Computer Shanigans.
When Jon was in Mexico his iBook took a rather large dive into the realm of non-function, we speculated it was a dead harddrive. Well, we finally took the plunge into fixing it, shockingly enough. Monday afternoon I went to pick him up, once back here I ordered the drive for him overnight (he paid me, so don’t be thinking I bought it for him, lol). Tuesday morning I randomly awoke, realized it was kind of late, and then I ran to the door, still in my sleeping clothes — aka just, uhm, underwear. Much to my surprise and horror the guy delivering the drive was there at the door. Keep in mind that I didn’t hear anything… not a truck, knock on the door, or otherwise the doorbell. Granted, I may have heard something, which woke me originally, but I doubt it. Anyway, I think that guy was a little surprised too, lol.
After milling around and doing various other things, including a trip to get the micro-sized tools required, we began the “procedure” that evening. We printed two huge guides, put down a towel, and some looped packing tape to hold the screws. Getting the plastic cover off wasn’t terribly difficult, though some of the corners were rather tight. Thankfully we didn’t break, destructively bend, or severely scratch the cover. There’s this little nub of sorts that helps to hold the cover on in the battery compartment, that alone proved to be perhaps the most difficult aspect, lol. Six screws went onto the tape during that little bit of the process.
We had different strips of tape for screws of different sections, but the problem came in when we realized afterward that some of the screws were just slightly different sizes, almost impossible to notice until it was too late and they were mixed together. Another annoyance, if you will, was that there are layers upon layers of metal, plastic, and such to remove, each layer has its own set of screws, so it was quite easy to put screws into the wrong layer. We, more appropriately me, snapped the magnesium strip around the battery compartment, whooops, but we taped it back together and all seemed well.
The new drive fit perfectly, and apart from the screws in the wrong layers problem along with the problem of not knowing which screws went where, oops, we were able to get it back together. We did have two screws left over though, lol, who knows where they were supposed to go, but considering it was only two of perhaps fifty of them, I guess it’s not so bad afterall. The drive was surely a problem, because it rattled when shaken, a surefire sign of a broken arm… we just didn’t know if it was thee problem. Jon said that he was going to give it to Eddi to destroy, because apparently Jon took out all of his computer frustration on him while in Mexico, heh.
The anticipation of turning the iBook on was very similar to when I built my very first computer, I wasn’t sure then if it would work, explode, or what. :) Sure enough though the iBook booted up, it was confused and flashed the question mark just like it had been doing. I had just then discovered that I no longer had the Panther discs… shit. All I could find were the Jag discs from when I was beta testing for Apple (i.e. they were beta build discs) and my originals that came with the iBook, an ancient 10.1.0 build. Using the ancient discs we were able to finally figure out how to get the new drive formatted and OS X was soon being installed.
It’s so funny how we both had taken the features and stability of the newer versions for granted. OS X circa two plus years ago was pretty awful when it really boils down to it. There were several problems with software though, most of the newer stuff requires newer versions of the OS, thus they weren’t exactly working as they should. Oh well, a few more days and we’ll be able to get that fixed.
We did need to take off the keyboard, airport card, and ram shield though, when we discovered that the trackpad wasn’t working properly. We’d plugged it in backwards, which somehow still allowed it to work, but the cursor would freeze up on a regular basis.
Amazingly enough we were able to accomplish something that is generally regarded as impossible, lol. It surely was a “never again” sort of procedure though, it took forever, was very painstaking, annoying, and, well… exhausting. Hehe, well, he did buy me lunch, and thanked me profusely, so I can’t really complain; it was truly a worthwhile experience, none the less neither of us wishes to ever repeat it. :)