What should I do with screwed up clamshell iBook?

[mengfei]

I had ordered a used iBook Clamshell 366mhz off eBay, as I liked the aesthetics of the design.

However, after getting it, I was plagued by a myriad of issues.

First it was a dead battery.

Then the USB port broke off.

Now the new battery refuses to charge.

I also replaced the CD-ROM drive it had with a PC laptop's dvd drive, as the original cd-rom wouldn't read any CD-Rs.

Now that I can't get it to charge, nor do I have USB, this thing is just continuing to piss me off.

I thought maybe instead I'd mod it into something else, because it's not quite portable anymore.

Any ideas?

[vb_master]

Digital picture frame.

[sgtpepper]

Trade you for a dead iBook G3!

[Triton]

what did you pay for it and what would you want to sell it for? lol, i too like the clamhell ibooks, what color is it? and how dead of a ibook g3? lol

[sgtpepper]

what did you pay for it and what would you want to sell it for? lol, i too like the clamhell ibooks, what color is it? and how dead of a ibook g3? lol

It's pretty dead... seems to be a logicboard-related video problem. The only way I've seen to fix it yourself is to use a heatgun to "carefully" (If that's possible ) melt the graphics chip back into place. Apparently over periods of 4-6 years, the graphics chips in older G3 iBooks actually came loose from their solder joints! So as I said before, pretty much dead as can be!

[Triton]

i have a heatgun. hmmmm.....

[SavageLych]

Well solder melts at like 400 degrees F, so, a heat gun might work if you use it along with a infared thermometer to make sure it dosn't get to hot.... anyhting is worth a try at that point...

[mengfei]

Well, looks like I spoke too soon.

I've managed to get the iBook running pretty good! I'm happy with how it's going.

However, seeing how some of you were interested in buying... and I was also interested in getting an old Pentium II laptop and putting linux on it... I just might do that.

So here's the condition of the iBook.

So far, still no USB connection, but there is FireWire.

I replaced the stock CD-ROM drive with a Toshiba DVD-ROM drive. At first I just taped on the original iBook bezel to the the drive after removing the toshiba bezel, but I didn't like how I could only eject through the OS, so I put the Toshiba one back on, after hacking off bits of it to make it fit. For those of you interested in purchasing, if you'd like the original bezel included, I can throw that in.

Cosmetically, the iBook is in good shape.

I took out the modem, so that I could fit in a Lucent Orinoco wireless PCMCIA card instead of the ridiculously expensive Airport classic card. The Orinoco card still shows up as an Airport card because it uses the same chipset. It's been working perfectly so far.

So therefore... the port that used to have the dial up modem's jack is empty now.

There is still a LAN port.

I have Mac OS X 10.4 running on this 366 Mhz iBook with 320mb of RAM pretty smoothly.

Now here's the thing I was struggling with before... that I think I've fixed now.

I had bought a brand new battery for it, and then the AC adapter went dead, so after TWO replacements (cheated by an eBay seller, grrr!!), I finally have a working AC adapter, but somehow, I think due to the faulty AC adapter sold to me by the eBay seller, the new battery went wonky.

For example, it'll charge for a few percentage, and then stop.

I've found a way around this by, every time it stops, taking out the battery and putting it back in, then it resumes charging.

This seems to reset something in the battery to allow it to continue charging.

I'm hoping that once I charge it to 100%, this fixes the problem. Even if not, it wouldn't hurt me too much to buy a new battery, as they go for about $30 on eBay.

Now, for those of you interested in buying, I spent over $300 on this damn iBook, to this point, where it's finally working satisfactorily. I'm willing to part with it for about $300-320, and also willing to negotiate.

I'm not entirely inclined to sell it as of now, especially now that I finally have it working after all this time, but, as I said before, my recent infatuation with Linux is making me seriously consider selling it to get another laptop.

Also, for those that aren't interested in buying at all, do any of you know exactly what is causing the battery to charge like that?

Thanks
Mengfei

[mengfei]

Oh, and this iBook G3 is an Indigo Firewire model.

[Sparkfist]

Now the new battery refuses to charge.

Yeah I've had that problem on my HP, your charging circuit in the laptop is likely either not working or flat out broken. And with how old that thing is if it can't charge batteries the only thing you can do is leave it on A/C power to run.

I thought maybe instead I'd mod it into something else, because it's not quite portable anymore.

Any ideas?

You can make it into a simple desktop, go for it. If it still have a display working or at least can output to a VGA display, still has ethernet and can still read CD-Roms still can be of use then.

[mengfei]

Well... it does charge now... and runs off the battery, but thanks for the tip!

[paul4990]

put linux on your ibook

[paul4990]

and just solder the usb back in place

[mengfei]

I have considered soldering the USB back, but I don't have a soldering iron, nor the skills.

However, I'm working on obtaining such needed materials/knowledge.

[Droke]

Soldering is pretty easy, you just have to get an iron to learn

(Corse, as with most other things, use logic. It will save you a lot of $$$ and headaches.)