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FreeCycle Conquest: PowerBook 150!

Mars478

68000
After getting some replies for old iMacs (Which I have no use for. :) Feel free to take them, post to FreeCycle NYC) I finally got an interesting reply. A Woman asked if I took laptops. I said of course. She said that she had a PowerBook that was ancient and unwanted. After further research the woman told me that it was a PowerBook 150. She said she tried to turn it on but it flickered on and off. She also had the PowerAdaptor. I finally met with the woman, and she brought me the powerbook. She asked why I wanted it, I said that I just have a small collection. As I took it up to the Apartment, there was a sticky substance near the places of the rubber feet. It's like melted plastic? it spreads... Anyone know what this is? The hinge also is very loose, and has some play to it. The Battery is dead, and I want to test out recelling it. Anyone know any tips for this?

The case is also spreading apart. I'll re screw it. A nice surprise, was that despite what the lady said, it booted into a flawless 7.5.3 Install. It has Ram Doubler installed. (Actually Tripler because it has 4mb ram installed and it Tripled it into 12 :D ) Also The Floppy drive does not inject. The Floppy does just not stay, it goes in but it does not click it bounces right back like if there where a spring or something... Any ideas?

Thanks to listening (Well reading actually :) ) to my rant. I only got to play with it for like 15 Minutes and now I am in NJ and on my MSI Wind Double contraband.

Pics will be up here on Sunday to flickr. I got no Pictures yet!

/end rant

 
Nice score, if anything the passive matrix screen in PB150's isn't bad.

The "melting plastic" would be what's left of the worn out case feet :) I've come across a few PBs with this lately.

JB

 
I got a free PB150 off Freecycle last year. Definitely remove the rest of the rubber feet - they never harden up again and they're sticky and disgusting. It takes a number of Q-Tips and some isopropyl alcohol.

IIRC mine has maxed out RAM; but I really don't like that 2-bit (or is it 4-bit?) passive matrix screen. A real POS IMHO.

 
Wow thats really strange. Why don't they dry up? what happened to them?

Freecycle is pretty awesome IMO.

Does anyone know about how to fix the play that the hinges have?

And another thing is that the Floppy drive will not accept disks. They bounce right back as it was spring loaded.

Thanks!

 
The hinges having play can be fixed by tightening the screws attaching the hinge to the case. (If it isnt the spring in the hinge.)

 
The "melting plastic" would be what's left of the worn out case feet :) I've come across a few PBs with this lately.
Its a common issue with a lot of those sorts of case feet...I have an AppleDesign Keyboard that I had to de-feet a few years ago after its feets went liquid-ish.

 
Cool, Pics will be up later today?

Anyone know how to Re-Cell a battery? I have a few old iBook ice Batteries that I can kill.

 
Whatever you do, do NOT put cells from ANY iBook battery into the PowerBook 150 battery. An iBook battery, like just about all laptop batteries made in the last 10 years, uses Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) cells. The PowerBook 100 series batteries (apart from the 190, which is Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH)), are ALL Ni-Cad (Nickel Cadmium) based. If you mix NiCad with Li-Ion, the results may be rather....dangerous.

You might want to ask in the 68k PowerBook forum...but whatever you do, make sure that whatever cells you buy are definitely Ni-Cad cells. Never, ever mix different types of cells when recelling laptop batteries.

 
Sure thing. I guess I'll just run it with power...

Ok and also, The floppy drive makes discs spring back out. They bounce out like if they were spring loaded. Any ideas?

Oh and I fixed the hinges. :)

 
Ive re-celled quite a few batteries in my time, but when it comes to laptop batteries id just rather get a gneric brand replacement or at least see how much a place like batteries + would charge

re-celling them is not the hard part, getting the !@ cases apart without destroying them is

as far as your floppy goes, yea they are spring loaded, if they dont catch that means either something is bent/broken or just jammed up inside

you should be able to carefully remove the drives cover and inspect its workings for mechanical flaws, just mind the read/write heads ... other than that they are basic mechanical devices

 
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