coius
Well-known member
PowerBook Pismo (FireWire) Keyboard Hack
Sad that I sold this machine, as I turned heads when I took this machine someplace with people saying "Wow! did it
come like that?!?!"
Anyways, onto the hack:
During the time I had my previous iBook G3 (I got a G4 1.2GHz in 2004 courtesy of Apple Computers after my iBook 900Mhz
G3 broke for the 14th time) ,I had a broken iBook G3 keyboard that I had left over from after Apple mailed me another one.
The coolest thing about the iBook G3 keyboards, was that they were translucent, unlike the iBook G4's one.
This was a good thing, especially since the Pismo's (Firewire PB G3) keyboard is a translucent Bronze color.
So it fit right in perfectly with the translucent theme quite well... (Although, I bet the iBook G4's solid color would
blend in equally well I assume (it might actually be a bit cooler, come to think about it...)). So guess what?
I had a hack on my hands!
The problem I had with the G3 keyboard, was that the tab on the upper left corner had broken,
keeping me from keeping the laptop keyboard locked down:
As you can see from the pic above, the tab doesn't want to
stay in the "up" position, keeping the keyboard from
staying locked into place which fits under the lip of the
case.
Time to get to hacking! The first thing I did, was to get all the keys off of the keyboard. i did this by taking a
small "jeweler's" screwdriver, and popping off the keys one-by-one, until I had all of the keys removed
from everything but the inside with a key left on the outside surrounding the keyboard edge.
I also did the same thing with the powerbook, leaving the keys on the outside there to make a bronze "outline".
I came up with a result that looks like this:
You can see the comparison between the two keyboards. The bronze keyboard is from the Pismo, and
the white keyboard (missing keys) is the old iBook G3 900Mhz keyboard
Once I got done with both the boards, i put the Pismo keyboard right back on the Pismo, and it looks like this now:
I was *VERY* happy with the outcome, as I
said before that people were turning their heads. I got several “Mac-heads” coming up and telling me that it looked very good.
I can say one thing about this particular laptop, I have spilled coffee into it at LEAST 4x and once I took it apart and
dried it out (all of them were are the coffee shop up the street from me) it booted up and ran fine.
If you have never spilled liquids into a laptop, you have no idea what the horror can be, especially since this
was a very special laptop (besides, it gave me a machine to use when my iBook was in the repair shop) and it could do anything
I threw at it (even garage band) I can't say enough of how rugged the machine is, and if you ever get offered one
(or have the money to buy one (it is expensive) they are nice machines, because they are the last upgradeable laptops that Apple made.
I loved mine very much because of the swappable 5.25" bays, and the fact they are so easy to service) take it!
I don't care how much they say they are outdated, if you have a problem-some machine, they are a great backup,
and I would NEVER get an iBook G3 *EVER* again, even for the horsepower. Those things break faster than hell!
All-in-all, it was worth the Pentium 3 850MHz that I traded it for (a guy that was a photographer had upgraded the Pismo
before the trade and no longer wanted the mac (hah! his loss) so we did a trade and he was happy, and I was VERY happy
)
Sad that I sold this machine, as I turned heads when I took this machine someplace with people saying "Wow! did it
come like that?!?!"
Anyways, onto the hack:
During the time I had my previous iBook G3 (I got a G4 1.2GHz in 2004 courtesy of Apple Computers after my iBook 900Mhz
G3 broke for the 14th time) ,I had a broken iBook G3 keyboard that I had left over from after Apple mailed me another one.
The coolest thing about the iBook G3 keyboards, was that they were translucent, unlike the iBook G4's one.
This was a good thing, especially since the Pismo's (Firewire PB G3) keyboard is a translucent Bronze color.
So it fit right in perfectly with the translucent theme quite well... (Although, I bet the iBook G4's solid color would
blend in equally well I assume (it might actually be a bit cooler, come to think about it...)). So guess what?
I had a hack on my hands!
The problem I had with the G3 keyboard, was that the tab on the upper left corner had broken,
keeping me from keeping the laptop keyboard locked down:
As you can see from the pic above, the tab doesn't want to
stay in the "up" position, keeping the keyboard from
staying locked into place which fits under the lip of the
case.
Time to get to hacking! The first thing I did, was to get all the keys off of the keyboard. i did this by taking a
small "jeweler's" screwdriver, and popping off the keys one-by-one, until I had all of the keys removed
from everything but the inside with a key left on the outside surrounding the keyboard edge.
I also did the same thing with the powerbook, leaving the keys on the outside there to make a bronze "outline".
I came up with a result that looks like this:
You can see the comparison between the two keyboards. The bronze keyboard is from the Pismo, and
the white keyboard (missing keys) is the old iBook G3 900Mhz keyboard
Once I got done with both the boards, i put the Pismo keyboard right back on the Pismo, and it looks like this now:
I was *VERY* happy with the outcome, as I
said before that people were turning their heads. I got several “Mac-heads” coming up and telling me that it looked very good.
I can say one thing about this particular laptop, I have spilled coffee into it at LEAST 4x and once I took it apart and
dried it out (all of them were are the coffee shop up the street from me) it booted up and ran fine.
If you have never spilled liquids into a laptop, you have no idea what the horror can be, especially since this
was a very special laptop (besides, it gave me a machine to use when my iBook was in the repair shop) and it could do anything
I threw at it (even garage band) I can't say enough of how rugged the machine is, and if you ever get offered one
(or have the money to buy one (it is expensive) they are nice machines, because they are the last upgradeable laptops that Apple made.
I loved mine very much because of the swappable 5.25" bays, and the fact they are so easy to service) take it!
I don't care how much they say they are outdated, if you have a problem-some machine, they are a great backup,
and I would NEVER get an iBook G3 *EVER* again, even for the horsepower. Those things break faster than hell!
All-in-all, it was worth the Pentium 3 850MHz that I traded it for (a guy that was a photographer had upgraded the Pismo
before the trade and no longer wanted the mac (hah! his loss) so we did a trade and he was happy, and I was VERY happy
)
