Titanium Powerbook Repair/Respray

After a good bit of use, and more recently creaking under the use of only one hinge, my faithful titanium powerbook has decided enough’s enough.  The other hinge has decided to also fail (something which is notorious on this series of powerbooks) and so I’ve been forced to scour ebay for replacement parts, no hinges make a laptop pretty useless. Replacing the hinges is an absolute nightmare, I’ve tried and half succeeded before, so I was lucky enough to find one which the motherboard was fried but the LCD and hinges were still intact, however it didnt go as cheaply as I had hoped (always the way.) I have also found that some of the insulation on the LDVS cable has been cut through wear and tear, something I’m hoping to resolve with some Liquid electrical tape, pretty ingenious which looks just the ticket for the hair thick cables.

Thankfully mine is in slightly better nick

There are plenty of very good resources for repairing Powerbook’s, and also quite a few on painting them/PC cases, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult and with a bit of patience will work out well. Colorware professionally paint laptops, however they are rather expensive,  at $450 and up, I’m hoping to achieve mine for under £45 between primer, paints and clear gloss. Althought they have extrotienate prices, they do have a good visualisation tool, and I have decided on my colour scheme using it:

Looks pretty sweet I think, if it ever ends up looking like this is another thing altogether, however only time will tell. Will spend a bit of time tomorow looking for my paint, have sourced some on ebay which might do the job if I can’t find any locally, and will post my progres as I go along!

A couple of resources for people considering doing the same thing (plenty others through a google search)

Linear Case mods

Spooky’s paint guide

Lappy paint overhaul

Red pepper Paintjob

ModTheBox

Low Tech Paint Job

Happy modding

Matchbox Pinhole Camera

I’ve been looking of going to film for a while now and the idea of developing them myself also sounds like a good bit of fun, the fact that I’m currently without a camera has probably increased this desire though. While looking for a simple guide of how to develop your own photo’s I ended up coming across DIY photgraphy’s article on making your own pinhole camera. This reminded me again of a rticle in outdoor photography about making your own pinhole camera, however the instructions were less than clear,and although when making something the chances of it going wrong is part of the fun,trial and error can get quite annoying. The instructions have been updated and are now being shown on matchboxpinhole, and I think this will be my next mini project, I’ll throw up my results whenever I finally get round to it!!