Powerbook (hooray!) and Powerbook (boo!)

[therieau]

Did some work for a friend of mine who, understanding my mania, offered to trade her old Powerbooks for some of my very reasonable pay. Picked up a working Powerbook 520c which is an absolute delight to use once you get used to the teensy trackpad and the very bouncy keyboard. Also picked up a 1 GHz 15" G4 Powerbook that won't start. It sounds like the optical and hard drives are spinning up, but the screen is dark and there's no startup chime.

The rest of the haul comes next weekend and they should round out this little collection nicely. The downside is that I'm still collecting while I need to downsize. We'll see which ones are the most fun and stick with them. The other ones will have to go, so stay tuned.

 

[therieau]

Update: Won the auction for a new (as in NOS-new) logic board for $20 for the G4. The old gal goes under the knife tonight!

 

[Juror22]

Congrats  -  I hope 'surgery' goes well!  Let us know how it turns out. 

 

[therieau]

It took me a little while longer to get started than I'd hoped, but the logic board transplant into the G4 Powerbook was a great success. It took about an hour from start to finish and the machine is now humming along like a champ. I don't know if I'm going to regret leaving the stock 80GB hard drive in place and not swapping it out while I was in there, but I'm on sort of a restoration kick at the moment. I'll leave the resto-modding to its next owner.

Next up, finding a decent browser for 10.4 on the G4 and for System 7 on the 520c. (I told a colleague about my recent "Apple Ethernet Twisted Pair Transceiver" purchase for the 520c and he asked if the seller was charging by the word.)