Operation


Here's what I've been doing. My hard disk is failing and I've bought a replacement a few months back. I took it to the Apple store only to found out that they want to charge me between RM120 to RM200 for the operation. That is more than how much I paid for the Hitachi replacement disk. Why? They say that my Mac model is one of the hardest to disassemble. Oh, okay..

Nonetheless, I went curious.. How hard could it be? I googled and found several websites detailing the process step by step. After a few detailed look and read I kindof decided that it was easy enough and it doesn't look it was worth spending RM200 for so I called Hariri and after a few delays, we finally started to take the laptop apart..

It was scary.. There was a lot of screws, all shapes and sizes. We tried to remember which goes where as we slowly take off the PowerBook G4, layer by layer. It should be rather easy if not for my dented aluminium case, thanks to the several drops it suffered. It is true what they say: if Apple want to make it easy for you to change the hard disk, they'll make it super easy like the new MacBooks and the Mac Pro, but if they don't want you wandering inside of your machine, they'll surely make it a suffering. Mine is certified as non user serviceable. Oh well, I have no warranty to worry about.



So there it is, the guts of my devoted laptop. The top right yellow thing is the DVD drive, the cavity under it is for the battery. To the left of it is the place where the hard disk sits. Look closely and you'll see the deformed case of my laptop; this is the point of impact of the last drop. I've removed the hard disk it in this picture, exposing the logic board underneath. Above it is the neat looking heatsink which sits over the GPU and the G4 processor chip.

We then transplanted the new Hitachi and started to reassemble the PowerBook, at times arguing which screw when where. Remind me to label stuffs next time okay? After connecting all the necessary cables we turned on the Mac to see wether the new disk works or not since we cloned the old disk's content into this one to avoid all the hassles of reinstalling.


Oh jolly, it worked. Now I'll just put on the keyboard here.. tighten a few more screws there.. and voila!


I was crossing fingers along the way but it was a relief that the whole thing was a success. Phew..

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You’re currently reading “Operation,” an entry on pelangi hitam putih

Published:
Friday, June 13, 2008
by amerhadiazmi