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.
is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.
