While this isn't in our mission, I thought I'd mention our experience with this computer and our trials and tribulations (and our troubles with tribbles).
We use a 12" iBook G4 that I received as a graduation gift in 2004. It has served me reasonably well, and I've been fortunate enough to know other iBook users who are less thrifty than I. As all iBook users know, the power cable is ill-designed, and I've had to replace that a few times (4) they don't make them particularly replacement-friendly, so I've had to purchase all-new power sources each time, even though it's only been the part that plugs into the computer that bent. Once, I was able to solder the end and got another few months out of the cable, but other times I just invested in the $30 generic brand power cord. My only tip for preserving your power cord (aside from "don't trip over it") is to save that little plastic cover for the end of the cord and store your power cord always in that when not in use. It seems to do a minor job of correctly bending a slightly misshapen tip back to its original working condition.
But all of that is digression from the important story of today. A bit more digression before we continue. About 2 years ago, I dropped this computer. It ceased to function properly. About 6 months later, the delightful Janeth Jones, a fellow Stage Manager at YTN, bequeathed upon me her non-functioning 12" iBook G4. Since I am handyman extraordinaire, I found ifixit.com, and put my hard drive in Janeth's computer. Everything worked beautifully until about 6 months ago when the optical drive (known to laymen as the DVD drive) ceased to function and ate Amelie's Lady in the Water DVD. We just used ifixit.com again... but I realized before we finished that the cord which connects the optical drive to the logic board (motherboard for PC users) was loose. I pushed it back in, and it works like a charm. The moral of this story is, if something is broken, especially your optical drive, check to see if it's plugged in before you take your computer apart. If we had known which cable was which (the orange cable is the one to the optical drive, it turns out) before we began, we could have just removed the RAM shield and pushed it in and saved ourselves about an hour of work.
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1 comment:
This is really disheartening when something happens to your dear machine which is associated with some event.
I would like to go with you on the notion that if we can put sometime to troubleshoot the problem beforehand rather than opening the system apart is beneficial.
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