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What do I do with two dead iBooks?

M

mikejtl

macrumors member
Original poster
Both my iBook and my wife's iBook died in the past six months. In both cases it was the logic board that went.

So what do you think I should do with them now?

Here's what I've come up with so far:

1. Recycle - I can take them to the apple store and they will recycle/dispose of the raw materials.

2. Salvage - PowerMax will offer 50 bucks salvage fee, but they don't pay for shipping so by the time I pay for shipping I'll probably lose as much as half the $50.

3. Ebay - My friend thinks I can get $200 and up per machine on ebay even though they have the bad logic boards. She knows a lot about ebay but not computers so I'm skeptical. Maybe with a bad HD or even screen people would pay that much... what do others think?

4. Stip - I could strip them and sell the parts on eBay myself. Power cords, HDs, RAM (512mb chips), one battery is good, keyboard, airport cards. This is not really my forte but if the money is there I would take a crack at it.

5. Other ideas? I'm all ears...

thanks
 
You would do very well to sell them on eBay. If you're thinking of just "recycling" them yourself, then what would be the harm is trying to make a little cash on ebay. Personally i would set the reserve price at about $100 each and just let it ride to see what happens. I never realized myself how easy it is to do maintenance on Apple computers until i recently had to rebuild my first generation Macbook Pro. Someone could really give a second life to their iBook salvaging the parts from your dead ones. Or maybe you could just order a logic board off eBay and replace the bad ones on your iBooks.

Here's a $135.15 Apple iBook G4 12" 1.33 GHz Logic Board that has been tested: Link

It's going to require some tedious disassembly on your part, but iFixit.com has really informative guides, and with some patience you can easily restore life to your iBooks and either donate them to a friend in need or a school or something.
 
Thanks for your response. I did look at ebay for logic board and debate doing the fix myself, which might be worth it to have a back up laptop around the house, I'll have to think about that.

Otherwise I think you are right, let it ride on ebay... see what happens.

My other thought was to put them on stands and mod them to just be displays hooked up to a mini for a funky little command center, but the quality of the displays themselves are probably not worth the effort.
 
I would completely dismantle one of them(probably the one in the worst shape of the two), and sell each major part separate on eBay. If it has an original Airport card(not extreme), that alone will fetch $40(I sold 3 of them for $40 about a year ago between craigslist and ebay), someone will buy the LCD, trackpad/palmrest/keyboard, couple bucks for the hard drive, and then the main shell and other accompanying pieces would likely go together.

Then, with the money gained from parting the other one out, buy a new logic board for your remaining iBook. You will likely break even, and have a decent computer on your hands. Additionally, you will have the experience needed to replace the logic board on the "good" one, after completely dismantling the other one.
 
buy two logic boards cheaply off ebay and make them work again! its the only option really...😎
 
I bought two logic boards on eBay recently for $5 and $20. One is for a PowerBook and the other is for a MBP. I bought them just because they were really cheap, the MBP is actually a unibody 2.4 GHz (brand new - guaranteed to work). I saw someone on Craig's List selling logic boards for iBooks and PowerBooks for $10 each. I guess the thing is, if you are patient and keep looking, you may find logic boards for them really cheap.

I would say wait it out as they are still ok nice Macs if you can get logic boards cheap. Doesn't cost anything to store them, and you will not get much for them selling them. If anything, wait and buy logic boards then donate them to your favorite charity or to family. Assuming you have replaced them with other Macs.

Good luck.
 
OK, I'm feeling inspired to look for logic boards cheap and fix them myself, at least one of them.

So let me ask this question: Since it's the logic board I'm replacing, do I need to put in the same speed as the one I'm pulling? Or can I put in a faster one?

I don't know what it needs to interface with other than things like display, HD, keyboard where the speed is not an issue, I think...
 
What model of iBooks are they? I think you can put in a faster speed, but you have to make sure that it's within the same "family" so that it still supports the same ram and bus speeds of the drives etc.

I really think you'd have fun replacing the logic boards, especially since you have two iBooks and you can have extra practice. When i first took my Macbook Pro apart, it seemed pretty daunting. But once I started putting it back together, I found that I no longer had to look at the guide for every step.
 
They are both 14" iBooks, one is 933MHz, one is 1.33Ghz. I think 1.33 is almost where the line maxed out before the switch to intel, so it might be best to just look for the same spec.

If I got one up and running, do you think I could use it instead of an Apple TV? I've been thinking about getting one, or a mini, to hook up to our home theater, but if this worked instead it might be a cheaper solution.

Thoughts?
 
In regards to option 5 FIRE, I would be exceptionally careful. I tried to fix my iBook by using a heat gun to reflow the solder on the ATI chip and ended up ruining my hard drive (in my iBook the HDD was directly under the chip). So I now have working video but now need a new HDD. Just a word of caution.
 
Thanks

Thanks to everyone who gave me great ideas on this one. Especially JayMan for your warning about using heat. When I get around to trying something I'll post my results.
 
Lots of great info here:

http://coreyarnold.org/ibook/

-especially the comments:

http://coreyarnold.org/ibook/?p=20#comments


-and here's a place will reflow the solder on the chip for $50.00 + $12.00 S&H - you need to send the bare logic board:

http://www.firstphasetech.com/ibook-repair-g3-g4.html

From what I gather, the issue is likely due to faulty solder-joints on the logic
boards, so any replacement logic board will be just as susceptible to failure.
Reflowing the solder would actually make it better than new, if this is true.

The logic board issue seems to be exacerbated by the case of the iBook which flexes easily.
I would recommend NEVER holding the laptop by the side, as this causes major flexing.

Here's a "dead" iBook G4 133 Mhz that I got for free; brought back from the "dead" with a C-clamp:

ibookmc7.jpg
 
logic board repair

so I was on ebay looking for logic boards and I came across a couple of postings for logic board repair. It sounded like most of them will just resolder the points on the GPU, if thats the problem you have, if not they tell you they can't fix it and charge you nothing, so their ad says.

THe deal is you pay $50 over paypal, ship the computer cross country, they do the work ship it back and voila...

Has anyone ever done this? Is it a scam?

Sure paypal can protect my $50, but if I ship them the computer I may never see it again. Even though it's busted it's worth something...

Would love to know if anyone has experience with this.

thanks
 
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