Restoring a Macintosh PowerBook 145B 

@@epiclydum you get early access if you sponsor someone it's like 5 dollars a month i think

@@epiclydum Patreon members have had access to this video for days.

Yeah, it’s a great idea!

I was using this tip in the 90s when I was fixing these. No 3D printers but using panels cut from old enclosures with CA adhesive worked fine.

I'm going to guess, that it's because retro bright is actually bleaching the plastic. I've heard reports that retro bright can cause plastic to become brittle and deteriorate much faster. That's usually the reason I hear when people state that they don't like it.

@@akaJughead That's not true. The additives that yellow were originally to improve the plastics flexibility/durability. The same chemical process that causes it to yellow, also causes it to be more brittle. So if you're working with a heavily yellowed part, it's already extremely brittle; and if you're disassembling/reassembling something for the first time in 30 years, you're gonna put more stress on the plastic. If you wanna read more, Hackaday posted an article in January with a polymer engineer who explained it.

^^ What he said. The most yellowed (or oranged) plastics I deal with are almost always cracked, or do so while working with them. The faceplates on 3.5" floppy drives are terrible about this. The little clips that snap into the housing don't bend anymore, they just snap right off. I've had to glue _so many_ of those back on, or remanufacture them with acetone and donor plastic... The retro-brighting, though, is really helpful. They may still be fragile afterwards, but they at least look nice. It isn't actually "bleaching" anything -- at least, not at first. You can tell because yellowed parts start un-yellowing, while parts that aren't yellowed just stay the same color. I use plastic bins filled with grocery store peroxide, on top of my laundry with a couple of 30W UV LED panels suspended from a DJ lighting rig stand. That way I can use it 24/7, without regard to weather. It's not failure-proof, and I have had some problems, mostly I think from my own negligence. You have to keep the parts submerged, otherwise they just bake in UV. This is tricky, because plastic tends to float, especially once the bubbles start forming. Also, if they aren't whitened enough after a few days, you just have to accept it for what it is. I've RB'd stuff for over a week and the results aren't good. That's when it starts to bleach, but not evenly. I've got some case bezels that went through that. They don't look very nice, but they didn't look very nice to start with. It's just a _different_ "not nice" now. If I want them back in OG condition, all I have to do is paint them -- which would've been the cure anyway. So, IMO, why not give it a shot? I have so much stuff that took to the RB process very nicely. I just finished a PS/1 model 2133 -- front bezel and drives. It made a world of difference in the perceived condition.

@@akaJughead That’s incorrect. Over time, UV light causes a fire retardant chemical to leach to the surface of the plastic causing the yellowing. The UV light also causes the plastic to become brittle. The retrobrite technique uses an oxidiser to draw this upper layer of the yellowing out of the plastic. It’s a process that should be monitored carefully depending on the strength of the oxidiser, usually Hydrogen Peroxide. Opinions vary but low strength (3% - 6%) over a longer time is considered a safer approach over the more aggressive 12% - 15% strength. The degree of yellowing is also a factor, slight discolouration is less likely to make the plastics brittle over heavy discolouration. Also, the use of a cream or paste over a liquid oxidiser can vary and whether the piece to be retrobrited is left unwrapped, Saran-wrapped or sealed in a Zip-Loc bag. As with all chemical processes, it’s best to try it on a small area first to ascertain the results before moving to the whole part. And it might be an idea to purchase a UV lamp or LED strip to control the retrobriting process rather than rely on the Sun.

Congratulations 🥳

Yep. The only machine worse than the 190 was the 150.

@@ThisDoesNotCompute What's wrong with the 190 and 150?

@@daemonspudguy The 190 and it's PPC cousin the 5300 had lots of fit and finish issues... paint that flakes off and weaker that normal screen hinges. The IDE hard drives feel a lot slower than the SCSI drives included in other Macs of the era. A 190 is basically a not-so-great replacement for the 500 series Powerbook.

​@@ThisDoesNotCompute.. good call wearing gloves at 2:26 Colin...... would have been okey to mention.. that the cadmium on the Ni-Cd (nikel cadmium) batteries.. (that little white powder) has been documented as carcinogenic..... especially when inhaling it.... yes.. yes.. with repeated exposures.. yes.. but never the less.....

What a piece of garbage that machine was. It bought one to replace the 145 and it died almost immediately and try and they might they never managed to fix it and offered me a refund which I spent promptly on the PowerBook 1400 which was rock solid and introduced hot-swap modules.

No, if you look in the description you can see he got it from a reddit post 7 years ago.

I as a little 6 year old I got a ibook g3 with 256mb ram and a 5gb hhd and used it till 2017(it was S L O W)

@@witmich Holy shoot, a Powerbook G3 in 2017 must really have been a pain

He must be a patient person when web browsing 😅

I'm going to guess it's probably capacitors. I have brought several PS/2 floppy drives back to life by re-capping them. And a 720K Teac. Most of those just needed new mini radial caps on the motor PCB (underneath the disk). But, I'm fixing a Mitsubishi 1.44MB drive now that had SMD cans on the controller board that leaked everywhere and took out an adjustment pot next to them. Yuck. It's _always_ the caps. And if it isn't, it probably will be.

There is the ghosting.

That's the polarizer. It can be fixed, but it's not easy.

Toshiba Tecra 700CS was also in my wish list.

Could be a new fuse needed by the battery terminals. I just restored one of these mainboards this way.

I feel like adding the lube will make the hinge smoother but the stress would be the same if the lid is continued to be opened improperly. The lid needs to be lifted from the middle up to equally distribute the stress load. I think this is what caused the hinge to have broken in such a way.

And then Steve Jobs came back