It has arrived! And it made it in one piece. It was packed with tons of bubble wrap (although somewhat insecurely), but all parts arrived in great shape. The seller also packed the trackball separately as I requested.
I plugged in the PowerBook and it immediately started up to the blue/black screen of death as expected. It can be caused by 3 faults:
1. The contrast is just turned all the way down
2. Bad capacitors on the LCD panel
3. Backlight is receiving power and turning on, but the LCD is not initialized and is not receiving signal.
It's very likely to be a combination of 2 and 3 behind my issue.
There's a small dark spot where the trackball would be, but no pink spot damage, and it shouldn't be noticeable when the LCD is actually displaying an image. You can see it in the picture, but it's minor.
After unplugging it and plugging it back in again, the hard disk spun up, and then back down, and then back up, and then back d-
Anyways, I instantly recognized the spindle sound of the drive as being distinctly one from a Conner, and upon taking the laptop apart, it is! And that's good news, as the fault I described is a known one, and is caused by a rubber bumper inside the drive turning sticky. The heads get stuck, and the drive has no idea what to do. Fixing it is as simple as opening up the drive and taping over the bumper, then it should be good to go again.
Next, I began to disassemble the PowerBook. The rubber on the bottom has all turned to goop, so I had to scoop it out with a spudger to get at the screws. The whole thing is like a big jigsaw puzzle, with lots of little covers to remove, especially for getting the display housing apart. I took care of all of them, and here's how the caps look.
Not too bad! They've certainly leaked, but they haven't done much damage yet. Just a bit of surface corrosion that should clean off with a bit of effort. My caps are due in tomorrow, but in the mean time, I can give this thing a really good clean, make my reference images for my website (and for me to use tomorrow), and get these crusty caps off. Perhaps I'll even crack the HDD open, fix the bumper issue, then test it in my 170.
I don't want to jinx it, but I think I've got fairly decent odds here! I'll be sure to look very carefully for any bad traces, and I'm probably going to desolder the 2 150uh inductors, as I've ordered replacements for them anyway, and it will give me additional clearance. Wish me luck!
Edit: Ughhh I just realized while making the reference photos that
I didn't order enough caps! The source I found for my website has it correct, but I copied it down wrong and went off my website. So I'm going to have to make another order... At the same time I'll get caps for other stuff I've gotta fix but this stinks. Guess it won't be until Monday that I'll be able to fix this darn thing.
