powerbook repair a qualified success
Last night, my laptop starting making its weird noises again. This morning, they had gone from “weird,” past “awful,” right to “unholy.” It was like there was a duck or bicycle horn inside my computer, making noise that I didn’t think a hard drive could make.
Tonight, after work, I opened up the machine and replaced the hard drive. I seemed like everything went well, but the screws in a PowerBook are not well differentiated. They come in three lengths (with two or three exceptions), in two head widths, and in one threading. This makes it hard to remember what screw belongs where. I reassembled the computer more than once and everything seemed fine, but it wouldn’t start.
I finally got everything started and booting to the “where’s my OS!?” screen. When I tried to boot from an OS X disc, though, I realized that the slot-loading DVD-ROM is not perfectly aligned with the slot in the case. I need to figure out how to adjust this, but I really, really hope it doesn’t involve much in the way of disassembly.
I installed the OS, but I’m not going to spend much time getting it set up, if I can help it. I’m waiting for the gold master of Tiger. I will be very pleased if it’s available on ADC soon, so I don’t need to wait for shipping copies.
At least it’s booting and not whining. I’m trying to determine whether I can go for a year (the remaining time in this machine’s planned lifetime) without an onboard optical drive.