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I took apart my PowerBook G4 12 inch to tighten up all the loose screws, and figured while I was in there, I'd "colorize" the Apple logo.
It didn't photograph very well, but looks great in person.
Location: Times Square, New York, USA
Yashica T4
Carl Zeiss Tassar T* 35mm f3.5
Konica Color Super XG 100
a wide shot of my office it looks cozier in the evening times when its dark and all warm looking. I stitched this photo together in photoshop by hand... i find you can get a cleaner stitch than using those automated programs...
The complete digital package circa 1995/96. The computer is my venerable Apple Powerbook 1400c/166 with OS 7.6.1. The camera, an original Apple Quicktake 150, 640x480, 16 image fixed RAM card, 9 pin serial connection. Works like it did when it all first came out of the box!
The three laptops which live in the house. Left to right: other half's HP laptop, my PowerBook, my Toshiba laptop. The Toshiba laptop still works, but only gets started up every 3-6 months to see if it's still living.
The PowerBook, for being a 2002-ish machine, is still one hell of a sexy looking notebook.
No Photoshop used. The trick to making this is that my sleeve is not on screen while my hand is.
This photo also won iLounge's Black & White photo contest and I won a iPod nano! Winners were announced in the Holiday Buyers' Guide, which can be downloaded here.
Original photo : theducks.org/gallery/banff/IMG_1241_01?full=1
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It has been mentioned that I was a little skimpy on details.. here's a comment I posted on TUAW:
Sorry for being skimpy on details :)
Here's a couple of construction tips and thoughts, both from previous work and what this one has shown me:
- Cutting long straight edges with a Dremel-type tool is a pain in the neck. Try to find an appropriate table saw (think low-ish speed, fine teeth). That being said, this was all done with a Dremel-type tool, but it meant I had to spend a lot more time on finishing the edges than I would have liked.
- Your laptop was originally made in south east asia/somewhere other than america. This means all the threads in components like the hard drive are metric. Get a big-box-o-metric nuts and bolts to mount things. Try to find countersink heads, as they'll look nicer, but failing that, the normal pan-heads are ok too.
- Drilling holes larger than about M3 will tear through plastics unpleasantly if the drill bits are too sharp. I solved both this problem, and the one of our pavers not having any holes in them simultaneously. Alternatively, find drill bits made for plastic
- Conical grinding attachments for your dremel-type tool are the easiest way to make countersinks for screws.
- Keep a spare piece of plastic around to test drill bits, grinding bits and technique, before cutting into the pieces you want to use
- Drill all holes before removing plastic/paper covering of plastic panels
- If you find a hole is slightly off, don't bother trying to re-drill, just use a small grinding attachment to extend it in the appropriate direction. The screw head will usually cover it up.
- Plastic garden tubing makes good standoffs. Threaded onto screws between the back panel and components, it stops the circuit boards and components from sagging, not being at the right level or scratching the plastic.
- It's hard to keep the smaller screws and plastic standoffs in the right place to mount the hard drive. A tiny bit of model making plastic cement is handy for this. It won't outgas and fog the plastic like super glue (cyanoacrylate), and it will break free once it's in position
- Wire up your new power plug with the INSIDE conductor live, not the outside one :)
- Soldering new wires to old wave-solder connected points (such as the existing power plug and sleep reed switch) is helped by adding more solder to the existing connection, tinning your wire well, and having a good eye for when the solder has reflowed.
- If your laptop was made after about 2001, it will likely be RoHS soldered, meaning you shouldn't use lead based solder to connect to existing solder points. Try to find lead free solder, to match types. It will be much easier to work with
- 3PDT (3 pole, double throw) switches aren't wired up like you expect. Check the datasheet BEFORE you solder it in place.
- To construct the LCD assembly, drill holes in the area to be obscured by the LCD panel and thread cables through there.
- To join the two panels together.. drill matching holes in each corner, thread a long bolt through them, tighten one nut up to the other side of the plastic to the head of the bolt, and leave one near the far end of the bolt. Place the bolts through the holes in the other piece of plastic, then put a third nut on each one on the other side to the one left at the end. Adjust and tighten as appropriate.
Tada, done :)
As usual, I was behind the wheel of my PowerBook shortly after waking. And as usual for the past couple of days, the "R" key simply wasn't pulling with the team.
I got out my little drawer of dental tools, chose an implement designed in 1968 specifically for the extraction of PowerBook keycaps, popped the "R"...
And...
Er...
It looked pretty freaking gross under there.
I popped some adjacent keys just to see how far the mess went. And before I knew it, I'd performed a complete QWERTY resection.
Friends, it looked like a crime scene. Bad actors and actresses armed with green lasers soon set up shop and shot a few stilted scenes from an upcoming episode of CSI. The keybed was full of forensic evidence: arm hairs, eyebrow hairs, beard clippings, sideburn hairs...suffice to say that the whole menagerie from the neck up and the elbows down was duly represented. I even found a lonnnnnng hair from my head, which by some ungodly process had insinuated itself inside and wrapped around several keys, like a tapeworm or something,
I was also reminded of all of the meals and snacks I've eaten in front of this keyboard, and the fact that Lilith 7 is nearly three years old.
"Aha," I thought. "Perhaps this is why I've been having regular keyboard problems for the past few months."
Yes, I took a picture of the complete horror show. I have seen it on my screen at full resolution. After some thought and consultation with an interdenominal panel of area clergymen, I've concluded that the most ethical choice is to not post it.
But here's the "After" picture. I popped the keycaps, I used dental tools and tweezers to remove all the visible hairs and crumbs and cruft, then I swabbed the decks with Q-Tips and a magical cleaning solution that cuts through the grime and gunk and yet is perfectly safe for use on electronics. I can't divulge the secret recipe, but if you have lots of hydrogen and oxygen around the house, you're well on your way.
Then I used the middle tool to carefully pop each of those white scissor-hinges. And one by one, I'd scrape, tease, tweeze, and swab underneath.
I was at this for hours. Ultimately, I extracted enough material to make either a large cat toy or a small cat.
After putting everything back together again, the keyboard sure felt better but the "R" was still a little weird and the "I" -- which gave me plenty of guff last month -- had joined it on the Being A Great Big Jerk And Not Helping Andy Even A Little Tiny Bit list.
Damn, damn, damn. Maybe there's something underneath the keybed layer. Maybe it's just a nipple problem. About a half-dozen of them were loose and they're damned-near impossible to reinstall properly.
Lilith 7 is indeed nearing its retirement age -- the DVD burner gave up the ghost last year and after Microsoft Office is released as a universal binary, PowerPC Macs will find it harder and harder to keep up -- but I'm hoping to keep it on the payroll until the next Macworld Expo.
But it's not easy to keep Lilith going. The Powerbook is a terrific design; it's just that it was never designed for easy repairs. Even just replacing the hard drive was a freaking nightmare. Swapping out the keyboard looks to be damned-near impossible. Even if I can find someone More Clever Than I to do it for me, $300 or so for the new part plus reasonable labor is probably way too much to spend on an employee who (very rightly) spends most of its time telling fellow staffmembers about the cabin cruiser it's going to buy and how it's going to spend its first four months away from the day-to-day grind.
Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy...
Another size comparison. I thought the MacBook Pro would feel a lot bigger and bulkier, but actually doesn't seem that much more to shlep around. Apple Design huzzah! If this had been another manufacturer, it would have been 3 times bulkier.
This is a PowerBook G4 15'' I got off ebay about three weeks ago. I only paid £25 for it and have spent the past couple of weeks fitting a new case and display.
The only things I could keep stock were the keyboard trackpad, logic board and the optical drive, everything else has been replaced with parts of much better condition.
My aging PowerBook. It's battery doesn't hold the juice long after feeding, so my bedtime reading is shortlived. I hope to replace him with something new, shiny and touchy feely from Apple soon.
My business partner Erika bought me a new Apple PowerBook when my iBook died in early April of 2004.
Some fun with photoshop. I got my inspiration from www.flickr.com/photos/nopipno/29402406/in/set-507364/
Can you see my big mistake? / ?Ves el error grande?
Lovingly attached by Firewire, ready to transfer my life from old to new.
The Powerbook is going to my mum, so I'm going to be briefly without laptop.
Tried a little trick with my Powerbook, setting the desktop as a picture of the background. I like the geometry in this one. Took about five minutes.
A new skin for my PowerBook, courtesy of Margi Levin, whose own iBook skin I've coveted for a while now. Thanks, Margi!
My G4 powerbook, autographed by Steve Wozniak shortly after his keynote at the 2600 HOPE conference in NYC. Summer, 2004.
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I read about this on the web - rotate a document 90 degrees, blow it up to full screen, then read as you would with a book. It is surprisingly effective.
For the latest Macintosh support visit Mac Users Guide's Help Desk. www.macusersguide.com/help-desk/. PowerBook 2400c (codenames: "Comet" or "Nautilus") was on of Apple Computer’s subnotebooks within the PowerBook line. Manufactured by IBM and introduced in May 1997 it replaced the PowerBook Duo 2300c. The PowerBook 2400c had an over-clocked PowerPC 603e processor at 180 Mhz. Missing from this model was a internal floppy drive that could be purchased separately; sound familiar - MacBook Air. Ports include: ADB, combined serial printer/modem port, HD-20 floppy port, HD-30 SCSI port, and VGA video out.
This appears to be an early PowerBook 140 or 170 prototype.
- The plastic is smooth and black unlike the textured, grey production version.
- The keyboard and trackball are white, unlike the final version.
- It's missing the Apple logo on the outside of the case and in the lower left hand corner by the screen.
- It's missing the model information, normally on the lower left of the screen.
PowerBook G4 15"
1.25 GHz PPC G4 CPU
1.25 GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
Airport Extreme, Bluetooth
Backlit Keyboard, etc...
At the time of its release, the PowerBook 3400c was the fastest portable computer in the world. My PowerBook 3400c is running Mac OS 8.6.
This appears to be an early PowerBook 140 or 170 prototype.
- The plastic is smooth and black unlike the textured, grey production version.
- The keyboard and trackball are white, unlike the final version.
- It's missing the Apple logo on the outside of the case and in the lower left hand corner by the screen.
- It's missing the model information, normally on the lower left of the screen.