Spencer Ponte Blog

Hardware Setbacks

I finally get a website and my computer dies. My laptop won’t charge, I believe the DC connector on the Sound/DC-In board is just worn out (it’s been a long time coming). To replace it (or the whole board) involves removing just about everything inside my poor old Powerbook… keyboard, logic board, heatsinks, speakers, modem, wifi, expansion slot, etc. A new Sound/DC-In board runs $99 plus S/H. So my frankenstein workaround involves stealing the DC connector off an old Powerbook (died in a house fire) and soldering it onto my existing board… I’m not very good at soldering, so the odds that this will work are optimistically 50-50. Then if(when) that fails, I can just order a new board and throw that in.

In the mean time, my fiance has been letting me use her Inspiron when she’s not using it for schoolwork. My brother will be loaning me a clamshell iBook soon to help me whether the storm too. It’s amazing the battery life those things get.

At any rate, I probably won’t be back up and running on my system for another week or two… or three… so it may be a little while until I really get back to working on the site.