gsaldivar
Diamond Member
It was an old Apple Powerbook with an unrepairable motherboard defect that I had lying around.
First, I dissassembled the chassis, and removed the keyboard and RAM card. Then I yanked the 4GB hard drive and opened it up for the hell of it. It was kinda pretty, so I replaced the steel HD cover with a piece of plexiglass I had, and it's now a little ornament sitting on my wall. 😀
I pulled the motherboard out and thought it would be cool to remove the CPU (PowerPC 603e). I cut the traces with a razor blade, and it came free pretty easily. I wondered what the core inside would look like, so I tried dropping it a few times, hoping it would crack open neatly. When that failed, I threw it against the concrete floor and it shattered into tiny pieces. I regretted this instantly when I saw what the inside looked like - it was beautiful! I could see the hairline traces leading from the edge of the chip into the silicon core itself (a bit larger than my thumbnail). I should have tried to pry the chip open with a razorblade or something, keeping the core intact. 🙁 I wish I had the core of one of these for a keychain or something.
After that, I tackled the LCD screen. I thought of keeping this for toying around with later since there was nothing wrong with it, but when I looked up the specs online I decided to trash it in the name of ATOT since it was only 640x480. 😀 I pulled the screen from the plastic framing, and ripped the power supply and controller board loose. I spent a while looking for the light source, and found it cleverly hidden in one of the edges of the frame - a super-miniature fluorescent bulb smaller than the diameter of a mouse cable. There were 3 separate layers of diffusive plastics specially designed to channel the light to fill the entire 10.4" screen, including an ingenious layer printed with a halftone pattern of dots that got gradually denser next to the light source. I surmise that this is designed to allow a the screen to be evenly lit across the entire area, even though the actual light is coming from only a single edge. Finally reaching the glass LCD screen itself, I found two edges filled with hundreds and hundreds of hairline copper traces, leading to the controller boards - linking each individual LCD pixel to the controller.
Hmmm.. next I need to get a digital camera so I can bore you guys with pics too. :thumbsup:😀
First, I dissassembled the chassis, and removed the keyboard and RAM card. Then I yanked the 4GB hard drive and opened it up for the hell of it. It was kinda pretty, so I replaced the steel HD cover with a piece of plexiglass I had, and it's now a little ornament sitting on my wall. 😀
I pulled the motherboard out and thought it would be cool to remove the CPU (PowerPC 603e). I cut the traces with a razor blade, and it came free pretty easily. I wondered what the core inside would look like, so I tried dropping it a few times, hoping it would crack open neatly. When that failed, I threw it against the concrete floor and it shattered into tiny pieces. I regretted this instantly when I saw what the inside looked like - it was beautiful! I could see the hairline traces leading from the edge of the chip into the silicon core itself (a bit larger than my thumbnail). I should have tried to pry the chip open with a razorblade or something, keeping the core intact. 🙁 I wish I had the core of one of these for a keychain or something.
After that, I tackled the LCD screen. I thought of keeping this for toying around with later since there was nothing wrong with it, but when I looked up the specs online I decided to trash it in the name of ATOT since it was only 640x480. 😀 I pulled the screen from the plastic framing, and ripped the power supply and controller board loose. I spent a while looking for the light source, and found it cleverly hidden in one of the edges of the frame - a super-miniature fluorescent bulb smaller than the diameter of a mouse cable. There were 3 separate layers of diffusive plastics specially designed to channel the light to fill the entire 10.4" screen, including an ingenious layer printed with a halftone pattern of dots that got gradually denser next to the light source. I surmise that this is designed to allow a the screen to be evenly lit across the entire area, even though the actual light is coming from only a single edge. Finally reaching the glass LCD screen itself, I found two edges filled with hundreds and hundreds of hairline copper traces, leading to the controller boards - linking each individual LCD pixel to the controller.
Hmmm.. next I need to get a digital camera so I can bore you guys with pics too. :thumbsup:😀
