All Things Tech

Make Magazine’s blog had a link to another site, SpikenzieLabs, which profiles great uses or reuses for common items to make working on electrical projects easier. Check it out here!

Well, I installed the shim and put it all back together again, and the iBook is humming along alright. A few lock ups that are indicative of the logic board problem, but on the whole, it runs mostly stable. I reloaded OS X 10.5 and iLife and it was stable enough to do that plus update. It was a much easier job given that (a) I’d done it before with my 800 Mhz iBook G4 and (2) I wasn’t too vested in completing the job; if it crashed and burned never to work again, well, I wasn’t really out anything. Much less stressful…

So, we’ll see how it runs long term. Christmas came early for a fried of ours; I’ll be bartering the lappy for some baby-sitting time. w00t!

I traded for a busted iBook 14″ 1.25 Ghz G4. My first apple PC was an 800 Mhz 12″ iBook G4, so it’s fun to come nearly full circle back to the iBook G4 family. This iBook suffers from the infamous logic board problem whereby putting pressure on the case allows the computer to work.

My plans for it involve replacing the HD with a solid state disk based on the CF to IDE adapters out there. Then, cobbling some parts off of eBay, replacing the logic board and CD drive with a super drive (that is, if my auction completes).

After that, who knows. The solid state disk limits the iBook to being more of a net book than a serious computer. Then again, so does the 1.25Ghz G4. I’ve wanted to build a solid state pc for a while too so it might as well be this project. If I can’t find a good use for it, most likely it’ll end up someone’s christmas present this year.

I found an interesting article on building a solar panel from blemished solar panels off eBay. I would love to build the panel and incorporate it into something like this commercial product. And it doesn’t sound like it would be too expensive.

I’m not looking to tie this in to the grid. It wouldn’t generate enough electricity to warrant the increased costs. And there are a number of other applications where this would be cool: camping, stargazing, and emergency power. Surely something like the commercial system can be built for less than $1400.

But what I’m struggling with is a parts list and a recommendation of how to wire it all up. So I’ve started searching for articles on the net which explain how this can work and recommend some parts and a basic block diagram.

Once built, I’d like to encase the batteries in a Rubbermade tote to be portable. I’d also need to find a way to protect the solar panels for transport. Fun stuff to think about, but first I think building a smaller version is in order.

It would be wonderful if Make Magazine devoted an entire issue to alt. energy concepts. I know they take article submissions from readers, so I’ll have to document my project as I work on it for possible publication. Who knows…

Yet another blog.

Sigh.

I need a place to document my makings and doings, and not clutter up the main Lawton’s blog. I’m inspired by the maker culture out there to build things that enrich our lives, even if it’s not the finished object but the journey that provides the enrichment. This blog aims to catalog these doings for friends and family who wish to know what I’m working on and for sharing knowledge about the things I make to the world so that no one has to duplicate effort.

All content on this site is part of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Contact me if you use any derivatives of the work on this page at charles <dot> lawton [at] gmail {dot} com.

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