The cyborg needs maintenance

Good news: I got accepted into PSU.

Bad news: Fuchikoma got knocked off onto the hard hard floor this morning.

Good news: Everything seems to be working still, though I haven't checked the optical drive yet.

Bad news: The case is however very badly cracked and I need to hunt down a refurbisher to see if I can find a new case somewhere.

Good news: I have a job lined up for the summer, and a second potential one I interview for on monday.

Bad news: I officially ran out of money a week ago, and it's still four weeks yet till summer starts.

Ug. Things've been hectic still. Slowly on the upwards slope of things, but still hectic. Fuchi's about four years old at this point. He's from the very first generation of widescreens back in the days of the titanium powerbooks, before the ultrawidescreens, before 802.11g, before the aluminums, before bluetooth was commonplace, back when the largest available ipod was 20GB, before the intel chips were even announced let alone in production. I'm not sure how easy it'll be to get ahold of a new frame given how long the model's been out of production for, but so long as I can find one, the replacement shouldn't be terribly difficult. Speed-wise fuchi's been just starting to show his age; mostly because of OS upgrades, all programs run perfectly fine even still.

Even if I had money, it's not yet time to start looking for replacements. I'm one of those people who keeps computers around until they're well and thoroughly beat before replacing them. By the time I do replace them, the old ones are old enough to be entirely useless. When I got fuchi I got the best model that was available at the time so that he would last as long as possible before needing replacement, and physical abuse aside I figure I've still got another couple years left in him. I'll probably be ready to switch about the time Apple officially ceases supporting the powerpc chips.

So, If any of you happen to see a case for an old 15.2" titanium powerbook g4 — primarily the outer rim of the main body, secondarily the bottom plate — do let me know. Also if you happen to know of any refurbishers in the greater pdx area, particularly those who deal with macs. I figure I'll ask at The Mac Store tomorrow to get their advice, and I'll also see if I can't get info about Mac Renewal from the geek, but after that I'm not sure where to head other than online.

Update (Sunday, 21 May 2006): So it looks like Apple does still have a stockpile of parts. Getting them direct from them would cost about 350$. The bottom plate is 100, and apparently the outer rim only comes with the top plate which together are a restricted part, meaning they want the puter shipped back to them to refurbish in case anything else was broken. The guy at the mac store suggested I may want to just scrounge through ebay to see if I can't get the parts from someone with a broken logic board or cracked lcd. I figure it can't hurt to look.