I did a little research, and found out that the small plastic piece that didn’t get back into the laptop is a holder for the AirPort antenna if it is not connected to an AirPort card. Since I do have my AirPort card installed, and the antenna connected, the piece isn’t strictly necessary. But now that I know what it is, I may as well put it back in for completeness’ sake.

Here is the explanatory diagram:

Thanks to ***mgilliland|http://www.broadbandreports.com/profile/439458*** at ***Broadbandreports.com|http://www.broadbandreports.com/*** for finding this info, and also for originally recommending ***Pre-Owned Electronics|http://www.preowned.com/*** as the source for my replacement part!

Good news everyone! I received the replacement AC/Sound board from ***Pre-Owned Electronics|http://www.preowned.com/*** yesterday. Last night I installed it in the PowerBook and put everything back together. And guess what – it works! 🙂

However, I did have a small plastic piece left over when all was said and done. I have absolutely no idea where it goes, and I remember thinking that I couldn’t figure out what its purpose was when I had originally disassembled things. Anyway, it seems to be working fine without it… but just in case anyone can identify it, here it is, next to a US penny for size comparison:

It’s nice to be able to use the laptop plugged into an AC outlet again. And to be able to charge the batteries fully from inside the laptop – they never seemed to charge quite right when they were in the external charger.

The Pismo just passed its third birthday, so hopefully with this repair, it will prove useful for many more years. And now that I know how to take the computer apart and reassemble it, I’m confident that I can make any other necessary repairs in the future.

Some time in June 2003, the AC power connector in my PowerBook Pismo stopped working. Around that time, I decided not to repair the connector. Instead, I purchased an extra battery and an external charger, and put off the actual repair until ‘later’. Well, I’ve finally rounded up enough money to buy the part I need, and tonight I started the disassembly of the PowerBook. This is not for the faint of heart, and tearing down a laptop is much more difficult than tearing down your basic tower-style PC. The part I need to replace was located at the deepest regions of the machine, so I had to literally take everything else out to get at it. You can see photos of the process ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/pismo_teardown***.

The next step is to send my old part in to ***Pre-Owned Electronics|http://www.preowned.com/***. Once they receive it and verify that it’s repairable, they will send me out an already-repaired, refurbished, and tested part. Hopefully it should come in at around this time next week. Until then, we’ll be without the PowerBook. We’ll deal… we have two other computers. 🙂

I can’t believe I passed this day by without marking it, nor can I believe that it was Mom who reminded me of it… but I want to wish a Happy 20th Birthday to the Macintosh computer!

On January 24, 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer in an advertisement during the SuperBowl. You can see the original ad ***here|http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/*** if you didn’t catch it back then. Well, it’s more or less the original – you’ll notice the star of the commercial wearing a nifty piece of electronics that definitely did not exist back in 1984, though it may have been a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye.

In 1984, our family did not own a Macintosh, or any computer for that matter. I was just over five years old and hadn’t even started Kindergarten when the Mac was announced.

I don’t believe that I even used a Mac until perhaps 1988 or 1989. It may have been an ***SE|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/stats/mac_se.html*** or an ***SE/30|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/stats/mac_se30.html***.

Our family bought its first Mac, an ***LC|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_lc/stats/mac_lc.html***, in the summer of 1991, seven years after the first Mac was introduced, just before I started seventh grade.

Six years later, in 1997, my parents got me a ***SuperMac J700/180|http://www.everymac.com/systems/umax/j700/supermac_j700_180.html*** Mac clone, as a high school graduation gift. Though this wasn’t an Apple Macintosh per se, it was licensed by Apple to run the Mac OS…. for a very short time.

Four years later, in 2001, in my last semester at college, I bought a ***Apple PowerBook FW/400 (Pismo)|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/stats/powerbook_g3_400_fw.html***, just after Apple had introduced its brand new ***PowerBook G4|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g4/stats/powerbook_g4_400.html*** product line.

Two years later, in 2003, I purchased a used ***PowerMac G4 (AGP)|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_450.html*** to replace the aged and ailing J700 (which had actually been upgraded to a S900 with a G3 processor by that time).

I can’t remember the exact date, but somewhere along the way my parents replaced their aged Mac LC with one of the older iMac series… but that LC lasted QUITE a long time – it was their primary computer for around 10 years.

Through all the years, I’ve done my best to convince the people around me that purchasing a Macintosh computer is the best way to go. It is always a difficult task; most people are quite willing to go with a Windows-based computer, which is admittedly an inexpensive solution and may indeed be “good enough” for most people. But I firmly believe that like many excellent things, it is worth your time and effort to save the money needed to take that step up to a truly remarkable personal computer – something that is more than just “good enough.”

An operating system and computer hardware platform that work hand-in-hand – a winning combination. Here’s to you, Macintosh.

Something I’ve been trying to get into lately is RSS Aggregators. Many sites, such as this very blog, include a link to what’s called an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsfeed. This link, when used in an application that can read it, allows users to read updated content from news and blog-like sites without going through the trouble of opening their web browsers, navigating to the sites, and looking to see if there is anything new. Instead, the program runs constantly on your computer, checking the sites for you, and alerting you if and when there is any new content.

If you’re using ***MovableType|http://www.movabletype.org/*** as your blogging system, and you haven’t done much to change the template, then you probably already have an RSS feed set up! Just look for “syndicate this” somewhere on your page for the link.

This also works with some web-based forums, such as my personal favorite, ***Broadbandreports.com|http://www.broadbandreports.com/***. Each forum at BBR has its own RSS feed, which is updated whenever a new topic is posted.

At home, the program I’ve found for Mac OS X is called ***NetNewsWire Lite|http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/***. It displays an alert in its Dock icon when it finds updated news items. I can then open the application to quickly browse through the news, and if I see anything interesting, I can open it in Safari to read the full article.

At work, I’ve had a bit more difficulty finding a good program to run on my Windows XP machine. There are tons and tons of RSS Aggregators out there that work on Windows XP. Many of them are no longer actively maintained. I’ve tried ***FeedReader|http://www.feedreader.com/***, ***Syndirella|http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www.yole.ru/projects/syndirella/&e=42***, ***NewsDesk|http://www.wildgrape.net/***, and some others who I deleted so quickly after trying them that I’ve forgotten their names. What I’m looking for is an application that will go out every five minutes or so, check for news on the feeds I’ve selected, and then quietly display an alert in my System Tray that new items have been found. I would also like to be able to browse those news items simply by right-clicking in the system tray, rather than having to open the app to see what the news is.

So if anyone out there happens to be using Windows XP and has a good RSS Aggregator that does what I want… let me know? I want the aggregation aggravation to end!

One of the other nifty things you can do with the PhotoStitch software that came with the Powershot A70 is creating a QTVR movie. This basically puts all of the photos together in a form that you can pan and zoom with your mouse. If that doesn’t make sense, just click below to try it. You must have Apple’s QuickTime installed for this to work (chances are, you do).

***360 Degree Tour of the Wood Living Room|http://prwdot.org/mov/livingroomkitchen_qtvr.mov***

It’s not too big to download, so don’t worry if you’re on a modem connection.

Well, after crunching some numbers, and thinking about our overall financial priorities, I decided that buying a $600 camera was not the best decision at this time. Instead, I did some research on the digicams available for about half that price. What I found was the ***Canon Powershot A70|http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/a70-60/index.html***. Some of you reading this, particularly Mom and Dad, might recognize the model… yes, in fact, this is the same camera that my parents bought earlier this year as their first digital camera.

The A70 is a really great camera. It’s perfect for first-time users, like Mom and Dad. If left in its automatic mode, it takes great photos and is simple and easy to use. But if you switch to its manual mode, you can control aperture, shutter speed, focus, exposure, and more. There is a ‘Stitch Assist’ mode that makes it easy to create panoramic shots, such as ***this one|http://prwdot.org/img/livingroom_panoramic.jpg***. The image quality is great. The camera runs on four AA batteries, and can get over five hours of shooting time. It received the best rating, “Highly Recommended,” at ***Digital Photography Review|http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canona70/***.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll get a chance to really put it through its paces. Becky is back from her NEMA conference (yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!), so we may bundle up and go do something outside. You can be sure that you’ll see the photos here!

The Sawtooth is here!

It arrived today via UPS and I finally got to see it this evening when I got home from work. It’s a very nice machine. Tomorrow, another shipment is supposed to be arriving, which will contain some more RAM and a better video card for the machine. For now, though, the machine is set up and running Mac OS X 9.2.2. I’ll upgrade it to Mac OS X 10.2.8 some time within the next few days.

For those interested, you can check out some ***pictures|http://gallery.prwdot.org/sawtooth_arrival*** pictures of the unpacking, setting up, and booting up of the new machine.

The official time of first boot-up was 6:15 p.m., September 24, 2003.

Hooray!

Well, new to us, that is. 🙂

Today I purchased a ***PowerMac Sawtooth G4/450|http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_450.html***. This is essentially to replace our SuperMac S900 FrankenMac, which died recently. I bought it from a used Mac dealer, ***Mac Of All Trades|http://www.macofalltrades.com/*** for $499 + shipping and handling. It’s a great deal on a great machine. It has a 450 MHz G4 processor, 256 megs of ram, a 10 GB hard drive, ATI Rage 128 Pro video, Zip drive, DVD-ROM, mouse and keyboard.

Now, the Sawtooth is not the latest machine, and certainly doesn’t compete with the new ***PowerMac G5|http://www.apple.com/powermac/***. In fact, it’s almost three years old. But it is a very capable and expandable machine, and for our budget right now, the price was right. It can be expanded to 2 GB of RAM, up to a Dual 1.4 GHz G4 processor, and can use AGP video cards. All in all, it leaves plenty of room to grow if necessary. I will definitely be upgrading the RAM and Video card without delay. I already have an 80 GB hard drive which can go into the machine, and our Firewire CD-RW can easily hook up to it.

The system will run Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) like a champ, and from what I’ve heard, should have no trouble running the upcoming Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).

It’s supposed to ship out by tomorrow, and should arrive some time next week.

Hooray!

Need a PDA? I’m selling my old ***Visor Deluxe|http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=38331&item=3047345208*** on eBay.

The bundle comes with the Visor Deluxe, a Stowaway folding keyboard (full-size keys, but folds up to just about the size of the Visor), docking cradle and portable docking cable, carrying case, and one-touch backup module.

It’s a great deal if you are looking to get started with a PDA, and the extras are very nice. And the proceeds will go to a good cause. 🙂