Glutton for Punishment

In a few weeks' time, this is what I expect my iBook to look like. I am going to tempt fate, and resurrect a (currently) dead machine.

But why do such a thing? Working iBook laptops are available at resellers, eBay, and other bargain sites relatively cheap. Well, yes, and no.

Bottom-of-the-barrel Snow iBooks that were released in 2001 are still going for ~$500 CDN on eBay. This, I find absurd, as brand new iBooks can be purchased for $1299 -- and those machines are far more powerful than the 500 MHz machines that were produced some four years ago.

Not only that, but a 500 MHz iBook cannot do what I need it to do. In addition, if I purchased one, I would have to rip it apart to upgrade the RAM and the hard drive.

It is simply more economical for me to buy the necessary parts, and repair my machine.

When I first purchased my iBook, it already had been upgraded. The RAM had been upgraded to 576 Megabytes, and the 10-gigabyte hard drive replaced with a 60-gigabyte. I also installed an 802-11b wireless Airport card, which allowed me to surf the web anywhere in my home.

After spilling a drink on the machine, and dropping the iBook with the lid open, it is completely dysfunctional. The display bezel no longer sits squarely on its hinges, and for a while, the computer stopped booting. Without being able to see a thing onscreen, I couldn't even run any diagnostics on the machine to repair any software issues.

Launching the iBook in Target Disk mode, and connecting it to my G5 via a firewire cable allowed me to repair the hard drive, and at least it boots now. But still no video, and the only way I can fix that (to my knowledge), is to replace the logic board and display.

So in a fit of eBay rage, I hastily purchased replacement parts -- a new display housing, and a new logic board. I will be replacing the logic board with an 800 MHz model, which also includes an ATI Rage video card with 32 megabytes of video RAM soldered onto the board.

Once assembled, I will have a much more powerful machine than what I had prior to the mishap -- one that will allow me to do videoconferencing, as well as audio recording.

Perhaps I should dub my new computer "FrankenBook". I will provide an update once my hopes (or fears) are realized.