Wish me luck. I bought a batch of semi-gutted PB G3s and one is a Pismo. Had no HD, HD cage and ribbon, processor, heat shield, EMI shield, modem, battery, CD drive. I have battery, CD or DVD drive and HD. Bought a batch of Pismo guts and now I have the HD cage and ribbon cable, EMI shield, and choice of 5 modems. When the processor I ordered arrives I will be able to see if the thing actually works. The good part is, I plugged it in and got the brief green sleep light and a very faint whistle/hum, so I know it's getting power and therefore should have a good power/sound card.

Does anybody know a good way to treat a rough area to the side of the trackpad where somebody seems to have removed a sticker with unnecessary roughness? I am thinking of trying Armor-All since it's safe to use on car plastics. I want to make it as fresh and nice as possible.

I have wanted a Pismo for a long time and pretty soon...

The Pismo's processor works, it's up and running. Unfortunately I can't power it with a cord, just batteries. And I couldn't figure out how to squeeze a modem in, but since I don't plan to use it on dialup, that's not a problem. Other than that, it seems to be good! I will eventually go for a replacement sound/power card, but I'm sort of reluctant to take it that far apart!

Next project: One of the other PBs was a Lombard 400 when it still had its processor, according to the bottom of it, and so would have the built-in DVD decoder. With a 333 processor popped in, it powers on, but the screen is busted. So I will bravely swap displays with another Lombard I have sitting around with a bad sound/power card, perhaps decorate it, and when it's all good, give it to my husband for his very own!

Glad you got the Pismo working. That sounds like a challenge. Parts machines can be fun to restore, but it seems like whenever I get the itch to do that, I end up spending more in parts than it would cost to just buy a working machine outright.

As for the sticker residue, I've used Goo Gone which is a citrus-based cleaner that is made just for that purpose. Goo Gone works great, and it smells good, too.

I've got almost every PowerPC PowerBook (pre-G4, that is) except a Lombard. At some point I'll have to pick one up. For a long time I was thinking about using one as a car DVD player. These days, there isn't much more you can do with them than use them strictly for entertainment. What do you think your husband will do with the Lombard?

So you're going to restore the Pismo for yourself, and you're going to give your husband a low-end FrankenLombard, eh? Good for you! I recently caved and gave my wife my dual 1 GHz QuickSilver CPU card to use in her Mac and took her single 933 MHz G4 to use in mine. Call me a sucker...

Peace,
Drew
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Power to the PowerPC!