Hi,

I'm new here and I have a wierd idea for a project that I always wanted to try.
They just introduced the Macbook Air, which is all sexy and everything, but the
price and features left out put it out of my range. I miss the old 12" powerbook,
which was in my opinion the best notebook apple ever made. So what I thought
of doing was to take the logic board from a macbook or maybe a PC laptop, and
try to stuff it into the housing of the 12" powerbook. I know this sounds radical
but if I sacrificed the optical drive which I rarely use anyway, I think I could do
it. I could get a PC motherboard (maybe even with decent graphics) and run
OSx86 on it. What do you think, is this even feasible?

Cheers :-)
Gabriel.

MAN, that 12" Powerbook rocked, didn't it! I had one, absolutely loved it! MacMod was actually re-born on that laptop

As for stuffing a macbook into it, I don't know if it would fit or not. I would bet the logic board is almost the length of the macbook, which would be too long for the 12", IIRC. I am sure there are some PC boards out there, but you are going to have a time and a half trying to line up the ports with those things.

Maybe some other folks will have a better idea on the size issues you have for this mod.

But, either way, I say "Just Do It".

My idea was to remove the ports from an original powerbook logic board (a fried one) and
solder some kind of tiny "extension cords" to the ports on the replacement board. I've looked
long and hard at photos of the powerbooks interior parts and from what I see the optical
drive uses a huge amount of space ;D If I get rid of it, there should be almost double the room
for a motherboard and maybe even a bigger battery and better cooling system. I could also
switch to a 1.8" HD like in the Macbook Air (thats just a thought, I haven't checked how
much those little bastards cost yet :P)

yea, I just don't know if the mobo is just notched out for the optical, or the entire board is square. Know what I mean.... like a square/rectangle or more like an "L"

notice how the optical spot is notched out. Thats a macbook mobo

*edit: might have to right-click, view image to see the right side...

Here is a shot of the powerbooks inside:


It looks like most of todays laptop logic boards will fit without
too many problems, the worst thing would be getting the existing
components like the hard drive and the battery to fit in snugly and
still keep it flat enough to put the housing back together 8-) I also
don't know about the cooling, it looks really precisely engineered
so that might be a problem.

Actually I think the battery could be the toughest part to sort out. You might well get a MacBook board in it, but the 12" battery may not fit afterwards, and the MacBook one certainly won't.

i agree with war, battery will be the hardest thing to get in there. Maybe you could disassemble the battery so that it is not removable and move the cells around in such a way to make it fit, like have some of the cells in the area where the optical was, etc. If you're feeling adventurous, I say go for it, but it won't be easy. I'm still on my 12" PB, and I love it.

Im not sure I would go moving cells around with a battery. I guess I have too little faith in cell stability. Maybe you can use the stock 12" battery and modify the connector to the mobo if needed... Not sure if the voltage is the same or not...

What about the board from a Mac mini? I haven't compared them, but it's worth looking into.