successful). I love this hardware, and it's running beautifully EXCEPT...
after a few minutes the screen blanks out to blue. Not black, it...