Modding the iBook G3 Clamshell to be Transparent
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- My beloved iBook G3 Clamshell Special Edition works great now that we've fixed the power jack, and upgraded to an mSATA SSD. It still has one glaring problem though - it's freaking hideous. The once dignified Graphite colors have degraded into a blotchy mess on the rubberized portions of the case, and the Apple logo is long gone. Let's do the famous transparency mod, and see if we can transform this wrinkly old fella into a looker again!
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🍏 Check out the LEM article about the mod, with a beautiful result: lowendmac.com/...
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#macintosh #ibook #g3
This is seriously one of the most underrated retro tech channels on TH-cam. You deserve many more subscribers than you have for the effort you put in.
Couldn't believe he only had 9k subs. Easily deserves 100k with this content and quality.
X1000
A couple of months ago he had less than 1k - exponential and very well deserved growth!
Never apologize for modding brother. These clamshells deserve all the love they can get.
also since it's his, he's legally allowed to do whatever the hell he wants with it
4:50 Somewhere here Apple realized that the logo is upside down when sitting at Starbucks, which illumination would make even more obvious.
The upside down logo was supposedly an intentional thing. I'm paraphrasing here, but the original intention was to make the experience nicer for the user as opposed to onlookers.
@@F_I_J_I_W_A_T_E_R People weren’t sitting in Starbucks back then. At the table at home it made sense to have it facing the user.
@@jonasthemovie I wouldn't rule it out, the clamshell models were the first to support Wi-Fi after all. Especially with this 466 model, which was still for sale around the time they started making Snow models.
Back in the day I really wanted a clamshell iBook! I'd love to have one now, esp with the mods you're gonna do to yours! I'll be watchin'! Great content as always Sean! Keep it up!
Thanks man!
@@ActionRetro No problemo~
you need to slap some LEDs in there to have more light inside the case to make it easier to see the parts. if you position them in the right place you could highlight key areas. just a thought
The subtle effect actually looks quite good! Gives it a pretty unique look, a cool mod for sure.
Very much looking forward to seeing the future mods to your clamshell. Such style with a better display and G4 power? Very yes!
Nothing like tech videos in the morning to get your day started.
Honestly personally I love the modding and I think it’s one of the things that makes this channel unique. I love seeing a mint restored machine but every vintage Apple channel can show me that, where as here I get so see some tasteful mods that most people are too scared to see and it’s nice to see something new!
Thanks man!
@@ActionRetro Hey Sean, I wanna say thank you for re-igniting my love for these vintage apple products. During the pandemic I began buying everything I could get my hands on. Thanks for the fantastic videos keep em coming!
I wish these did have a light up logo. It would look amazing with the coloured logo!
When it comes to restoration versus modding, I think if you own it, do what you like with it. The world is full of homogenous, fully restored retro machines, and if you’ve put a SSD in a clamshell, you’re already going to hell. You own it, give it some character. Make it truly yours, and that’ll have its own value,
I do think all restorations and mods should come with a business card, detailing what was done and who did it, though, because to collectors in another ten or so years, specific restorers and modders might be sought after.
From what I've read, it's definitely the adhesive, but the issue is that the adhesive degradation tints the rubberized material, so yeah it's done. I would recommend first removing it and seeing how it looks with nothing to replace it, and if you don't like it, use a *very* low-grit sandpaper and a sealer to layer-by-layer cover the rubberized coating and entrap it inside a sealed "prison", then paint over-top of it. Alternatively, you can also 3D-print replacement pieces out of regular plastic, which might be a go-to for a better look (that may even include custom colors/designs).
I did the metal delete to my blueberry iBook back in the day, mostly because there was a bunch of dark junk on the edges of the metal where the paint flaked off or something. The first gen models definitely had a more transparent body than the later SE ones did. It's probably better to leave the bottom metal piece in there however because it doubles as a heat spreader for a few chips such as the GPU and the disk controller (IIRC) which will get pretty hot without it.
I never tried replacing a large BGA device with a heatgun because it's a very touchy process with a high failure rate outside of tightly controlled environments. Good luck with it.
Hey ! The iBook G3 is painted on the inside. It's a greats mod since it is really easy to wipe off that white paint and it paint it with blue or red transparent spray, I done it a few years ago and turned to be handsome !
I think they didnt light up the Apple logo because when the laptop is open, the logo is upside down on the Clamshells. It would look kind of silly, and in terms of branding, i think they decided to axe it.
They did do this on the PowerBook G3 of this era. Even when those also had the logo upside down. No idea why the clamshells were passed on this treatment.
Living my retro Mac dream vicariously through your videos. I would love to have a maxed-out clamshell of my own, but I don’t have the resources and time to make it happen. I’d love to see a G4 and a better screen in this unit.
HA:) You beat me to it, I bought four processors from the same seller, but as usual I have more in process projects than finished ones:) Can't wait to see your upgrade.
Hey man, that mod is pretty sweet, I think I like it better subtle like this. Shame there was nothing to be done for the coloured plastic part, though.
There's a noticeable improvement in the audio here, too. Especially in the first five-ish minutes. It sounds like you were a bit further away from the mic. Plosives (P, B, T, etc sounds) were rendered far more naturally, and there were no mouth sounds that I noticed.
The second segment where you're actually handing the laptop was a bit quieter than the first segment, and it sounds like you moved a bit closer again after that (at about or just before 5 minutes in). I think the audio in the second segment would have been just fine if it were boosted a little more, and moving closer again wasn't strictly necessary. (Though I can totally understand if it happened unintentionally instead of intentionally, I have been known to drift to that closer, proximity-effect, emphasised plosives zone accidentally.) If background noise becomes an issue, many noise suppression solutions (such as in Audacity) do a great job for speech.
Anyway, I've always had a real soft spot in my heart for these laptops. The carry handles, the cute shape, the colours. I bet wifi reception was pretty good, all things considered. Also even though the trackpad is tiny, the design of the button pleases me far more than the later laptops.
Of course, as you say, the screen can be a huge limitation. I love the idea of doing a screen swap and a CPU upgrade. Make a stealth ultimate version of one of these! A G4 has enough oomph to install Linux on as well and run modern utilities (with a lightweight GUI option), which works quite nicely with this size and type of screen. I don't know if there's any way to get modern wifi authentication protocols on this hardware though. I know the later "AirPort Extreme" cards can still support WPA2 today, but I don't know about how the original AirPort behaves. But yeah, this could get even better for multi-booting and making it perform :D definitely bringing one of those to a coffee shop would be pretty dang cool. Outshine everyone else with a way more recent Apple laptop.
All in all, another awesome video 👍
Great job man, turned out amazing!
I've dealt with similar discoloration before on other devices and plastic parts, my suggestion would be to gently warm the material up with a heat gun or hair dryer and see if you can reflow the material a bit. This trick works very well on other semi-transparent rubber coatings.
I did more or less this exact mod last year, but with one of the older model iBooks, and the more transparent plastics do make a dramatic difference. In my case, the rubber was pretty much fine but the metal shielding had some weird corrosion on it, so removing that was kind of a no-brainer. I'll post a link to some photos of mine in a separate comment (just in case TH-cam flags it).
I don't think Apple changed the plastics to be more durable (the problem with cracking seems to be something that happened over the long term and probably wouldn't have been obvious while these were still new). I'm pretty sure the change to the plastics was entirely an esthetic choice that had the side effect of making them more durable.
Here are the photos: imgur.com/a/GYcbpvH
Yeah that looks really incredible. I didn't expect this iBook to be a completely different kind of plastic - I was hoping for your kind of effect
Cool stuff! Gonna' have to stay tuned to see if these upcoming mods are worth it or not, I have an indigo G3 Clamshell and it's my favorite of my collectible laptops.
Wish I could find a DVD drive cover for it though... The CD drive cover doesn't work (posts hit in different spots) and they neve seem to have made DVD drive covers in Indigo. It seems like it could be done with a 3D printer though, assuming anyone is able to 3D print clear blue plastic, lol.
If you made silicone molds I bet you could recreate the entire shell out of transparent resin. That would make for an interesting mod.
We modded these back in the day too, so dont feel bad.
Bold plans for upgrade :) I am really curious how this will end...Clamshell G4 - really nice !!!
Thanks for trying retrobrite so now we know that it won't do anything.
What is this rubbery material? Should by all reason be SBS or some kind of SBS graft. I don't think i've seen much research on their degradation modes.
Yay another Action Retro video this is gonna be great!
I see u everywhere haha
@@FS--ew3se Probably because ive been a fan since his channel started getting big
@@gp3328 ye he is a very good youtuber and deserves more subs
I'd love to see some kind of mod to use the screen and keyboard, but replacing the insides, maybe for a raspberry pi or something similar, to have more use of something so beautiful in this day and age
This guy put an i5 in his: th-cam.com/video/iTIJs0gK0HU/w-d-xo.html
you don't need 8MB of VRAM for 1024x768. You need a minimum of 2 if you want it at 16bit (thousands). it'd be 4MB for 32-bit color (millions). The incompatibility likely has something to do with the screen hookup.
I've also picked up one of those G4 chips. Planning on doing a G4 mod on my iMac G3 with it! Sadly it'll need a fan after that but it should probably have one anyways.
Nice!!!
This channel is starting to get crazy. Replacing a soldered CPU? You’ve got bigger balls than me my friend.
Haha thanks
If it’s a BGA CPU, then I’m sure it would be smaller balls…
what I'd experiment with is a stronger bleaching solution to turn the rubbery plastic much paler, sealing the white plastic with something and dunking the whole thing in a solution of dye to get -some- penetration into said plastic to get a brighter more even color, but I have no idea if it'd work with that plastic.
What I'm thinking is I'm going to try to find a new back case in nice condition, and then use the old one for experiments on bleaching and restoring the color
I'm pretty sure you will need a normal soldering iron as well for the CPU swap to clean up the pads on the motherboard with desoldering braid.
That Will Be A Cool Mod Sean And Also I Like It With Out The Shielding Looks Better
Could you take a heat gun/hairdryer to the lid and melt the glue holding the rubberised parts on? Then you'd perhaps be able to deal with the discolouration.
I think you're right about it being the rubberised coating/adhesive breaking down, in the same way that old tape turns yellow from the adhesives used. Not sure there's any way to fix it, it's a shame but can't see any good way of restoring it.
Looking forward to the CPU upgrade, should be scary :)
while you had it open, you could've taken some scissors to the inside cage above the HD. And then if you leave the top case of the mSATA adapter off or cut a whole in it, you'll have instant access to the mSATA by lifting the keyboard, as one does with a Pismo. I've done it on mine and I *love* it. I haven't had to open it up since
Oh yeah I do plan on doing this!
its an Alienware laptop :)
🤣🤣🤣
Alienwhere? Alien here!
Great video as aways! Are you planning to mod the cooling in it, like Greg Hrutkay and Dosdude did in their mod?
Looks good, I reckon, nice work!
3:55 Speaking of Aliens. I've been watching the Roswell series lately. And loads of these Clamshells and other Apple's from that era can be seen in those episodes :)
Apparently the graphite and indigo iBooks were the ones most notorious for that discoloration. Check out this guy's video where he improves the overall finish using a special kind of ink. th-cam.com/video/48MC0GL3df0/w-d-xo.html
Have you ever considered a blasphemy build? Fitting an apple system into an old IBM case or vice versa
Oh yes
where can we get that wallpaper tho
I'm just glad that you are having a go.I would have a go myself were I not disabled.
It was clearly ugly 20 years ago as well ;P
Big fan of your channel, keep up the good work! :)
Looking forward to the LCD mod and even more so for the CPU !
I love your videos. Great content, and classic Macs! Please keep it up!
Well if you have a replacement shell you should experiment on removing the rubber
The shielding is there for a reason, but yeah, why not rip it out? It's not like You're really going to use that clamshell laptop anyways. At least You're not going to rely on it. Some interferences going in might not hurt it too much. Btw, I destickiefied an Apple puck-mouse by using tuner cleaner. It's a cleaner that's plastic safe and leaves no residue; that's why it can be used on tuner capacitor fingers. Worked for me. The puckmouse is still nice and clean and sticky free :D
I was hoping there was going to be a completely new case that was clear acrylic D:
WHAAAATTTTT????? I thought you have 100k sub 😂😅
Your Voice is so relaxing....
I'm calling the FCC on you
The Fancy Cats Corps?
I personally hate it when people transparent mod clams but hey its your personal device... At least your not trying to con people on ebay claiming them as "Rare Transparent"
Try toothpaste to remove yellowing from the rubber i have used rhis method on a early macbook pro with rubber coating on the botom
Maybe just cover the outside in a skin to dull down the graphite area...
RBG clamshell 😮
I want to say the paint is why it is more opague.
Ink will restore the color.
Great video!
HA! you say "wuder" the same way people at home do!
im thinking of recreating replacment apple logos for clamshells using polymorph... allthough im not sure how to do it
Oh man that would be super cool!
@@ActionRetro in that case. I'll definitely concider it! ;)
Kinda looks like mold. Rubber tends to age like fine milk...
🤣
I like the channel but I don't get what value the pointing at the laptop and repetitive hand gestures add
Thanks 👈👆👈👆👆👆👈👋
Cute Cat!!!!!
nice
G4 awesomeness good luck 🤞I watch dosdude on you tube he knows BGA maybe contact him I don’t know him but he makes it look easy
wayyyyyy to many ads in this.
Adblockers are your friend...
Claim you here before 100 views
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89th like, 16th comment. no one cares but i just wanted to say it
First
#27 liker
Second,lol
Third, haha