Slashdot Mirror
PowerBook Upgrade and Repair Guides
kwiens writes "We had such a positive response from Slashdot with our Free-As-In-Beer Mac disassembly instructions last time around, we decided to do it again: We've made six more FixIt Guides, perfect for those intrepid road-warriors who refuse to trust anyone else to work on their 'Book. Now there's nothing stopping you from trying that LNO2 overclock on your PowerBook-- or just a hard drive upgrade. The new Guides have professional photos, a new GUI design, and screw guides (no, not this). Guides are now available for all iBook G3, PowerBook G3, and PowerBook G4 models (including the oft-requested 12, 15, and 17 Aluminum 'Books)."
Tumbleweed rolls by as news article is posted...
No comments, people?
1. Install Yellow Dog Linux
2. ???
3. Profit!
Everybody knows that Macintoshes are hermetically sealed at the factory and can never ever be upgraded.
I'm serious! There's a taser in there that zaps you in the butt if you try!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I need such a guide for my Asus W1n, which just broke down! Bringing it back to the store for repairs will take eight weeks, which I frankly, can't afford.
Too much to ask?
Considering how Apple treats it's customers that did not shell out the several hundred bucks for Apple care those guides are badly needed.
At least in Germany you have to pay at least 350 Euros if you want Apple to repair your 'book that is older then one year. Of course it's very well possible that you have to pay even more if something seriouse is broken, but even if just a part costing 5 Cents and taking two minutes to replace is broken you'll still have to pay 350 bucks.
To sum it up, I really like Apple's hardware, I really like OSX but personally I'll never buy anything from Apple again.
then disappeared Fucking confirmed: You should bring our cause. Gay and Juliet 40,000 6one Romeo and and distraction you all is to let
Still no one has come up with bezel replacements for the titaniums which had paint problems. Shame on apple for not dealing with those paint issues.....my powerbook just looks ugly now.
I hack PC hardware all the time. Build my own boxes. I have an old "server" hanging on the wall like a painting, with no case (hurry up and die already please so I can throw it away...)
.. it .. SCRATCHED it.. OMG I can't stand this any more, I'm going to go hold my powerbook for a few minutes to make everything better. It's so warm and cuddly.
But I ain't taking apart my 17" powerbook. No way. I can't even stand looking at those pictures of somebody's grubby hands taking apart that powerbook, and all the sensitive guts exposed.
I know, it's just a motherboard and a hard drive, and all the stuff that's in my other computers. But no there's got to be something magical in there too, something you can't see, something that escapes when you open it.
And what if I were to get a screwdriver near it and
Stop looking at me like that!
especially this link
I don't know how many times in the last six months I've heard idiots on IRC claim powerbook 12 inch models don't have fans because apple skimped on the design.
It's nice to be able to show proof. All hail intarweb.
I have followed it 100% and I have LOST MY WARRANTY! Please be smarter than I was.
any of you greased up hippies went to First Saturday tonight?
Seems to be missing from the list :) But most of those wouldn't be out of warranty yet.
I will be doing a hdd upgrade at some point though.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
Very good point. People should be aware that they may lose their warrnty if they do exactly what is said in that guide. It is not clear yet it is crucial. Please mod parent up.
This is important to keep in mind before opening your Mac because unlike a standard PC it is not built to open by end user and indeed one may very easily void the warranty.
Those who want to upgrade or repair their Macs don't understand what liberal Apple is - a company that manufactures computers whose workings are impenetrable and hidden (i.e. information hiding), like parts themselves are in other PCs. If people start upgrading their Macs, it's only a matter of time before they turn where they should - to American x86 or American x86-64.
"Hey, this heatsink takes up loadsa room and it must really cut the airflow! There, problem solved" :)
When my fan kicks in (playing a movie or similar), it sounds like a small jet. Anyone hear about ways to reduce the noise level of the fan?
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
The noice level is reduced already. You see; it only kicks in when you play a movie or similar.
would be awesome to cool one's computer with liquefied smog though
I bought an iBook G4 fairly recently, and I'd like to upgrade the hard disk. I note that my laptop isn't included in the list on pbfixit.com. Does anyone know if it's feasible to do home upgrades on a recent-model iBook? Or if not, is there anywhere (in the UK) that will do it for me? :)
HEY, Let me tell you about our extended in-store laptop warranties! Did you know you'll need to pay the shipping yourself if you need to have it repaired? And it can take weeks!
What?? You decline? WOW, NOBODY has EVER declined this before. Are you sure? Can you tell me why you've declined? Geeze, let me tell you about all the risks of turning this down.
(other floor guy walks up)
Hey, this guys buying this laptop without the extended warranty. (Glances exchanged.) No way! Yep. Does he know about all the things that could happen if something breaks. Yep, I told him but he says he doesn't want it. Wow, I don't know if anyone has ever declined it before.
(trying to get to check out with laptop in escort, manager walks up.)
Hey, Bob told me you are passing on the extended warranty. This is a very expensive items so there are a few things we have to cover before you buy it. Do you know if it breaks you'll have to cover all shipping expenses to and from the service center? That laptop has lithium batteries so there are hazardous shipping charges involved. It can take weeks to get it repaired. It's very odd for someone to turn down the extended warranties. Are you sure? Well, I have to inform you of all the potential risks of buying without the extended warranty.
I've replaced the case on my aging rev-a 400mhz (hacked to 500) tiBook
You 'new-skool' alBook (HATE that moniker, and the new PB case) don't know how good you got it
I keep 'wanting' to upgrade (as if I could afford it) to a new powerbook, but then I keep 'wanting' some x86-mfr to take the design bait and lure me back to cheap territory with even sexier case specs, too
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Mod parent up. He's definitely right that the parent should be modded up.
This is quite cool.. when I bought my clamshell iBook (used) years ago, it was very cheap because of a damaged DC-in power jack. The soldering had come loose on the inside, and you have to apply pressure to the plug to make it charge (I use rubber bands to charge it - very ghetto). Apple wanted hundreds of dollars to fix the jack, as the computer was out of warranty when I obtained it.
Rubber-banding it all this time, I'd been planning on a hack to solve the jack problem - but this site has complete instructions for replacing the DC-in jack, as well as where to buy a new jack! Perfect.
I'm surprised that Apple stuff are not bobby trapped to explode when an unauthorised person opens it.
:((
Serious!
Let's look at say, the iPod.
It is darned service unfriendly. No matter how good you are, you will leave a few little marks on that case when you open it.
Then when you finally open it, suppose say the iPod's hard drive died. Short of getting a special hard drive from Apple (the drives they use are actually from Toshiba, but normal OEM drives do not work), there is no way you can fix it.
Apple stuff are darned unfriendly man! The UI is all a guise for its underlying unfriendliness!!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I want my next iBook to be matte black, white is so unsuitable for a geek like me.
Use an ice cube tray (or two) for all of the screws, separating them by size, and draw detailed charts and notes as to where each one came from.
If you don't do this, you won't get it back together. Good luck!
Excellent, that should apply to all the parent posts too, since they're so childish...
Before buying from TiPaint, you might have a look at Google Groups. There have been a number of a complaints ranging from poor product to non-delivery.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I recently opened up my AlBook (15") to hopefully to upgrade from a combo drive to a super drive. Lemmie tell you - opening up this case is HARD! Undoing all of the right screws is nothing, but removing the top deck with those tabs - It's murder. I scratched the heck out of my computer and even when I took it to my Apple-Certified technicians (Yes, they claim there's a special tool for unclipping those little metal tabs.) they scratched the heck out of my computer and bent the bit of metal above the CD slot.
If anyone knows more details about a magic tool to help "pop the top" on an AlBook - Please, let the world know about it. Otherwise, I strongly recommend you get a thin plastic-coated pry bar for popping those tabs, and DON'T use a lot of force.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
That's a load of crap. Macs have standard parts just like any other PC. Everything is pretty much as upgradable as possible (except for iMacs and eMacs, which are somewhat limited, unless you're really dedicated). I've always mucked around inside my PowerMacs and PowerBooks, and purchased standard high-quality PC parts, and they've pretty much all been a joy to work inside of. The cases are thoughtfully laid out (since the days of the infamous Performa line), and upgrades of all kinds are about as easy as they can be. The drives are ATA, RAM is standard DDR, the cards are PCI or AGP, the CPU is on a ZIF socket in most cases (in the PowerMacs), power supply is standard, etc., etc. Apart from the initial building of the machine, Macs are ideal for tinkering, thanks to very good case design and layout.
Then there's the OS. Since it's POSIX-compliant (all except in name thanks to licensing issues), and all the config files are either text or XML, there's a whole world of tinkering to be done. This includes compiling your own nix software, building apps in XCode (free and included with all Macs), hacks aplenty, etc. This is in addition to all the main commercial titles available. It's really a tinkerer's nirvana; one where you aren't limited by anything, and yet can still forget all that and just be productive. It's amazing how liberating an experience it is to use hardware and software that were crafted with care and thoughtfulness. Macs are not about dumbing down, but about excellent design and efficiency, as well as quality. You can still muck around the internals to heart's content, but you'll find you're too busy getting stuff done, and playing in OS X. In short, it's the perfect system for geeks who don't feel they have to prove themselves with completely custom setups and a dremel tool.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
they 3ant you 7o Impaired its fucking confirmed:
how funny this came up, i run my blog on a powerbook and wanna hear about this cool new way to make traffic for your own blog checkout :: http://www.blogexplosion.com/index.php?ref=liskl
hope this helps someone triple or even raise there blog traffic by 600% like it did for me
--- Website: http://spinhex.sytes.net/
In the G3 Pismo guide, only one I checked, they tell you how to pull the heatsink OFF, make no mention of the quiet little popping noise you'll hear when you do (it's the double-sticky thermal transfer tape, a tiny little rectangle on top of the CPU that fails when the heatsink is moved even slightly).
And they say to replace the heatsink. just do the reverse.
Well, NO. Apple made it very easy to break the contact between CPU and heatsink, even accidentally, and once that's impaired overheating is going to become a problem.
Look for posts in MacFixit forums, about G3s, Powerlogix, heatsinks, thermal transfer -- best advice I've seen has been put together by a fellow named Bruce Miller.
What's LNO2? Liquid Nitrogen Dioxide? Surely you mean liquid nitrogen, or LN2!
-Rich
I like to keep my Powerbook silent and cool by placing it in a medium-sized ATX tower. Then I hook up the display to my CRT monitor which I place on my desk. Finally I attach an external mouse and keyboard and it's ready to roll!
my laptop came with a 3 year limited warrenty...
:)
the laptop cost $2k canadian.
i was a little worried about theft and if i dropped it since those weren't covered.
so i got third party insurance from an insurance company that covers EVERYTHING for about $100 one time payment. (lasts about 2 years)
much cheaper than most extended warranties
-judging another only defines yourself
I had to replace a dead optical drive in my G4 12". If I had only followed the recommendation to tape the screws to the boxes on the screw guide it would have gone a bit faster and I wouldn't have 3 screws left over :)
These fixit guides greatly simplified and illuminated the process.
Not that it is hard to generally take things apart and put them back together, but when you are trying to make a decision on wether to pry something up or not... it is nice to know someone has gone through the trouble of telling you how to do such things without breaking them.
Next up I replace the hard drive... which thankfully won't be as hard as the frelling optical drive.
-- oh.... so..... sleeeeeepy.
So, anyone find a faster (8x +), dual format (DVD +/-), and hopefully dual layer DVD burner that will fit in a PowerBook? I love my SuperDrive, but being able to only use DVD-Rs and only at 2x is kind of a drag when a full-size DVD burner that costs less than $100 can do +/- at 8x or higher.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
I checked, and the hard drive in my PowerBook 165c is a 3-1/2" SCSI drive.
So much for a hard drive upgrade. Good luck finding a SCSI laptop drive at any reasonable cost.
I guess my PowerBook will just remain as it is.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Do you normally take apart your laptop computer with your ass cheeks?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Wow, no kidding... That would have saved me some time... How fiendish of them to have hidden away those instructions in the user's manual, of all places.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Very good point. Parent should be modded up.
minor correction there... woops.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
It's not the fastest laptop on the planet, but a Combo (DVD/CD-RW) drive is about the only thing I miss on my circa. end-of-2001 iBook G3 600 MHz (I've upgraded it with additional RAM and an Airport card.
Does anyone know if there are other suppliers of Combo Drives for the G3 iBooks? Australian suppliers would be preferred, but not essential.
They're wrong about the one button mouse and they're wrong to stick with DVD-R's.
At a minimum, the drive should be DVD+-RW.
But I guess paying a premium from apple doesn't get you the latest tech.
Now I just have to wait until some apple fanboy tells me that just supporting DVD-R is less confusing for users. Idiots.
Screw guide, ha ha. Not like any Slashdotter would need it. :P
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
If nothing else turns up let me know and I'll go have a look in the boneyard, er, Powerbook Rest Home Closet Annex in the backyard shed. Any 1xx Powerbook except the PB150 has a 2-1/2" SCSI, they're interchangeable. Look around for an old one.
Or find a PB150 -- mine has a 2-GB drive in it, direct swap since the 150 used the now common IDE hard drive instead of a SCSI.
Check the drives database at www.xlr8yourmac.com -- search for anyone who's upgraded your model or related Macs and see what they had to do to make another model work. For a simple search enter only "OS X 10.4" -- that'll pick up a recent report on success with a Matshita/Panasonic combo model that works native, and newegg.com has it for under $80 right now.
My new 40 GB IBM/Hitachi 7200 RPM 2.5 inch hdd just came in this week. I'm upgrading my G3 iBook(http://john.brier.name/gallery/ibook) which had its 20 GB hdd die over summer. I opened up my iBook previously to try and fix it when the display started flickering and going off. Turns out the motherboard/logicboard and reed switch cable were bad. This problem occured about 1.5 yrs after I bought the computer. Apple wouldn't initially refund the price of the repair after I payed for it out of pocket when they first started the iBook iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program (http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/). After broadening the iBooks it covered twice I was finally covered for cost of repair. I got my check from Apple a while ago. $402.11. I'm not sure I'll ever buy another Apple computer after the way they treated me on the phones. I had a superviser tell me that they couldn't cover the repairs when it wasn't initially covered because "Power book logic boards fail regularly, but we can't reimburse the price of those repairs if they're out of warranty just because." or something to that effect. She insisted that my problem which matched the symptoms described exactly on the program web page were not related to the problematic iBooks that were covered under the plan.
terrible.
Anyway I'll be glad to have it working again.
Besides instructions on how to upgrade and repair Apple notebooks, at TuxMobil there are disassembly guides for laptops and notebooks, dissection pictures of PDAs and handhelds, take apart manuals for mobile (cell phones), as well as images from the inside of mobile media players. Guides on how to maintain other mobile electronic gadgets will follow.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 13 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
The biggest thing I think is missing is....
AIRPORT ANTENA UPGRADE!!!
The biggest issue I have with my "slow" 400 Mhz G4 TiBook, (Generation 1 celebrating it's 4 year birthday in January) is not the graphics or the CPU, it's the 802.11b range. With a high-gain antena upgrade to the base station, it is better, but how about some upgrade to the laptop antena too!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Different methods will work for different people - my prefered method when working on a new model would be:
1. Make sure you have plenty of clear flat space - preferably 3-4 times the footprint of the device your disassembling.
2. As you remove screws from the device place them relative to the component you are removing - so if I'm going to take the base off, I will put if above where I'm working with the screws around where I will be putting the base, with the top left screw next the top left corner, etc... This is far easier to show than it is to describe.
When you go to reassemble the device, you know which screws go with which part.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World