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A project log for Raspberry Pi Powerbook

Replacing the guts of a broken Powerbook with everyone's favorite SBC

dan-jilekDan Jilek 06/18/2020 at 20:130 Comments

My Powerbook arrived in the mail. This thing is in tough shape. Disintegrating is an apt term. Both the top and bottom halves of the case are splitting open and there's something wrong with the hinges. But for $20, I think it'll do.

I don't have a power supply for this thing, but I highly doubt it would turn on if I did. The nickel metal hydride battery pack looks like It's been leaking into the case for a decade.

That piece of the pack isn't supposed to come off like that. No matter. There's enough left to close up the case once the pack is pulled out and disposed of. Now let's see what's up with those hinges.

It appears someone tried to open (or maybe close) the Powerbook after a long period of disuse. The hinges are completely seized, so the top case just cracked apart under the strain. This will take some reconstruction. Fortunately, the computer was well packaged, and all the random pieces of the case were included with it. I now have a specimen jar with various chunks to piece back in. I'm going to need a good glue, but for now, we move on.

The computer comes apart fairly easily with a size 9 torx driver (1995 wasn't getting too fancy with the fasteners). I think almost every plastic retainer broke when the case separated, but given its age, I'm hardly surprised. The top half of the computer is in relatively good condition, save for the broken areas where it was attached to the hinges. The Powerbook 190 shipped with a 9.5 inch greyscale, passive matrix LCD. This one appears to still be serviceable, but won't quite meet my needs. I'll put it aside for later.

The bottom half of the computer is a little rougher. The battery pack leaked all over the interior, corroding things as it went. I had considered trying to interface with the original touchpad, but after removing the palm rest, that's not looking good.

Pulling out the battery pack shows the extent of the leak underneath, and the corrosion on the mainboard where the contacts are still sort of attached.

Removing the rest of the framing and what passes for a heat sink on a 68k processor reveals the mainboard in all its mid-90s glory.

One of the PCMCIA slots still had a US Robotics 28.8 modem in it. Bonus? From the corrosion on the bottom of the board, I don't know that this machine could have run again, at least not without some serious TLC. There are much better examples of this computer available anyways, so I don't feel bad about gutting it. The mainboard can become a framed art piece for my office, next to the grid of floppy disks.

That's probably good for now. Once the board and the support structure are pulled I'm going to be spending some quality time with vinegar and baking soda (not at the same time).

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