DIY upgrade to backlit keyboard?

[powerdave]

Has anyone with a 15" Combo PowerBook without the backlit keyboard upgraded it themselves? Is it possible to do this?

Just kinda curious. I'm considering a 15" and I'm not sure to add the feature to the machine.. but I'd give it more thought if it I knew it was impossible to do at a later date.

Edit: Oh, with the backlite keyboard, can you turn the feature off? For watching a DVD in the dark or something, the keys would be kinda distracting.


-David

 

[tomf87]

Not sure about the upgrade, but I was skeptic about the usefulness of it at first. Now that I have the backlit keyboard, I wouldn't do without it.

Yes, you can turn the brightness up and down and even turn it off with F8, F9, and F10.

 

[_pb_boi]

Especially in Japan, it gets done with iBooks a lot. I can't remember the name of the site, but a search on google to the effect of "backlit iBook" or whatever will show you the sites I'm talking about.

The Powerbook is packed a lil tighter though - the transformer needed to DIY backlight the keyboard would be too big, imho... at least it was in the previous (ie. not brand new) pb's...

To be honest, the results can be sketchy. Most people use DIY snake light to do the upgrade, and that inevitably results in pretty varied luminous intensities, so you could end up makin it look worse, rather than better.

andy

 

[rainman::|:|]

it can be done, to varying degrees of success, but it never looks nearly as good as Apple's own backlit keyboards do.

paul