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It lives: The Mac Portable restoration is complete!
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2008-04-12 14:41:12
http://gallery.mac.com/fourseason7444/100016

After much procrastination, I finally got around to replacing all of the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard, and that seems to have solved all problems--crackling audio, sudden shutdowns, etc. Where possible, I replaced surface-mount types with same (and hopefully better quality). The surface-mount caps are the little silver aluminum cylinders, and most had leaked. Surface mount parts were actually pretty easy to replace, but it takes a steady hand. The conventional caps were difficult, and if I were to do another restoration, rather than unsolder the caps from the board, I'd try to snip off the old part, leaving a bit of the wire lead sticking up from the board, then solder the new part to the old leads. Much less chance of damaging plated-through holes and lifting foil traces if you do that.

Older restoration jobs include a rebuilt main battery and a 1.3 gigabyte 2.5" IDE hard drive, adapted to SCSI, fitted into a 2.5"->3.5" adapter bracket and connected via home-made 34-pin SCSI cable. The hard drive + IDE/SCSI bridge card was an Apple service part intended for owners of older Powerbooks in need of an out-of-production 2.5" SCSI hard drive, but it works just fine here too.

The restored system seems rock-solid! Cost of capacitors was about $10, because I got them all as surplus.
Posted by: funkytoad on 2008-04-12 15:07:08
Wow, congrats on getting that done! Looks like it was quite the project.
Posted by: Temetka on 2008-04-13 03:51:58
Nice work, how long is your battery life?
Posted by: 4seasonphoto on 2008-04-13 07:28:49
Thanks, folks. Battery life isn't so hot right now, because I rebuilt that battery what, 2 years ago? And they must have sold me old stock, because they never took a full charge even then. With a fresh set, I figure 5+ hours, easily.
Posted by: gobabushka on 2008-04-16 11:54:42
sweet dude!
Posted by: Patnukem on 2008-04-17 01:06:19
that is one neat looking computer!
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