Huxley
Well-known member
A stranger reached out to me via a local Facebook group in my town, because he had seen some of my retro computing posts and wanted to know if I might be interested in a couple of old laptops he was about to have e-waste recycled. Naturally, I said yes, and here’s what I ended up with: a pair of gorgeous mid-1990’s Apple PowerBooks!
One is a PowerBook 150 (a bare-bones budget model) which may be lacking its original internal hard drive (the screws are missing from the underside, and there isn’t even a hint of hard drive sound when it’s powered on) but is otherwise in good shape.
The second is a PowerBook 165, which booted right up and appears to have some cool applications installed on the original 80 MB hard drive. Unfortunately, the display of the power book 165 appears to be suffering from the typical capacitor failure, because it drifts from being razor sharp and bright, to being broken up and washed out, and then back again.
Pretty cool, and especially since they’re now safe from the recycler! Click through to the album linked above for pics + details.
Three questions immediately come to mind:
1. Is anyone here offering recapping services for these displays/motherboards?
2. If recapping service isn't really a thing these days, could the display from the 150 be migrated into the body of the 165?
3. For the 150 (and the 165 too, as a preventative measure), what adapters would I need to replace the missing internal hard drive with a CompactFlash or microSD card? I'm guessing the 165 would need a PowerBook-style SCSI2SD (hey @inertialcomputing - are those available?), but I'm not sure what the 150 would need...
One is a PowerBook 150 (a bare-bones budget model) which may be lacking its original internal hard drive (the screws are missing from the underside, and there isn’t even a hint of hard drive sound when it’s powered on) but is otherwise in good shape.
The second is a PowerBook 165, which booted right up and appears to have some cool applications installed on the original 80 MB hard drive. Unfortunately, the display of the power book 165 appears to be suffering from the typical capacitor failure, because it drifts from being razor sharp and bright, to being broken up and washed out, and then back again.
Pretty cool, and especially since they’re now safe from the recycler! Click through to the album linked above for pics + details.
Three questions immediately come to mind:
1. Is anyone here offering recapping services for these displays/motherboards?
2. If recapping service isn't really a thing these days, could the display from the 150 be migrated into the body of the 165?
3. For the 150 (and the 165 too, as a preventative measure), what adapters would I need to replace the missing internal hard drive with a CompactFlash or microSD card? I'm guessing the 165 would need a PowerBook-style SCSI2SD (hey @inertialcomputing - are those available?), but I'm not sure what the 150 would need...