Feeler/FS: Indigo iBook (Firewire) G3 (366MHz) 320MB/30GB/Airport/Etc

[kalisphoenix]

Well, I got married on Saturday and my wife and I woke up Sunday morning to realize that we are broke. Dead broke -- as in, our combined income is under $800/month and we have about $1200 in bills/month not to mention that we have $7500 in credit card debt and owe about $1500 more for the wedding, $3000 to people who've helped us out in various ways, and so on.

We knew this was happening, mind you -- it's not a matter of fiscal irresponsibility so much as it is just Murphy's Law -- I was counting on $6 000 to come in as per a contract, and, well, it didn't. Our ship's scheduled to come in about January, and then we'll be cool again and back on top of the game... but for now, we can't afford food.

Anyway, I'm selling my iBook.

It's a G3/366MHz, the lower-powered Paris iBook. It has 320MB RAM, a brand new 30GB HD (wedding present), Airport, and so on.

I managed to screw up the power adaptor somehow, which fried the motherboard, so I bought a new motherboard for it as well as a new power adaptor (all parts Apple, don't worry).

The original battery was dead, so I bought a brand new one a couple months ago-- depending on settings, it gets up to 4.5 hours of battery life. The touchpad and keyboard are in great condition and without any dead areas/keys.

I've disassembled it a couple times. I removed part of the metal shield to allow a thicker hard drive to be installed, but it has no effect on cooling/stability/anything like that.

The hinge is firm -- no floppy iBook. I've never used the modem but I assume it works. I disconnected the built-in speaker because I hate the chime -- I'll reconnect it. The pieces of the case fit together perfectly (ie, I'm not an idiot when it comes to disassembling and reassembling computers) and there are no missing screws that I'm aware of. There are no major scratches -- just the little superficial scratches resulting from normal use that don't even show up in pictures.

My only complaint about it is that the CD-ROM is picky -- it only boots from about three-quarters of the burned CDs I've tried (the rest it will boot from sporadically). It seems to do it based on the OS -- it'll boot burned Gentoo and Yellow Dog Linux CDs, but not Ubuntu or Debian -- fortunately, the kind Ubuntu folks provided me with "real" CDs, which it boots happily.

It's a very snappy machine, despite its age. It runs Tiger smoothly and is very cool and stable. The upgraded hard drive is much quieter and faster than the 10GB stock helicopter hard drive.

I'll upload pictures before too long -- I took them just now, but my wife's camera battery was dying and I can't find the AC adaptor for it :-( Bad day, bad day.

In the pictures, I'm running an Ubuntu liveCD. So don't be weirded out :-)

Anyway, it was just a couple months ago that I spent several hundred bucks getting this machine and the airport and RAM. In the past month, I've replaced the logic board, the power adaptor, and the hard drive. There's obviously no way for me to recuperate my investment, but I still have some idea of what this computer is worth -- to the market, as well as to me. Please don't lowball me. I wouldn't be selling this if our need wasn't dire

Thanks for your time!

[skoker]

Well, I got married on Saturday and my wife and I woke up Sunday morning to realize that we are broke. Dead broke -- as in, our combined income is under $800/month and we have about $1200 in bills/month not to mention that we have $7500 in credit card debt and owe about $1500 more for the wedding, $3000 to people who've helped us out in various ways, and so on.

We knew this was happening, mind you -- it's not a matter of fiscal irresponsibility so much as it is just Murphy's Law -- I was counting on $6 000 to come in as per a contract, and, well, it didn't. Our ship's scheduled to come in about January, and then we'll be cool again and back on top of the game... but for now, we can't afford food.

Anyway, I'm selling my iBook.

It's a G3/366MHz, the lower-powered Paris iBook. It has 320MB RAM, a brand new 30GB HD (wedding present), Airport, and so on.

I managed to screw up the power adaptor somehow, which fried the motherboard, so I bought a new motherboard for it as well as a new power adaptor (all parts Apple, don't worry).

The original battery was dead, so I bought a brand new one a couple months ago-- depending on settings, it gets up to 4.5 hours of battery life. The touchpad and keyboard are in great condition and without any dead areas/keys.

I've disassembled it a couple times. I removed part of the metal shield to allow a thicker hard drive to be installed, but it has no effect on cooling/stability/anything like that.

The hinge is firm -- no floppy iBook. I've never used the modem but I assume it works. I disconnected the built-in speaker because I hate the chime -- I'll reconnect it. The pieces of the case fit together perfectly (ie, I'm not an idiot when it comes to disassembling and reassembling computers) and there are no missing screws that I'm aware of. There are no major scratches -- just the little superficial scratches resulting from normal use that don't even show up in pictures.

My only complaint about it is that the CD-ROM is picky -- it only boots from about three-quarters of the burned CDs I've tried (the rest it will boot from sporadically). It seems to do it based on the OS -- it'll boot burned Gentoo and Yellow Dog Linux CDs, but not Ubuntu or Debian -- fortunately, the kind Ubuntu folks provided me with "real" CDs, which it boots happily.

It's a very snappy machine, despite its age. It runs Tiger smoothly and is very cool and stable. The upgraded hard drive is much quieter and faster than the 10GB stock helicopter hard drive.

I'll upload pictures before too long -- I took them just now, but my wife's camera battery was dying and I can't find the AC adaptor for it :-( Bad day, bad day.

In the pictures, I'm running an Ubuntu liveCD. So don't be weirded out :-)

Anyway, it was just a couple months ago that I spent several hundred bucks getting this machine and the airport and RAM. In the past month, I've replaced the logic board, the power adaptor, and the hard drive. There's obviously no way for me to recuperate my investment, but I still have some idea of what this computer is worth -- to the market, as well as to me. Please don't lowball me. I wouldn't be selling this if our need wasn't dire

Thanks for your time!

Hmm, I'd say about $300. I'd actually offer to buy it for that much but don't have that amount at this time :(

[ITASOR]

You might not like eBay, but on you could probably get $400-$450 on there for it. You'll get more on there than on here, but that's your choice. Perhaps put it on ebay and still take offers on here too.

[mbl42]

Put it on craigslist too, people don't know what things are worth there. Just watch out for those Nigerian scammers! Good luck.

[Sutekidane]

You might not like eBay, but on you could probably get $400-$450 on there for it. You'll get more on there than on here, but that's your choice. Perhaps put it on ebay and still take offers on here too.

Ha, I'm trying to sell the practically the same ibook and I'm struggling to get $200 for it, lol.

[kalisphoenix]

I've sold some things on eBay, but for whatever reason I just feel better selling it on here.

My mom refinanced her house, so there's a chance I might be able to keep it... I guess I'll just see if there are any good offers for it, and if not I'll try to keep it.

There's a lot I want to do with it, so I'm not very happy about letting it go. Even when the battery dies, it'd make a decent little desktop machine. It's too beautiful to mod, really, especially into something like a digital picture frame. Something imaginative... that'd be cool.

I thought about heavily modding my B&W G3 -- another computer that's powerful enough to be usable but too old to get a decent price, even with the CPU upgrade -- and possibly modifying the left (ie, stationary) panel to act as a frame for this iBook's display.

I wasn't really sure where to go from there -- I thought briefly of modifying the display to run from the ATI card, and dispensing with the rest of the laptop entirely (this was after the logic board failed, don't freak) but then I realized how complicated that was. Then I thought about purchasing another logic board and mounting it inside the computer, joining it and the B&W through Firewire... share the iBook's wireless connection to the B&W, which would act as a server. I could run Linux on the disassembled iBook and use it as a heavily-firewalled gateway for the B&W, which would be a desktop...

but then I found a logic board for a decent price, which sort of robbed me of the admittedly bizarre ideas I had for modding these machines.

I dunno.

Anyone got any interesting modding ideas for this?

[reberto]

Put it on craigslist too, people don't know what things are worth there. Just watch out for those Nigerian scammers! Good luck.
One of them made a offer on my G3 iMac and...anyway, how low in the price can you go?