Rebirthing a Pismo
I’ve just successfully performed a brain transplant on my five-year old Pismo PowerBook - moving it’s hard-drive and a few other bits into the chassis that previously housed one gone to meet it’s Philippino maker.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve keep my eyes open and carefully collected a stack of PIsmo parts and two mordant chassis. So, when the screen on my beloved old work-horse could no longer sustain an erection I was somewhat prepared pull these parts together and create my very own Macinstein. Handicap - I didn’t use any manuals!. I’ve been inside of enough iMacs and Pismos over the years to be sorta familiar with what goes where, and while I’d never done a complete part-swap on this level most Apple’s are self-instructive - is you just look you can see how things work. At least these old ones were like that.
You should have seen my bench - parts were strewn from one end to the other. Little “x” marks and discrete piles separated the trash from the treasures as I carefully laid the parts out in anatomical order. Keeping track of everything required a suprising amount of discipline, or at least compulsive attention. Thank you again for your assistance Mr. Ritalin.
Rule #1, never put in the last screw without testing. My first attempt resulted in complete and utter silence on boot and the beginnings of a dangerous frustration. I swapped more parts but after a few hours unplugged everything and went to sleep on it, waking at 5am the next day determined to either get the damn thing working or turn the entire project into jewelry and wall sculpture.
The gods of old Macs smiled though, and after a few chasing a few screws across the room and digging the crud out of a few parts, I now have a 5+ year old mac with two batteries, a great screen and almost all of its pieces happily running OS X 10.4.9. And I never once had to resort to Super Glue or “make a part work.” The old antique may yet have more life in it. Try THAT with a 5-year old PC laptop!
What’s sad though is that the days of a geek user swapping out parts to keep a favorite laptop on the road are coming to an end. No one in their right mind would ever think of cracking a MacBook just for fun. Like shade-tree mechanics, kitchen-table hardware hackers are an endangered species because it’s just to damn hard to break the new devices down and get them back together without a NASA facility and support staff. The only special tool I needed was a teentsy Torx screwdriver - which was easily found online, and more patience than I usually exhibit.
So here’s to Apple’s great design and the deviant Celtic determination to keep a good tool on your belt for no other reason than because you can.