A reader calling himself Apple Engineer writes: As some users, I have had the misfortune of having PowerBooks (Firewire’s as well as Lombards) come in for repair with smashed screens.
I have had to turn away customers because as I was told only apple could fix/replace the LCD panel inside these ‘Books… Until now. I’ve found something very interesting that will surely get up Apple’s nose. Apple states that you can only use LG or Samsung panels. Not true.
A reader calling himself Apple Engineer writes: As some users, I have had the misfortune of having PowerBooks (Firewire’s as well as Lombards) come in for repair with smashed screens.
I have had to turn away customers because as I was told only apple could fix/replace the LCD panel inside these ‘Books… Until now. I’ve found something very interesting that will surely get up Apple’s nose. Apple states that you can only use LG or Samsung panels. Not true.
I recently bought 4 500 Pismo’s all with smashed LCDs and i decided to take a risk and bought four 14.1-inch notebook Panasonic OEM LCD panels on eBay (what a mouthful) for the tidy sum of US$60 a piece. If they didn’t work I could always use them in some Toshiba laptops i have.
I looked at the pictures and they all looked like the same connections/lengths etc., I swallowed hard and hit the buy button. Two weeks later the goods arrived and I ripped open the box, grabbed an LCD panel (carefully mind you) and proceeded to take apart one of the Pismos.
I took out the old LCD after removing two dozen screws and secured the new LCD inside the brackets and put it back together. Next I crossed my fingers and turned the PowerBook on and heard a chime (which is a good start) 10 seconds later i was presented with a beautiful image of a happy mac icon whilst it booted up into OS 9.
I jumped for joy yelling “yes!” at the top of my voice as i have just saved myself over £800 (about US$1200) for a repair that took me an hour and cost me only US$60 (plus shipping costs.) I ran a barrage of tests to test for dead pixels colour calibration, etc. and all were perfect if not better than an original display.
I noticed an added bonus to these LCDs you can view them from 90 degrees all round. I left the book on all night and it stayed perfect. “Fantastic!” I thought to myself. I have now repaired all four PowerBooks and sold them for quite a lot of money.
Also. I managed to put in combo CDRW/DVD in them as well. I just bought a UJDA710 from eBay and stuck the new mechanism into the old DVD case. It boots it does everything. I just wanted to let other users know my findings so if they have a bit of courage as well as a service manual handy/or some knowledge of how to take apart PowerBooks they could save themselves fortune if they drop their PowerBook or something else happens to the screen.
