ok, well I have a relly nice 12' Alluminum G4 that I totally love, unforunately the alluminum case has taken a beating over the years, I got a son who loves to drop it, it's a tough sucker been kicked punched dropped half a dozen times, so I was thinking that I would like to buy an old broken down G3 Clamshell on ebay and case-mod the guts of my Powerbook into the Clamshell umm.. shell... What do you think? I love the clamshells i think they are awsome I always wanted one when they came out but I never had the cash. Now that i have some money to burn their way obsolete and nowhere near even completely maxed out what I would need for it to function properly.

I don't want to keep any of the guts of the clamshell i just want the case... What do you you think? Is it possible? Can It be done? What do you guys think I will need to do it? Dremel ect?

Go for it. It'll take a lot of work to get the motherboard to mount inside the clamshell case due to its unique design. You are talking about a mod though, and anything is possible if you put your mind to it. The hardest part will be adapting the case to fit the new board and optical drive, and then the battery issue. You COULD use the original iBook battery, but you'd have very little life. You'll most likely have to build your own.

well i am thinking of it more of a case mod, i did some research and got some spcs from the net on both of the lappys. I THINK that if I rip all of the guts out of the clam-shell then i can fit the mb from the g4 in there nicely, it seems to have enough room, the problem is going to be with modding the holes for the USB. power ect. I had a couple thoughts on this i was thining that if I fill the origional clambook ports with epoxy or something sand it down and dremel in new holes where they powerbook ports will be. the other problem i thought of was the optical drive obviously i have the internal slot drive on the g4 and the Clammy has the tray, whati thought it i will rip out the origional cd-rom and superglue the cover directly to the case, line it up with the slot drive and cut a nice little slot for it, again this is all speculation because i don't have the Clamshell yet, and my g4 is still in one piece. I also thought about molding the bottom piece out of acrylic or carbon fibre or something maybe even Silver Got a silver smith by me, would be expensive but gangsta. My main concern is the keyboard, and really the only thing I would want to keep from the origional clambook. Don't know if it will be compatible.... anyhow, i hope to start this mod soon. Battery might be an issue too .... Any ideas would be appriciated. Anyone know about molding? Carbon fibre? or Acrilyic? if i wanted to make a replica of the bottom part of the clamshell? what would be best to use?

Thanks

m1

It sounds like a good challenge, let us know how it turns out.

I'm in the middle of turning an old Clamshell iBook into a digital picture display. I still have the case pieces if you want them. They're old and cracked, but you could work out what you're going to do with them before you try it on a mint case, since those are few and far between. I've got all the grounding plates and frames, but the bottom jelly color has come off and there is no drive bezel. You could have them (and a bunch of screws for the MB) for whatever it costs to ship 6 pounds from 85335 to you, plus $5 for the box and gas.

Update: I did locate the CD drive bezel too!

I had the same idea at about the time when my clamshell became obsolete. I think that for me the main barrier to kicking off this mod was difficulty in adapting the screen to the clamshell.
Any progress? I'd be interested to know how it's coming along.