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.