Bagel Belly Blog

Deconstructing my Mac

The combo drive finally showed up this morning, so I just spent a nerve-wracking two hours dismantling my powerbook and installing it. 26 screws, three connectors, some stress-relieving bubblewrap bursting, and three bits of sticky tape later, it's up and running again with a functional combo drive.

I followed the excellent 15" powerbook fixit guide which talked me through every step, including which screws to remove and what order to tackle things in. I certainly wouldn't have managed it without those instructions - the powerbook is like some devious chinese puzzle. I've opened my fair share of computer hardware, both desktops and laptops. Like any geek, I've run computers without their cases, ripped out and replaced PSUs, done RAM upgrades, put in new gfx cards, network cards, CPUs - the lot. But taking apart a powerbook ... a thing of beauty and craftsmanship, the most expensive computer I've ever owned ... well, that took every bit of courage I could muster.

I'd taken the door over the memory slot off before, so I was used to the tiny tiny screws that Apple use to hold this thing together. What was slightly disconcerting was the amount of force needed to undo some of the screws. They all use loctite-like stuff to keep the screws from shaking loose, but they're also done up exceedingly tightly. And many of them look slightly wonky in their sockets, before I'd touched them. Another hiccup is that the torx screwdriver that was recommended with the combo drive was the wrong one - I was sent a T8, but on my laptop, the screws were a T7. Thankfully I happened to have one lying around. A magnetised screwdriver was also indispensable for catching the screws as soon as they were free.
Opening the machine was actually a fairly smooth operation, and there was only one point that I got truly stuck and couldn't figure out how to proceed: unlatching the lid at the front. The instructions talk about a silver metal latch, but I couldn't figure out where it was or how it worked. In the end the lid just popped off - but I'm unsure whether this was right or not. There's now a slight gap above the combo drive where the case doesn't seem to sit quite right. When I'm feeling braver, I might undo it all and try to fit the case more securely. I'll probably wait until I've tracked down a larger hard drive, first.
Looking inside the guts of the machine is quite fascinating. The first thing that struck me was how well the space was utilised (well, duh!), but immediately after I noticed that a huge chunk of the left-hand side was used up by the PCMCIA slot. Given I haven't used the slot and probably never will, it makes me think Apple could do us all a favour and release a powerbook without this slot. I'm not sure what they'd put there in place of it ... hot-swappable hard drive? More memory? Or maybe just shrink the laptop a little...
Here's the next surprise: the size of the connectors in this thing. I know that hard drive ribbon connectors have been shrinking, but wow! ... the size of the combo drive's connector is insane! Take a look at these three pictures:

Ridiculously small!
Anyway, I got the machine in pieces and got the old drive out. The old drive was a Matsushita CW-8122-C, and the new one is a CW-8123-B ... so I assume there's some sort of incremental improvement in there. It's certainly not noise - it sounds just as noisy as the old one did when it was working. The instructions stopped short of mentioning that you need to remove the mounting kit from the old drive and screw it to the new drive - though I guess this is pretty obvious once you reach this point.
A bonus of taking the laptop apart was that I got to find out what goes on underneath the trackpad - something I've always been curious about. Sadly, finding out what goes on amounts to seeing a PCB bolted to the underside of the lid. But hey, better than nothing! Apple also has a serious orange sticky tape fetish. I assume this is some magic anti-static tape rather than the everyday clear tape the rest of us use. There's certainly a fair amount in the guts of the machine, holding wires in place, covering sharp edges, etc.
Putting the powerbook together was much easier, and I've never been more relieved to see the Apple logo in the middle of the screen. I chucked a CD in, it mounted, ejected, all is well. I haven't yet tried booting from the OS X DVD. The whole operation took me about an hour and a half. It might have been quicker, but I took time to make notes, take photos, and generally be incredibly cautious.
How does this compare to an Apple repair? Well, it cost me about £129 for the drive, screwdriver, and USPS postage. Add to that £20.93 of VAT, and £13.50 random parcelfarce surcharge for "clearance fee", for a total of £163.43. Last year when I shopped around, I was quoted £280 for a replacement drive. Apple quoted two weeks for replacing the drive under warranty.
I'd definitely recommend this as a solution to Apple's stupid warranty turnaround times. for me at least, £164 is a small price to pay for a two hour operation rather than a two week operation.