PowerBook G4. 17" 1.33Ghz for $25 worth of work :D

[coius]

Yup. Customer and I worked out a deal. for $25 of work, I will be getting a 17" 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4 w/ 2GB DDR-2700 RAM, 250GB HDD, dead battery, and FW800/Dual-Link DVI (i think).

Not bad eh? only issue is it needs a little work. I am gonna need to repair the DC Jack. machine has been dropped a couple times screwing up the case, but that's no an issue, I have worked on the machine before. I am thinking I may give it to my dad so he has an Apple Laptop. or i could give my my 12" 1.5Ghz PowerBook G4 w/ 1.25GB RAM, new battery and 160GB HDD. Not sure, but it sounds like a cool deal. Since i am proficient with soldering and stuff, I would love to get the machine like that. If not for movies, then at least for older Mac gaming. Halo on a big screen anyone?

 

[Temetka]

Nice score!

I remember when those came out but I still had my top of the line Ti and so getting one wasn't on my list. A friend of mine did get one though and I was rather impressed with the screen and the overall speed of the machine.

 

[coius]

Well, I had to buy a DC-In board per diagnosis of iMacC2D/600, since that was the original area of problems. The machine I was told ran fine off the battery, it just wouldn't charge or power up. I removed the piece that was in the jack, but all the DC plug does is glow orange. no green.

I ordered the piece and it should be here in a few days. If it doesn't work, I will offer the parts up for sale (or the whole laptop) and everything works, trackpad/keyboard/Super Drive/HDD, Screen. it would just be the logic board shot, but at this point anything can happen. I could throw that dc in board in and the machine mysteriously power up.

I have attached the picture of the PowerBook G4. Looks nice after I bent most of the case back into shape.

It looks nice now, it just needs a little TLC.

 

[coius]

And here we go. The part pictured is the part that failed.

The other picture is the machine up and running. The keyboard is taking some time to get used to, but it looks like the machine is in good shape as far as anything working.

 

[PowerPup]

Looks nice, hope you have fun with your "new" Mac.

That makes two laptops repaired this week, between the two us us. (Finally got a screen for my TiBook, posting from it right now.)

 

[coius]

I seem to be on a roll. Fixed my Mighty Mouse by taking it apart and cleaning out the ball mechanism area. I had to glue the stupid rings. It appears once you take it apart, the only way to get the rings back on (outer and inner one (inner does glide surface) is to glue it. So I got glue holding the rings (5-ton epoxy) to the bottom. It works nicely.

I got the mouse about a year ago off of ebay for $10 NIB, after about a month, it quit scrolling down. so I ended up shelving it after seeing the problems. I decided to press my luck tonight and took the 5 minutes to clean the freaking thing out. Man it was filthy in ball area. How can one of those things accumulate dirt so quick?!

Oh well... I got it going "bluetooth" to the new powerbook, and I will keep using it on that.

I downgraded to 10.4 on the machine since 10.5 was being a bit sluggish on the suggestion from Defor in the IRC room. It is much snappier and workable. On top of that, with spotlight and dashboard turned off, it really makes it quite quick.

Not bad for a machine that shipped with 10.2.7, eh?

My PowerBook G4 1.5Ghz 12" laptop will still run 10.5 though. Seems to do rather well. I may downgrade that though just to see, or dual boot it. We shall see. I can always boot it off this machine to see how well it does over firewire.

Well, I think I am done repairing stuff for the night. I gotta finish up some work and then I will be heading to bed shortly.

Lots of stuff has happened and came in (Cisco gear, the DC In jack, the apple tv came today, I will write a review later...)

So I think it's time to unwind and get ready to sleep.