Easiest PowerBook I have worked on in a LOOONNGGG time...

[coius]

Some of you in the #68kmla went through this with me, but wanted to spread the word. I had a client come to me with wanting me to reset the Password on his PowerBook G4 1.67Ghz 17" w/ 1GB RAM (long story...) and when I tried to, it wouldn't reset (Encrypted)

So, the next best thing... Reinstall. So we got out the install discs, only to find a few minutes into the install KERNEL PANIC!

Thinking it might be a hardware problem (Good guess I guess...) I popped in TechTool Pro. and low and behold, BAD HDD Sectors! Well.. This means only one thing. Harddrive replacement!! One thing I hate out of ANY laptops out there, are APPLE LAPTOPS. Well... this one shocked me. using iFixit (or PBFixit, don't remember...) I went through 3 major steps (not really, just a bunch of screws) and I was in to the drive. WOW! that was *really* easy. Took me 5 minutes max to go into it and replace the drive with another drive (100GB replaced by another 100GB HDD). I now have 10.5.1 installed and almost ready. This was an overnight job and made $175 with the harddrive being install. Not bad for like 3 Hours of work... Not bad at all...

So, if anyone is thinking about going into your 17" PowerBook 1.5/1.67Ghz, it is REALLY easy. almost as good as going into a powerbook G3 Pismo. Simple inandout really quick. Just wanted to give the heads up!

 

[tomlee59]

Yes, the G4 powerbooks are a relative pleasure to work on. Changing hard drives and optical drives is a breeze. Quite a nice contrast with, say, the corresponding operations on an ibook!

 

[MultiFinder]

I love how they took care of that on the MacBook. Pop out the battery, undo three screws, pop out a little cover thingy, and BAM! HDD and RAM, both just itching to be popped out in a few seconds.

 

[Dan 7.1]

when you've replaced the motherboard on an AlBook, then we'll talk about "easy". don't even get me started on the 12" AlBooks...

In reality, AlBooks are an real PITA to work on. the easiest G4 laptop by far is the last-gen TiBooks. even replacing the motherboard is a relatively simple procedure.

 

[benjgvps]

I swapped keyboards between a PowerBook 150 and 145B. It only took less than half an hour.

 

[Patrickool93]

Thats a long time, but the 1xxs were kinda hard to work in. Easy to get apart, but everything os connected strangely. Changing the KB in a G3 iBook/PB could take about 3 minutes...