I Bought More Than 100 Laptops

John from Roadkill Inc is someone that I’ve gotten to know over the last few months.  He lives here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area and we share a love of Retro Computing.  See his YouTube channel here...  I've been doing repairs (and attempted repairs) for John in exchange for broken retro computers, at least one of which has already been featured on my bLog, the Orange Clamshell Trash to Treasure article.

John is downsizing his collection, and he offered various portions of his collection of low-grade machines in order to avoid having to move them.  He offered me a deal I couldn't refuse, thanks John!  I purchased 118 laptops, and used my minivan to move them...

If you've watched John's channel before, you'll know that these have all been recovered out of the eWaste stream at a recycler.  Some of the machines he gets are in good shape, but these are all C and D grade machines, so until I've had a chance to clean each one and try to power it up and evaluate, hauling them like this isn't going to cause significant additional damage.

Here's another picture setup in the garage at home...

In the foreground, we have G4 White and Translucent iBooks from the early 2000s, mostly 12” machines, but some 15” iBooks.  The Aluminum machines are 15" Powerbook G4s from the early 2000s.  These machines are about 20 years old, and have just started to regain popularity as these are the last machines that can run Mac OS 9.2 in the "Classic" environment on Mac OS 10.  To the right, there are a bunch of PowerBook G3s, and behind on the table saw are the grey and black 68k and early PowerPC PowerBooks.

For intake, I’m cleaning the outside of each computer using water and a microfiber cloth to get most of the dirt off so that they can be stacked without causing additional scratches and damage to one another.  Then, I’m powering each machine up and writing a post it note about what I observe.  This is just a condition check, there is no significant troubleshooting happening at this stage, just trying to figure out how many of these have signs of life, how many good screens there are, and if there are groups of machines that should be combined to make one good machine.

Just this intake process alone has proven to be several weekends worth of work, but I got my car back in the garage, so it’s going well!  I’ll provide some highlights from the oldest machine in the lot too the youngest...

The oldest classic Mac in the lot is a PowerBook 150.  I’ve already fixed up and rescued a PowerBook 145B from John that I built up out of two recycled machines.  The screen is a bit weak and flickers on my 145B, so I was hoping to use the screen from the 150 if it was not smashed, but unfortunately, they are not compatible. However, I still may be able to use some of the case plastics off the 150 to improve my 145B.

There are two generations of PowerBooks for which I have no power supply, and can’t do power up testing.  The PowerBook 500 series, and the PowerBook 190 / 5300 series.  The four 500 series machines that I have are incomplete and I won’t be able to make one functioning machine out of them.  Also, this series has a bit of an odd 4 pin plug, so I may take a pass on this repair and trade these parts machines to another collector.  The PowerBook 190/5300 series machines use a 24VDC barrel jack, I will have to sort through my saved power supply drawer and see if I have something that can work for this.

There were four 1400 machines, and I was pleased to see three 3400s as well.  The 1400s are a gap in my collection and I think I’ll be able to get one or two running machines out of this lot, as there are two working screens here.  The 3400s are not complete machines, none of the three had a keyboard, so I could not do power on testing.  I already have a 3400 I got off Craigslist last year. That computer has a screen that works, but is a bit flickery (it probably needs a recap) Maybe there will be a screen here that I can use and I’ll certainly keep a parts machine.  So there are a couple of projects in this group of machines.

The G3 PowerBooks use the same power supply as the Clamshell G3 that I have.  These machines are in rough shape but there are machines that boot and there are good screens in the lot.  I will have to combine parts from 3 or maybe even 4 machines in order to get one running computer, so this will be a lot of work!  I’m hopeful that I may be able to get 2 working Wallstreet machines and 2 working Pismo machines out of this lot.  At this time, I don’t have any of these black G3 machines in the collection, and this is one of my favorite eras of Retro so these are the machines I’ll probably work on first when I do get through intake and into the process of actually fixing them.

There are 39 iBooks ranging from the translucent to the solid white ones.  Although I did not bLog about it, I've already repaired five of these white iBooks from a previous lot from John and I enjoy working on this generation of machines. These are considerably more repairable than the current offerings from Apple, who have adopted an Anti-Repair stance.  While I'm on my soapbox, have you signed the Minnesota Right to Repair petition yet?

I have completed intake on these machines and as expected they are be in better shape.  Yield on these should be about 2/3s of the machines, but again these are recycled machines, so there are no museum pieces here.  I will likely keep some of these machines, but if you live in the area, keep an eye on Craigslist as I plan to sell some of these off to fund further adventures in Retro Computing.

There are 43 15” Aluminum PowerBooks.  These are the last of the PowerBooks, and the last PowerPC laptops that Apple made.  After completing intake on these, I’m hoping to get about 1/2 of these machines working (given enough time for repairs).  The biggest challenge with these is that dents in the top cover of the laptop can cause dark spots on the display even if the display isn’t smashed.  If anyone has any tricks for pulling dents out of Aluminum PowerBooks please let me know in the comments.

Well, as you can see, this purchase has left me with projects that should last a good long while.  I’ll keep updating the bLog about these repairs as I go along.  Thanks for reading, and please do let me know in the comments if you have you any good memories of these machines, or if you have any suggestions for me about how to do the repairs?