One Good Turn blah, blah, blah

[TheNeil]

Got an email about a month ago from some random stranger wanting help with their PB160. Tried helping, sorted out a boot disk etc. but looked like the HD had just given up. The woman then said thanks and said that she'd just trash it - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Anyway, long story short, I offered to take it off her hands and she sends me it for cost of shipping...as well as a PB150

They turned up this morning but I didn't have a chance to try any actual tests. The 160 is in good shape (missing its main battery but hardly a massive problem). The 150 is looking a little bit less healthy (but does have a battery - I wonder where that'll end up) with the screen hinge looking like it's trashed the display casing and the main body looking like it's been crunched by the Post Office. Oh and she chucked in a set of OS 7 install disks and what looks like some documentation.

Might be able to restore the 160 back to life (I'll know better when I actually take the pair apart) but, if not, a nice pile of salvagable parts

 

[coius]

well that's pretty sad the 150 shows up. And it's too old to file a claim. Anyways, nice score. If you can, can you transplant the board from the 150 into the 160? I think the 150 was missing some stuff on it that made it a "Consumer" Laptop, but this was only from memory with messing with a laptop. from the early 1x0 series

If you can, try transplanting or downright reseating EVERYTHING in the laptop. Take it apart, clean it out. if it's got a Ram card, take it out. One of the problems I had with the one I worked on, was that whenever the RAM card was in, it shorted something out because I could hear a high pitched blip when I pressed the button, then it wouldn't do anything.

Good luck with it!

 

[TheNeil]

Once I get a couple of spare hours, me and Mr Screwdriver will see what's what, work out where the damage is and what can be done. I don't really want to create a Franken-Mac if I can avoid it but as I can't remember what state my current 150 and 160 are in, it could be that I end up merging the two 150s together (and doing likewise for the 160s)

 

[LCGuy]

Don't do it - I once put a PB150 board in a 170 many years ago and it gave off that wonderful burning silicon smell :-/

 

[TheNeil]

Ok managed to fire the little beasts up last night. The 160 boots but the screen is screwed - it starts off OK and then either goes white (to the point of not being able to see anything) or decides to go totally yellow. Could just be a cabling issue, could be something nastier but a complete strip down is probably the order of the day.

The 150, despite having a totally destroyed pair of screen hinges and screen bezel, is working perfectly...except for the hard drive having a nice 'whirr-click, whirr-click' soundtrack and refusing to boot (hardly surprising given a trashed HD). Screen looks bright and crisp so when I take the 160 apart, I'll swap the HD over and see what's what.

Should have enough to get one machine out of these two (don't worry, I'll resist the urge to swap motherboards or anything that could result in the 'smell of death' )

 

[skeletor]

well that's pretty sad the 150 shows up. And it's too old to file a claim. Anyways, nice score. If you can, can you transplant the board from the 150 into the 160? I think the 150 was missing some stuff on it that made it a "Consumer" Laptop, but this was only from memory with messing with a laptop. from the early 1x0 series
If you can, try transplanting or downright reseating EVERYTHING in the laptop. Take it apart, clean it out. if it's got a Ram card, take it out. One of the problems I had with the one I worked on, was that whenever the RAM card was in, it shorted something out because I could hear a high pitched blip when I pressed the button, then it wouldn't do anything.

Good luck with it!

I used to have a PB 160....before I traded it in, for a then 'new' PB 165c

(bit of a dog, screen wise-passive matrix )

the ONE good thing about the PB 150, was the amount of ram..

up to 40 mb , using a duo motherboard...and other 100 series Powerbooks had a ram ceiling of 14mb....