Powerbook Ti, new SV25 mod, [H]appy [H]olidays

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BigBadBiologist

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 19, 2001
Messages
3,260
First the Powerbook Ti 400:
specs really aren't that impressive, but if you've ever taken apart a powerbook, you should be impressed that I could get it back together (the stupid thing is glued together in a lot of places). It's been totally disassembled and each component has been individually painted.
ti-1.jpg


ti-2.jpg


ti-3.jpg


Modded SV25 system 2: Basic mod on the outside, just black paint on the case, painted drives, and a polishing job for the front. All LEDs have been replaced with blue ones, fans have been modded to run at lower voltages, I've replaced all the caps with higher grades one, I added an extra fan to the power supply, pin modded the Celeron 1.3 CPU to run at 1.7.

sv25-black1.jpg

sv25-black2.jpg


Finally, [H]appy [H]olidays: various leftover LEDs and ethernet cable strands to make a Christmas tree.

tree.jpg


tree-lights.jpg
 
The X-Mas tree has to be the best mod you did that day ... :D

Nice job on your Mac, looks good in my opinion. Pretty brave of you to fiddle around with an expensive equipment. I have a Sony Vaio myself and I haven't even removed the stickers on it :p (not that I plan to). Good job and it's kinda cool to see a black Mac, it stands out from the usual White or Silver models.
 
Nice painting...I like the painted notebook...

Also, a tutorial on the Christmas tree? :p ...Seriously though...
 
Thanks for the kind words. The black is an automotivie paint (just some extra black my dad had laying around) with a Sikkens clearcoat that is for door jams in cars (so it's supposed to be a little more durable, but not as shiny).

As for the high dollar powerbook comment, it really needed to be taken apart anyway. The outer edge of the powerbooks is plastic that is glued to metal. The glue was breaking apart and this was causing a lot of the plastic to crack. So I really needed to repair all of this stuff anyway. So I just figured, since I was totally tearing this thing apart, I may as well make it look cool.

As for the cristmas tree, it is made out of very firm ethernet cable. I just made a cardboard cone and marked off various distances along the cone and made concentric rings of ethernet cable. From there, it was just a lot of soldering. The trunk is where the power comes in. Each ring is attached to the trunk individually and one wire is a positive for the LED above it and one is a negative for the LED below it. All of the LEDS are essentially wired in parallel so you need a 4V power supply that can handle high amperage (although I've never actually calculated how much I should have). The power supply I am using is from an old cordless screwdriver and it gets VERY HOT, so I think it's sort of underpowered. I definitely wouldn't reccomend leaving this thing plugged in for extended time periods without accurately calculating your power requirements.
 
Are the lines down the edge of the Powerbook screen part of the background?
 
BigBadBiologist said:
No, it's just the wrong screen for that model powerbook. It was broken, I bought the wrong replacement :(
Click to expand...
Ah, sorry to hear that. Are you going to get it fixed?
 
Really like the polishing job you did on the Shuttle system! :D

Have you considered repainting the drives with a chrome silver paint? You did such a great job polishing the aluminum front of the case, that the drives almost seem drab in comparison!

I know my local walmart carries silver & brass chrome paint, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding it. I've used the silver chrome paint before (not for a computer mod), and I can definitely tell you that it puts normal glossy silver paint to shame!

Again, super job! :cool:
 
dudewth said:
Ah, sorry to hear that. Are you going to get it fixed?
Click to expand...
Heh, yeah, I will as soon as I save up the ~175.00 for a new (lower res) screen or find someone that wants to trade for a higher res screen..

Thanks again for the kind words everyone. If anyone else makes any more LED trees, make sure to let me know. Mine looks a little crude, so I'm looking forward to improvements.

I have tried the chrome paint, and I've never been able to do it well. The paint never really seems to dry and it seems really easy to get fingerprints in. The "aluminum" that these are painted actually looks perfect with the original rough face plate. I was thinking of sanding down the drive faces and painting them gloss black and putting black allen head screws in where the stainless ones are.

Here's a link to another SV25 system I did a while ago (I posted this a while back here):
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze85qtq/id1.html
 
paint looks good on the PowerBook.. I'll have to do the same thing with my VAIO lappy - I've already opened it numerous times - I didn't take it completely apart tho.. but it's not far from there ;)
..and I love the christmas tree :D
 
Very nice job on the PowerBook. I'm sorry to hear that you ordered the wrong monitor though. :( I think the LED tree would be a fun little project. :)
 
For typicall LED's, right around 10mA is how much current you want to put in them. If you wire them in series, its necessary to use a resistor in series with them to limit the current going though them. If you wire them in series, you can only be drawing 10mA for all of them, but you have to worry about the ~0.7V voltage drop across each one (some LED's have ~1.5V drop so check the specs). Using a 12V supply you can only have 9 or 10 LED's in series any more and you wont have enough voltage left to turn them on (can be used like a VU meter this way) The other way is to wire them in parallel. You can get away with putting less voltage into them, but you have to start worry more about how much current they are drawing because this time it adds up. You can get away using a 5V supply with 10 LEDs in parallel as long as it can supply 100mA or more (assuming 10mA for each LED).

The equations and stuff are a little more complex, but thats the basic idea.

[edit]
LOL.... looks like you are using 18 LED's and if you dont have a resistor in there it looks like you are trying to pull 5amps for each LED... thats 90amps!! no wonder its getting hot! Its having to deal with 360W of power! suprised nothing has fried yet if thats the case. You can put a 10 to 22ohm resistor in between the supply and the LEDs and that'll cut the current its drawing WAAAY down (down to 8mA-18mA or so for each LED).
[/edit]
 
Nice christmas tree! Hmmm could make a good present for the relatives that like that sort of thing.


miek said:
For typicall LED's....
Click to expand...

You're right about the leds drawing too much current but the numbers are a bit out. Regular diodes have a drop of 0.7V, those LEDs have a voltage drop of 2.1-3.0V depending on the colour.

Putting a 100ohm resistor in series with each LED will give them a much longer lifespan. The total current will be 18leds * 20mA = 360mA.
 
You could go to a machine shop and get them to make a tray and faceplates out of aluminum for you on a CNC mill :D
 
heh. Actually, my dad's a machinist and I polished the front of the SV25 at his place. I sort of hinted that I "may" want a billet front instead of the polished one and he was like "yeah, I wonder how much someone would charge for making one of them..." :)

I may try the reistor thing with the main power going into the tree, but there's no way I'm going to put a resistor at every LED :eek:
 
eh, close enough for government work :)

The LEDs I used for the tachometer I built dropped ~0.8V for the green and ~1.5V for the red. the yellow ones dropped around a volt. But I do realize that different LEDs drop different amounts depending on color/cp/etc..
 
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