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Mac Lab Report

iBook Takes a Lickin'

- 2002.08.01

I've had a couple of spills with a 500 MHz iceBook with a Combo drive that could have turned out badly - but didn't. One involved me leaving the iBook on top of an unstable pile of books. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No one touched it, but the books began to slide slowly off my counter, and the next thing you know, "crunch!"

I gingerly picked up the laptop where it fell from a 3' countertop to a tile floor. Aside from a few scratches, no physical damage. And it booted up nicely, probably because it was off when it fell. If the hard drive hadn't been parked - well, I guess I was lucky or Apple just builds 'em tough.

The second encounter with disaster had more serious consequences. I had just finished giving the "always move the laptop with two hands" lecture to the class when I elbowed the laptop off my desk. It landed on one corner on a padded seat, which for some reason caused the drive to pop out. Then it slid off the seat and landed, you guessed it, on the ejected drive tray, which snapped in two.

Our poor district techs are overworked and overbooked. Consequently, I knew the computer would not be collected and sent in to be repaired soon - when I put the work order in, they asked, "Does the machine still function?" trying to set a priority for it. "Can you use it without the drive?" I said, yes, it boots, connects, etc., and so the repair was not supercritical.

The right-side command key broke as well. Actually it as the inner ring with those tiny pins on it. But I hardly ever use that one, so no big deal there except for the gaping wound in the keyboard.

Naturally, I looked at the damaged drive carefully. The read-write head was not bent. The circuit board and ribbon cable was intact. The only broken component was the tray itself. If I could only get another one - but we have no source for these, since all the iBooks are new. Finally, I decided I must surrender to temptation and break out the super glue.

After carefully realigning the two halves, I saw that the metal plate on the bottom had sheared one screw connection completely loose. I couldn't get that to fit back again, but everything else lined up so nicely, and I figured if it ever got repaired, they'd just replace the unit, so what the heck.

I glued it.

And it worked!

Well, actually, the first time it didn't, it made a horrible grinding noise on a junk CD. So I broke it again, realigned it, braced it with a bunch of pennies and paper clips and so on, and on the second attempt, it worked!

It even plays DVDs, if you can believe that. The only remaining problem is the bottom plate hangs just low enough to catch on the way in, so you have to lift it up with your fingers. A little tape is holding that in place temporarily.

Just remember, folks who are too scared to try to fix things: If it's already broke, you're not going to make it worse. Usually.

Then there was that time I set my boss's PowerBook 180 on fire, but that's another story.

Jeff Adkins is a science teacher who isn't afraid to state his preferences in computing platforms. In his classroom he has everything from a beige All-in-One to a a G4 XServe, and they all work together nicely. He calls himself the "poster child for technology integration" in the classroom. He was the 2006 Outstanding Educator of the Year for the California Computer Using Educators (CUE) organization. He also maintains a site for astronomy teachers at www.AstronomyTeacher.com.

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