PowerBook Disassembly Guide

kwiens writes "We've been slaving away for months to create the FixIt Guide Series-- a set of Free-As-In-Beer step by step PowerBook disassembly instructions. Maybe waiting another 6-18 months for those PowerBook G5's will be easier if you fix your old PowerBook now (or just use the Guides as a starting point for that killer PowerBook case mod). Guides are up now for the PowerBook G3 Wallstreet, Lombard, Pismo and Titanium PowerBook G4 Mercury, Onyx, DVI."

Comments

Re:Saving money is great - fraud is not.

[JayPee]

I get this shit all the time. I'm the sole Apple hardware guy at a laptop campus which currently has around 600 students with iBooks and 12" Powerbooks.

I've heard and seen just about everything.

Student: "I didn't spill anything on my iBook"

Me: "Oh yeah? What's this sticky shit that smells like a Gin and tonic?"

Then again, the guys that work on the HP/Compaq's have it worse. They've had two or three laptops that have been pissed on. I suspect it has something to do with lower customer satisfaction.

Re:You think this will get shut down?

[jap]

Maybe Apple has asked for this site to be placed on /. - why hire expensive lawyers sending c&d's if a herd of clicking nerds with bandwith will give the same result.

or...

[Jon Proesel]

Or you could just go with CowboyNeal's method of disassembly. http://cowboyneal.org/ex-powerbook.jpg

Taking it to extremes

[caitsith01]

My girlfriend once used my computer for an evening. The next day, when I tried to type, pressing a key would produce something like:

#$F|||||||||||#@#$SSSDGF

instead of, say 'a'. So I find my girlfriend, who has an innocent look of concern on her face, and I ask her: did you download any strange software yesterday? No. Did you scan your floppy disk? Yes, no viruses. Did anything else weird happen while you were using my computer? No, nothing weird.

Hmmm... so after tapping away in frustration and checking the cables I decide there must be something loose inside the keyboard that is producing crazy input signals every time I press a key. I decide to check it out, so I go and get the trusty phillips head and go over to my computer. I pick up the keyboard, and as I turn it on its side, liquid starts pouring out. Lots of liquid... lots and lots of liquid... in fact, an entire cup of tea pours out all over the desk.

Using my Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction, followed by an appropriately Holmesian denoument in which I made my accusations, I discovered the following. She'd knocked her tea over with her hand, and it had fallen neatly and poured directly into the keyboard body. Then, realising how terrible her crime was (it was a nice keyboard), she quietly logged off using the mouse to select Start->Shut Down->Yes, quickly packed up her stuff, and weaseled away into the night without saying a word.

Things I discovered from this incident:
- keyboards are remarkably water-tight
- darjeeling tea with one sugar is very bad for circuit boards and contact-based switches like the ones inside a keyboard
- there is no limit to the optimism and weaseliness of people when they want to get out of trouble
- it will cost you more than the price of a new Logitech keyboard if you call your partner an evil keyboard murdering wench to her face

Where's the information on screws?

[DarkRecluse]

I never see anything about what type of screw goes where. I was taking apart a Pismo 400 the other day and while I thought I could remember where each screw went I later realized that I could not. Of course now I can seeing as how I had to take it apart a few times to make sure everything was seated correctly.

Needless to say, when you feel resistance on a screw and you're not quite sure where it goes, don't keep screwing it in. That goes for laptops and women.