Its great that you young whippersnappers are all enjoying these old Powerbook 500's like we ancient ones did back in the day! I also appreciate the Star Trek II trailer playing on there! Thats just awesome. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to watch Star Trek II now!

Sidenote about the 500 series; You can swap a 540 monochrome screen with the 540c's color screen without changing anything in the logic board. the logic boards are identical, and it detects which screen is attached. I did this swap years ago on one of my 5x0's. I still have a bin of 5x0 parts. I should probably sell them now or something... hm.

You should blue loctite those lower hinge screws.

every time i watch a video and author says "we will do this for now and fix it later" and they dont fix it makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. I was so happy when you later returned to makin those 3d printed bezels, it made me so happy. I insta liked the video! Great job!

I propably would have used bit more glue and let it cure for 24hours under some "squeeze" before installing. :D Great diy once again from you. :D

I remember teachers in middle school having these laptops. 3D printing wasn’t even a thought back then! Nice work dude!

Thank you for the honorable mention! And great job remixing the original hinge STL:) PS: I think KZfaq blocked the link to my site

If you put a dab of loctite on the hinge screw it won’t come loose again. Always had issues with those on mine.

You and Collin have really inspired me to take on my own PowerBook Repair project! I recently ordered a really good condition PowerBook 190 and I plan to upgrade it, strength the screw holders with superglue so that they don’t break, upgrade the screen to the 190CS screen, and even add a dedicated IDE SSD. Hopefully it works out!

I bet you could solder some extra RAM chips on to that memory module. If you can read the part number off the existing ones I can help look for some suitable ones.

Hey Action Retro, for those orange (FFC) ribbon cables, you can do something i call "Ghetto lamination." You take clear packing tape or kapton tape and you carefully put it on both sides of the ribbon cables sandwiching them together. Then you very carefully trim off the excess tape leaving a 1-3mm edge on it. This greatly reduces the chances those orange ribbon cables will rip, tear, or what ever. It's especially useful for older ribbon cables. I do this quite frequently, the only thing to be mindful of is with some twisted lcd hinge cables, sometimes the holes are pretty small and the cable twists through them, and the extra thickness of the cable can make it hard to twist and squeeze through. This was especially true for my GPD Win2, but for most other thing's it's not a problem.

Love the video, i just bought a Compaq Armada V300 and i'm super excited to start my retro computer collection

Polymax PLA is pretty resistant to heat- use it in my car (windshield area) and in sunlight on the exterior of my house. Fumes are not bad when you print + it's really strong. You shouldn't have ABS items near heat or in your house. Fumes can kill you when it burns.

Now this is the content I subbed for! Making old new again!

Lovely video! Thank you very much.

So amazed by your collection. Just absolutely amazing.

If this is supposed to be Apples best laptop ever, surely there are more modifications available than just an SSD. Maybe a future video on CPU and RAM upgrades? Also with how thin those speakers are, and how thick the screen is, you might be able to do a speaker upgrade as well :)

Maybe a little lithium grease in the hinges? Might put less stress on the hinge connections.

I had one of these back in the days with a broken hinge, and Apple did not want to replace it :P. Not only the hinge was bad, the "smart" batteries were also pretty useless, since they did not want to charge, if you did not fool them to begin to charge.

Yea this is pretty typical of plastics from that time to degas then shrink resulting in cracks let alone just falling apart. Another gripe is those DSTN panels going bad and the usual rot caps.

Thanks for the video, I love retro repairs and upgrades. Although I am more partial to epoxy than superglue on magnesium parts. I also saw other creators use the metal threads with 3d printed parts for these kind of high torque applications.

Great video, thank you for your content! I have one of these very units, the hinge has yet to fail, but I fear what post damage might lie beneath the casing beyond my view. I had already seen Colin’s video and hoped that the later models might have been immune.

Great video as always! I've spent the last couple of months reconditioning a PowerBook 520c. Fun little laptop. I've rebuilt battery modules replacing the NiMH cells. It was tedious, but not difficult. Upgraded the ram card from 4 MB to 8 MB for a total of 12 MB. I'd love to find a 32 MB upgrade. I'm patiently waiting to purchase a SCSI2SD once they become available again. I recently purchased a PCMCIA module (Revision B). Haven't found the right compact flash card for it yet. Recognizes the 2 GB CF card, but sits and spins on "Creating folder...". I think I may need a fixed disk mode card instead of removable for it to work.

Best. PowerBook. Ever! Also the only 68040 PowerBook, it was so good it never needed updates or revisions! I wish I still had my 540c. It just disintegrated on me over time as most do 😭

16bit processor = 2GB hard drive ceiling. There are some mods available for hard drives to see the rest of it, or you should have been able to format the rest through the drive utility.

I had a PowerBook 540c for a few years as a kid, I loved it. Even back then the hinge felt flimsy and I always made sure to treat it gingerly.

Thanks, I am going to try this out, I have one of these that I rescued from being recycled... with a broken hinge. Subscribed! Sean.. how 'bout adding a vintage Rainbow Apple tat :) ?

Nice, got a 540c as well, pretty good condition apart from a broken piece at the bottom right of the main body, even have one battery that still works and holds about an hour. Got the original HDD although it sometimes has trouble spinning up when left unused for a while and installed 7.6 which uses way less RAM than 8. The hinge still seems solid on it, actually the one on my 3400c is more scary and wobbly. Think I won't do any surgery on it yet since the bottom cover also still holds fine and I think it's wise to avoid removing it, but good to have the parts in case. I think printing in PLA might be better than ABS/PETG just because PLA is more rigid and thus it shouldn't wobble as much.

Of course modern laptops still have the same problem. I repaired one in the past year by finding some of the same plastic (PC+ABS FR40 seems pretty standard in case parts) and using an old soldering iron to melt a huge blob of it into the broken case. Then I pushed in the metal threaded insert with the hot iron and it seems at least as good as new. Since my plastic hack is much thicker than the original posts it should be much more durable. This was all on a 2013 Lenovo but I'm sure it would work equally well on vintage computers.

You were born to make this content.

I repaired this same model Laptop for a coworker back in 2013 !

As for this hinge failure it is a common problem with modern laptops that are cheap plastic where the grommets will separate from the plastic. Lower body cracking is also very common with age but most failures with in a couple of year of age is brought up by bumps and drops. So I strongly prefer metal body machines anyway for vintage laptops as they age it helps to handle them with care.

Props to you for managing to not glue yourself to anything

I had a Power Book 520. I don't remember the amount of ram it had in it. 160 Meg Hard drive. It had a grayscale screen that was made of two miss matched panels that did not look even. I wanted the color one, but my parents would not spend the extra on it. I got it my Junior year of High School. I remember the SCSI port that had a top heavy adaptor and the strange Ethernet dongle it used.

I would love to try to make something like this be functional in the modern day. I don't know what it would do necessarily, but it would be neat to have the option.

Thats A Great Fix Sean That PowerBook Should Last A Long Time The 3D Printed Parts You Created Are Really Neat And The StarkTrek ll Movie Very Nice Touch

Anyone else notice the Star Wars blaster sounds that were used for the phasers in the Star Trek trailer?! :D

UHU actually do a special plastic adhesive, unlike superglue it doesn't "stick" the 2 parts together, instead it chemically melts both surfaces and bonds them together so the result is as strong as if it was one piece. Its called UHU Plast Special. It would work way better than superglue is this application.

Sat Trek II, i approve😁

The hinges on the Titanium PowerBook were the worst too. They were guaranteed to break after a year or two.

I think I would prefer nylon over PETG though Nylon is definitely not the nicest material to print with. Still you are correct that PETG is a much better option than PLA at least.

I dunno man, I think you wanted a lot more superglue on the hinge fix plate. Remember, this is rather thin plastic and holding the entire force of the folding operations. Little bit sketch imo.

I was given one of these bad boys about 18 years ago. I was super excited for it. Problem was it was stored in a hot attic, and the batteries blew up and leaked out, completely killing the laptop. Ah well.

Where is the Skillshare link? Finally found someone I want to support by signing up and the link isn't there -_-.

To 15:30 - the initializing from System 7 don‘t format non Apple certificated drives. Use a System 8 for that…

10:06 No irony. IBM didn't care who they sold hard drive to. They were the best drives in that category. Also remember that at the time IBM and Apple had alliances: PowerPC, Taligent, etc.

3:05 What firefox theme do you use? I really like it! Also a very nice vido!

Do you have more info on the solid state drive you installed? I could see you put in a converter, but where was the drive? Was it just attached to that circuit board? Edit: Is it a SCSI to microSD card adapter? Can you include a link?

Apple should issue a warranty recall for this issue :)

Did you get the capacity issue figured out with the SCSI2SD? Often those need to have their parameters configured (on a modern computer via USB) before they'll work properly. Kind of fiddly at first but they work pretty well once they're set up.

For the cost of some thin steel sheeting it seems quite infuriating that the top was held on by some screws into plastic, especially when they use some anyway to support the screen itself. Id have been tempted to buy some and use that instead of 3d printing more plastic (the first one shattering doesnt bode well imo), with a bit of drilling, dremel and filing it wouldnt be difficult. You could even thread some holes fairly easily or epoxy some nuts to it and replace the tapping screws with bolts. With that said though, i hope you get a good few years out of it!

Instead of glue, with ASA and ABS I like to solvent weld it using MEK or acetone.

The 32 meg upgrade was the same price as the base model :) 4000 USD.

If this problems are not fixed, twenty to thirty more year this machine's gonna be unheard

another great video 👍

The 520C I bought, brand new, had hinge problems right from the beginning, much like my Powerbook G4! (You might think- I didn't learn. I'm stupid. I bought another Apple... but actually my employer bought my G4 for me :-)) Anyway this thing was dog slow, even at the time. I eventually put a PowerPC accelerator board in it. It helped enough that I could run some application software... In my case, I took my 520C and a Sparcstation 5 to Hong Kong with me. At the time, you could lug Sparc 5 machines in your suitcase and the airlines wouldn't care about the 50 pounds. Much. If you made googly eyes at the cute checkin girls anyway and complimented them nicely, which is what I did. Always worked. Anyway, I made a living using my poor 520C as an X Windows Terminal for my Sparc 5 in Hong Kong... quite a feat. That year, 1995 I guess, was the year that if you wanted to do java, you weren't jack if you didn't have a Sparc machine, as the Windows port of java was slow slow and the Mac incarnations were curse-worthy. So as bad as a machine as that 520C was, at least it did serve me well enough to make money. Keep in mind that the Windows machines at the time often didn't have Ethernet, TCP/IP, etc. So it was kind of nice to use the 520c as a smart terminal for the Sparc machine, at least. Having said that, my 520C was one of the crappiest Apple products I ever had! I don't know why I kept putting money into it... tho't with more memory and a PowerPC processor it would get better. And it did. Just not much. Contrast to this the machines that blew me away while I was working at Apple. The Powerbook 140/170 and the Quadra 900/950. Those were GREAT machines for the time. Powerful, ran A/UX and really expandable. I almost cried when I sold my Quadra 900! I cheered when I sold my 520C... was happy anyone would pay anything for it. What a total piece of junk, like many Apple products that have come since.

It’s becoming more and more likely I need to get a 3D printer as an essential part of my retro computing toolbox.

Hey, I’ve been looking for a compatible version of SCSI2SD and would really love to know where you bought it (Oh and yeah I have PowerBook 530C version and actually have the same issue with hinges haha)

Gotta love 3D printing

Make sure to print this out of PETG or ABS. PLA, at least the stuff ive used, has this bad habit of turning into brittle goey mush after a few years.

That is a nice looking laptop

Aaaactually.. pla is stronger than both petg and abs. Those have other advantages over pla but tensile strength is not one of them. Pla is the strongest of those three and takes the most force to break. Tons of comparisona of the strength of the different materials here on youtube for those interested.

Now if you can find the NuPower 117 Power PC upgrade and the PCMCIA card cage for that.......

(8:00) Gee, isn't ABS plastic the one that would shrink over time and the screw -things- inserts would crack and then the shells of some of my vintage laptops would crumble if I wasn't careful?

Sean, what ZIP drive do you use, a V1000? V2000?

Was the LC really low-power? I thought they just had the FPU turned off because of die defects.

Old Win Books can have the same issue with the plastic around the screen cracking.

i think there is a guy who makes ram modules for this from existing scrap or 16 mb ones oddly enough there is a tough book that uses nearly the exact same modules as that power book .

When will you do a PowerBook 190cs?? I have one that I bought in the late 90s, and it is almost completely turned into a pile of broken plastic :(

Mine caught fire after an HDD upgrade, I was crushed!

I want a powerbook g4 so bad but prices are going up in ebay and most of them are broken or in really bad condition

Title: Video: With the power of today's sponsor..

Anyone know if there's a similar fix for the PowerBook 1400?

I literally just watched Star Trek 2 on my PowerBook G4 Titanium.

Four hours of run time definitely don't hold a candle to my 20+ hour M1 Macbook Pro battery life. 🤣

its funny how apple has become the benchmark for extremely well built machines where as companies like acer are still having this issue today.

Wow!

A dab'll do ya.

new video yay

You can retemper plastic with hot water

HAHA ! Jazz drive nice ! ;-)

There is a 32mb stick on Ebay for around $160.00

Can PCBWay make custom RAM?

The curse spreads

also good supr glue is tamiya hobby glue that stuff is tough as nails

Cool video! Does anyone offer 3d-printed parts? The 1st problem is solved by this, but the 2nd is the dead battery. I have a 165c and a 540c and a G3 Bronze and clamshells... Most of them only running with power-supply.

By "Fatal Flaw" I thought you meant a leaking NiCad battery (namely Varta).

This is a pretty neat birthday present 😆 thanks for uploading on what happens to be my birthday

What if they made new plastic molds of the PowerBook?

my powerbook 140 needs more than a hinge fix :(

Don't you add a bit of grease to ease the mecanism?

These, and the PB 190/5300 cases... really, really bad plastic. I can't even number the amount of plastic I replaced while they were still in warranty.

If he keeps pointing like that, I’m going to bite off his finger!!

those rerto macs have wacko memory modules

They say plastics last a very long time. They never had a powerbook.

sorry my englishe is a little carzy, i am russia my feeling are, as usual and please to tell, how do I powerbook? what is best way for me to powerbook?

The link to your PowerBook 500 series hinge fix gives a 404 error.

All computers matter.....

can't you just solder memory chips to that stick?

4 + 32 = 38?