Immaculate 180 - preventative maintenance / battery ideas

[Powerbook27364]

It was present on both when I got them but the 145B got worse after the airport security didn’t treat it too well. The 170 has not worsened though. Hopefully I can find a new bottom casing panel. Maybe I will design and print one but that’s a ton of work

 

[GRudolf94]

TSA absolutely mangled a 520 of mine. That one got a lot of superglue though.

 

[Powerbook27364]

That's what I was talking about crack propagation. First you have to stop the crack by drilling the end of it. Then yeah if you don't feel like melting it back together, flooding the inside with epoxy maybe.

One of my PB180s is cracked just like that. And one of my PB100s has a wavy battery bottom of the compartment where it seems to have slightly melted, lol

I don’t have a clue how to do that lol. I will have to try on some old broke plastic prices and not something I care about.

 

[Powerbook27364]

I know it is several cracks and not just one on the 145B which is quite annoying. I might just buy another 100 series to get the bottom case and have the spares.

 

[flimshaw]

Quick update over here:

I still haven't gone into the display bezel, I'm just throwing a little salt over my shoulder and opening it real gingerly.

But I *did* build a new battery pack. I didn't have a lot of time, so I remixed a case on Thingiverse to just make a big empty box, then I used QuikSteel to place some electrodes, and wired up an off-the-shelf 6v NiMH AA pack. It's not the best battery life, but the construction was extremely cheap and easy. I will take some photos and share later, but here's my WIP emptied out case on thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6114478/files

I also replaced the venerable IBM 120MB drive, which still booted and went to sleep and everything, with a new ZuluSCSI RP2040 mobile version. It's *mostly* working great, but I'm having trouble with it failing after it goes to sleep. I did also add a small variation that I threw on my Mac Classic one too: a piezo speaker on the external LED port! This adds a satisfying click to let you know the drive is doing something. I don't know which piezo I used, just one from the junk bin. OK thanks, more later.

 

[flimshaw]

OH one other thing: after I opened the bottom case, the two standoffs that held the silver bracket that goes over the floppy drive and hard drive had crumbled before I even touched them. So far, the other standoffs are intact, but I see what folks are talking about with these things getting brittle.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Yeah you’ll have always lost a couple of the silver shield standoffs on any of these. I’ll bet a couple would be broken even if you opened up a NOS one at this point.

 

[GRudolf94]

Yeah. Mine were gently re-melted into shape. The ones in the Duo 280C lid I'm working on had to be remade from scratch using the bits that were still rattling about the insides.