I have a 2001 ibook which came with a 10 gb hard drive, which has been getting more and more crammed. With the devtools and Panther installed, I had about 1 and a half gigs for files since mac os X has an insatiable need for space for disk caching.
So recently I decided to replace the hd with a 40 gig travelstar from Hitachi. I wasn't really concerned about messing up since I'm relatively handy at taking things apart and reassembling them, and I'd weighed the odds that if I did mess up bad enough to send it to the shop, I probably wouldn't pay too much more to get it installed by a pro. And besides, there are some very handy instructions online about replacing a hd.
Ok, so I order the drive from owc, it comes in a couple of days and I install it. It takes about 2 hrs and goes pretty well except for a little difficulty detaching and reattaching the trackpad ribbon. This ribbon actually has no connector on the end, but simply slides into a connector that clamps it to 8 pins on the logic board. The pins became slightly loose and the ribbon needed to be reseated in order to get the trackpad to work. But other than that it went fine.
Unfortunately, the new hd started clicking at every drive access. That did not make me feel good about the well-being of my data. So I called owc and asked for a replacement. They were very good about sending me the new hd.
So last night I replaced the hd again. This time I'm a pro. I get it apart and back together with little problem other than the typical problem of getting the speaker wires to lay down in the right place so the ibook will fit back together.
I started it up, and the trackpad didn't work. No big problem, I thought, I've dealt with this before. Except for this time when I touched the connector, the pins broke off at the board. I suddenly felt very[\b] sick. There are two rows of four pins apiece with each row less than 3/16 of an inch in length. That requires some expert soldering to even think of fixing. Also complicating things is that one row of pins was not accessible by the soldering iron without completely tearing the ibook apart. I was pretty sure I'd have to get the motherboard replaced, since I was no where near that good of a solderer and I didn't think many people, even a repair shop would be able to solder it. But I asked my roommates if any of them were steady with a soldering iron. One of them said he'd give it a try.
Well, he did an outstanding job. He traced a bit of solder on the board for each pin, and then as I held the connector, he heated the four pins he could get to. I wasn't extremely confident that it would work since it had failed even with a more secure connection. But amazingly it started up with no problems and the trackpad worked perfectly. I'm still dragging my finger across the trackpad with a feeling of relief when I wake my ibook. Oh, the new hd works great. That experience caused me about the worst panic I've ever had.
So recently I decided to replace the hd with a 40 gig travelstar from Hitachi. I wasn't really concerned about messing up since I'm relatively handy at taking things apart and reassembling them, and I'd weighed the odds that if I did mess up bad enough to send it to the shop, I probably wouldn't pay too much more to get it installed by a pro. And besides, there are some very handy instructions online about replacing a hd.
Ok, so I order the drive from owc, it comes in a couple of days and I install it. It takes about 2 hrs and goes pretty well except for a little difficulty detaching and reattaching the trackpad ribbon. This ribbon actually has no connector on the end, but simply slides into a connector that clamps it to 8 pins on the logic board. The pins became slightly loose and the ribbon needed to be reseated in order to get the trackpad to work. But other than that it went fine.
Unfortunately, the new hd started clicking at every drive access. That did not make me feel good about the well-being of my data. So I called owc and asked for a replacement. They were very good about sending me the new hd.
So last night I replaced the hd again. This time I'm a pro. I get it apart and back together with little problem other than the typical problem of getting the speaker wires to lay down in the right place so the ibook will fit back together.
I started it up, and the trackpad didn't work. No big problem, I thought, I've dealt with this before. Except for this time when I touched the connector, the pins broke off at the board. I suddenly felt very[\b] sick. There are two rows of four pins apiece with each row less than 3/16 of an inch in length. That requires some expert soldering to even think of fixing. Also complicating things is that one row of pins was not accessible by the soldering iron without completely tearing the ibook apart. I was pretty sure I'd have to get the motherboard replaced, since I was no where near that good of a solderer and I didn't think many people, even a repair shop would be able to solder it. But I asked my roommates if any of them were steady with a soldering iron. One of them said he'd give it a try.
Well, he did an outstanding job. He traced a bit of solder on the board for each pin, and then as I held the connector, he heated the four pins he could get to. I wasn't extremely confident that it would work since it had failed even with a more secure connection. But amazingly it started up with no problems and the trackpad worked perfectly. I'm still dragging my finger across the trackpad with a feeling of relief when I wake my ibook. Oh, the new hd works great. That experience caused me about the worst panic I've ever had.
