How we love enterprising geeks. "This machine isn't dead," they say, "it's prepped for re-purposing!"Thus was Jonas' thought process (maybe not verbatim) when he came across this 500mhz G3 ibook with a busted display. Other than the screen, the computer functioned perfectly, making it a good server candidate.
He removed the display, optical drive and battery. Next he whittled the case down to the bare minimum that would contain the remaining parts. Finally, he went to a used book store and found a hardcover book that was slightly larger than the resized laptop and cut out all of the pages.
He then used some plastic and velcro to secure the 'book in the book, put it on the shelf and the iBooklet server was born. He claims that there have been no heat issues. Still, I wouldn't go to sleep with that thing running.
[Via Make]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-05-2007 @ 7:46PM
Sam said...
That guy make some serius cool stuff
I also love his post on getting ready for OSX Leopard
http://www.c-h-a-o-s.com/2007/05/17/c-h-a-o-scom_chaos_leopard-ready-hdd/
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7-05-2007 @ 8:39PM
djscott said...
Nicely done. I like the way he used a real book. I had similar G3 re-purposing thoughts when I created the iNoteBook a few years ago: http://www.applefritter.com/node/1597
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7-05-2007 @ 10:39PM
derek said...
"came across this 500mhz G3 ibook with a busted display"
with a BROKEN display.
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7-06-2007 @ 1:32AM
Greg G said...
I can't believe he's not having any heat issues. I don't think you could do this with today's notebooks.
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7-06-2007 @ 2:29AM
Steven Luscher said...
That's funny; I've been doing the same sort of thing with my iBook 500MHz G3 whose display circuitry went on the fritz. I sold the LCD, removed the lid, and what I call "The Headless iBook" now lives in my bookshelf, acting as an iTunes server, a print server, a Boinc client, and more.
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7-07-2007 @ 2:53PM
JeffDM said...
derek; It looks like "busted" is used legitimately, at least according to the OED.
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7-08-2007 @ 3:07PM
One Jesus, two Jesii? said...
A 500 MHz iBook G3 runs surprisingly cool. Once, as I opened the lid after a few hours of sleep in a temperated (~22°C) room, the internal thermometer reported a motherboard temperature of only 6°C!
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