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Aika

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 7, 2006
207
177
Performing this was a lot of heartache but maybe this write-up will help somebody in the future who is Googling for solutions.

I got an SSD for my PowerBook G4 5,8 a while ago, thinking it would be an easy and fun upgrade. Little did I know that the previous owner had gone to town on the HDD retaining bracket: 1 missing screw, 1 very stripped screw and 1 completely stripped screw. I gave up on it but having been furloughed it seemed like a good time to finally give it another shot. With a bit of effort I got one of the screws out but the remaining one was just not having it. I tried the rubber band trick, no luck. I tried filling it up with solder to make a mould around my screw bit, still no luck: I would need to strip down the entire machine.

Following a disassembly guide on iFixit, I began disconnecting the ribbon cables, connectors and unscrewing the logic board from the case. On the 5,8 there is a ribbon cable connected to the underside of the board which is not mentioned in any of their guides. Do not disconnect it from the logic board!! Instead remove the speaker and the PCMCIA cage to access the modem and disconnect the ribbon cable from there instead. I learned this the hard way as this is a ribbon cable that will fall off very easily and given its location on the underside of the logic board, it's very difficult to get back on again especially once the foam it is connected to is broken. Fighting with the logic board when you've just had to replace the thermal paste is less than ideal.

Back to the HDD, with the logic board loose it was possible to remove the ribbon cable from the HDD. With one stripped screw that was never getting out, removing the HDD was a bit of an ordeal and the pins got damaged in the process (I was going to junk it anyway). I had to cut the hard drive bracket with pliers too but with all 4 rubber bumpers transferred and one piece of the HDD bracket salvaged the SSD was firmly in place. Unfortunately the tiny piece of the bracket that remains attached to the stripped screw can spin around a bit giving the impression of a loose screw when moving the machine which is a bit nerve wracking.

The installation of 10.4 went smoothly and the machine passed the extended Apple hardware test but all audio coming from the left speaker was incredibly distorted. I thought I damaged the speaker during reassembly and I felt really distraught. This was an area of the machine where I had messed around with a lot, especially with the aforementioned ribbon cable that attaches to the bottom of the board so I thought I had damaged something. Luckily a PRAM (cmd+option+P+R) reset cleared it up and 2 bongs later it was back to normal.

Now after all that I need a good lie down. 😴

Drive used: Lycom ST-173-7 Covert mSATA SSD as High Speed 7mm 2.5" IDE SSD Drive with a SanDisk NAND.
 
Unfortunately the tiny piece of the bracket that remains attached to the stripped screw can spin around a bit giving the impression of a loose screw when moving the machine which is a bit nerve wracking.

I think all things considered, I would invest in a small Dremel like drill. They aren't expensive and very useful for all sorts of small jobs, particularly on vintage computers. You should be able to get micro screw extractor drill bits to fit for not too much either.
 
I think all things considered, I would invest in a small Dremel like drill. They aren't expensive and very useful for all sorts of small jobs, particularly on vintage computers. You should be able to get micro screw extractor drill bits to fit for not too much either.

Yeah I think it's about time I invested in one.
 
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