Blueberry clamshell repair or pi mod?

[Echeb]

Hi, first post hope it's in the right place!

I got this ibook from ebay, the discription was just the model name. And photos only showed it powered off but for £40 plus postage why not? And £36 for power brick.

On arrival half the screws and airport card were missing, the spring for the power button was loose in the case, the battery was bulging and the charging port was loose so I didn't dare try it.

After opening it I believe a previous owner tried to get the power board out by bending the shielding up and squashed the cap.

Question is do I try to resolder the jack and replace the cap hopeing there's no other damage or sell on the internals and use the case to make a raspberry pi build?

This is the first mac I've touched since the same vintage imac in primary school.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Hi, first post hope it's in the right place!

Welcome! Yep, you're in the right place.

I got this ibook from ebay, the discription was just the model name. And photos only showed it powered off but for £40 plus postage why not? And £36 for power brick.

On arrival half the screws and airport card were missing, the spring for the power button was loose in the case, the battery was bulging and the charging port was loose so I didn't dare try it.

After opening it I believe a previous owner tried to get the power board out by bending the shielding up and squashed the cap.

Question is do I try to resolder the jack and replace the cap hopeing there's no other damage or sell on the internals and use the case to make a raspberry pi build?

Are you confident with carrying out soldering work? If so then it's definitely worth a try because from my experience that would take 10 minutes to complete and then you can try to power it on and see what happens.

 

[Echeb]

I've done a bit in the past but the more I research it looks like this part is not replaceable unless someone uploads it to pcbway or somewhere so a bit aprihensive but will give it a go when my flux and the new cap arrives.

Also I can't get the 3gb hdd to mount on windows with paragon hfs+ on windows 11 via a generic ide 2.5/3.5/sata to USB 3 adapter. The drive spins up when it is switched on and clicks a bit when I open hfs+ but the drive is not detected so I'm assuming it's dead. Got a red sled and msata drive on the way which I can use in projects at my work if not needed here.