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What method did you use to write the image to the SD card? I’ve seen this error crop up when the hard disk driver stored on a drive got messed up.    So there may have been an issue when writing that part of the image.    If it were me, I’d grab the 1gb 6.0.8 file and start from there. Even...

I just had a thought that sent me deeper into the rabbit hole: since the 145B is a later revision of the 145, it stands to reason that it would only have the revision C panel, since Apple was already transitioning from revision B to C during the run of the original 145. So I grabbed a copy of...

So I've been keeping an eye out for any LCD's you can use for your 160, because I guess now I'm invested in this PowerBook's "story" and want to see a happy ending; and I found this service document which adds to the previous information I found about display compatibility...

And now those prices have leaked onto the local classifieds. I was looking for an old PC to make up some special floppies. Plenty of options, but they were all labeled as “vintage gaming PCs” and went for at least $100 for just the tower.    There needs to be a PSA on TV that lets people know...

Hopefully the voltage spike just fried the DC/DC converter and nothing else.    I can’t believe the prices people charge on eBay for these PowerBooks. The active-matrix models are reasonably popular so it’s more justified. But so many people bought the passive-matrix models, there’s a...

Worst case scenario, there is this listing on Etsy...

Sorry to hear about the death of your 160's screen; it's a shame to lose a computer you have an attachment to and put work into fixing already. According to the service manuals, the 160 & 165 use the same LCD panel, I poked around and none of the other 1xx machines use this screen. The...

I don't know if what I have can be called "confidence", I just wing it and pray it works out. That's how I've been fixing things for decades and somehow it hasn't bit me in the rear; yet. These old machines are honestly a good starting point. Plastics are fragile, but component density is much...

I’m at the opposite camp, I know the capacitors are going to fail eventually, and I’d rather handle it now while the plastics are still in reasonable shape. I still use these vintage computers a lot; most of my homework in college circa 2011 to 2015 was done on my 170.  I also want to...

That picture isn't actually mine, I pulled it from this website: https://oldcrap.org/2020/04/27/apple-macintosh-powerbook-180c/ I was at work at the time and didn't want to wait until I got home to snap a photo of my own LCD. My board is nice and clean there. Actually, the underside with...

Way ahead of you guys, I have a silicone sheet for the occasion. This is also why I'm upgrading my soldering iron to something with a fine tip and controllable temperature. My current one has only one setting: hot as blazes, it's not at all suitable for this task.

Washing out is the symptom I usually see when an LCD has bad caps. I guess in those cases they take a while to store a full charge. I ordered new caps along with a good soldering iron/hot air station combo. I've been making do with a large, ancient soldering iron for years but that's simply not...

Just realized that those look nothing like rectangular, surface mount, electrolytic capacitors. And whoever had a 180c with gap goo in the cables likely had the laptop stored on its side, letting gravity slowly pull expelled electrolyte from the other side of the board into the cables. The fact...

Sutekh, you are an absolute legend. Thank you so much! One last question: There's these capacitors here that I've "circled" in red. Are these something I need to replace as well? I'm worried about them because they're running right next to the delicate ribbon cables 

Yes, that's it exactly, it's an active matrix panel that's acting like a passive matrix panel I was trying to think where I've seen that kind of look before; it's been so long since I've used a passive matrix panel that I've practically forgotten what it's like! Last time I had used a...

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Any damaged display cables I’ve seen resulted in very different forms of visual artifacting compared to what I’m seeing on the 180c Thanks for chiming in, makes me feel better. I wasn’t keen on trying to find a display cable; 180c specific parts like that...

Howdy, everyone. I’ve been working on a PowerBook 180c and I’m about to tackle the part I’ve been looking the least forward to: recapping the LCD Before I get into it, I’d like to get some confirmation is these lines are likely caused by faulty capacitors/damage from cap goo Anything colour...

Good to know mine isn’t the only unit that prefers lopsided 10mb modules.    I’m tempted to bend the pins a bit as suggested by sutekh, but my hands aren’t all that steady anymore, and I don’t have a spare upper motherboard in case things go sour. Oh well, it’s fine as is for my own use

So apparently I posted too soon.    I was fiddling with the 10mb module and found that the PowerBook would POST successfully if the module is held at a very specific angle, a tilt of about 10 degrees. I placed a folded up business card between the top case and the module to act as a shim, and...

Howdy everyone, I have a PowerBook 180c that isn’t cooperating with a 10 megabyte RAM module I have.    I plugged the module into my PowerBook 170, and it works perfectly. System 7.6 boots fully, and I ran it like that for a while and it never gave any trouble. The 180c however, refuses to...