MacMod.com - Your Mac Modification HQ

Hi-Def PowerBook

Written by Baxter Brittle

Monday, 04 September 2006

Recently there has been a bit of publicity about this modification. So here is the long and short of it.

I have this PowerBook that I had been using as a media centre for some time after it was given to me by a friend. The screen was cracked and he was given it for free and passed it on to me when he got his new PowerBook. I was hunting around for a replacement LCD for it when I came across an WUXGA display at a very reasonable price - so I took the plunge. I had been waiting and waiting for Apple to put one of these into their line of lap- tops and rumors kept saying next tuesday, no, I mean next tuesday. So stuff it lets do it ourselves

So lets look at the complications of putting this type of display into a PowerBook:

Most PC displays are 15.4" where as the PowerBook was 15.2". Somehow I'd have to shoehorn this display into the existing housing
The display uses a much larger connector to the standard PowerBook display

Okay so where do I start? Well at first I was screwed - I wouldn't know how to rewire the LVDS cable to even test if this display would work in this machine. Luckily Apple came to the rescue within days of receiv- ing my new panel Apple announced new PowerBooks with higher resolution displays (Not WUXGA). I checked out the LVDS cable for the new displays and they were using the newer larger connector. I promptly ordered a cable and had to wait for 6 weeks or so for the new cable to come in. I then took apart the machine and plug it in - it worked, just like that, plug it in it works. The image was amazing I just couldn't get enough, I was hooked. Now how to get it into the laptop?

From there I spent quite a bit of time hacking apart the original display casing to try and shoehorn it into that. I dremeled and dremeled until it could be dremeled no more. The problem was not that it is too wide to fit into the casing - the problem lies in the fact that it requires almost the entire width of the housing to fit width wise. The housing is curved at the edges and doesn't provide enough depth to allow the screen. I very very nearly got it to fit but the screen would have had no strength left to open and shut. What to do now?

I started making plans to build a display housing from scratch (Which I still may well do) but a while later Apple came to my rescue again. They introduced the MacBook Pro with a 15.4" display. I decided stuff it and promptly ordered a display bezel for one of these ma- chines. Another 6 weeks passed and I had the bezel in my hot little hands. Next problem....

The display has these tabs on it that are for installation in some hulking great Dell - they had to be removed in order to get it in the slender MBP display housing. These tabs are very hard and are attached to a very sensitive LCD display. I tried many a method to cut the little buggers off but they were proving to be very difficult. After mangling them quite severely I managed to figure out how to quite cleanly and easily remove them. Simply create a dent in the tab as a cutting line (the line along which you wish to cut) then twist the tab along that line and it will tear as it is turned.

Okay so now screen fits in housing how am I going to fit the housing to the PowerBook? Well fortunately the housing came with hinges so after a bit of trial and error I managed to figure out a way to create a hybrid between the MBP and PB hinges. You use the lower section from the PB and the upper from the MBP. I needed to grind down these two little guides in order for the screw holes to match up properly. The Screen asembly now fits into the bottom section - great tested and it works, wonderful. Put the computer back together and oh crap... the lid doesn't close! Changing the hinge alignment has caused issues with the display spacing and now sit too low.

I then had to pull the machine apart again and figure out a way to space the display out. I used these little pieces of plastic in between the two sections of hinge assembly to space them apart. This worked very well. The clutch cover also need to be moddified to fit the new display housing, my one is pretty dodgy but that is mainly because it was bent and buckled from the drop that cracked the LCD screen.

Okay so at this point I had a complete machine again that worked and the lid closed. Still a few issues, one I have fixed and one that I haven't. The first are the Airport and bluetooth antennas - on the PowerBook these are behind little plastic sections on either side of the display but on the MBP they have been relocated to the clutch cover. I did not have a MBP clutch cover antenna assembly to test out and wasn't sure whether it would even work on this machine. So I tried to mount the antennas in the lower casing around the vents and had limited success. I hunted and hunted for a place that would not block the wireless frequencies. But almost all the casing is made of aluminium. Then I realized that the screen is mostly glass/plastic. So I double sided taped them to the back of the display housing and bam wireless access.

The latch problem is the final hurdle that I have yet to overcome. The screen closes fine but due to the 2 latches rather than 1 it doesn't stay fully closed. Oh well I guess it will almost always be a work in progress until I give up - but that's the nature of mods.

I should also note at this point that myself and a bunch of others at the forums of macrumors.com have been trying to get this to work in the MBP but have had limited success as although it fits and works perfect in windows there is some sort of software issue that stops it from functioning correctly under OS X. I'll try and keep you posted as on the MBP it is a very very easy conversion that requires no moddification to your laptop - just a straight swap. This mod should also work very well in 17" PowerBooks as the panel size is the same as the PC panels ie 17" and 17" - this is untested - do at your own risk.

Materials required:

1 x PowerBook G4 Aluminium 15"
1 x 15.4" WUXGA LCD panel - In this case a Sharp LQ154M1LW02
1 x LVDS cable from Hi-Res PowerBook (1.67GHz 15" last model before MBP)
1 x MBP Bezel
2 x MBP hinges
1 x MBP Display backing (housing)
4 x Small bits of plastic 3x3x2 mm
4 x Longer compatible screws for hinge assembly

Process:

Remove tabs from new display done by using the tearing method as above
Take apart PowerBook to remove screen assembly - guides can be found on how to do this at ifixit.com
Take apart display and remove inverter board, diversity board, clutch cover, wireless antennas and hinges
Take hinge assembly's apart from both MBP hinge and PB
File or grind off the two guides from the MBP section of our new hinge
Screw two side together with two holes lined up.
Double sided tape plastic pieces to MBP bezel just be side screw holes and screw hinges into place. This should space out the screen enough to be recentered. This is where you will need longer screws
Tape antennas to inner back ing of display assembly
Assemble display as normal - see ifixit guide for MBP
Plug display and antennas in as normal and reassemble
Turn on
Enjoy it's full glory

There is one final step. Although the display will tell your computer what resolutions it op- erates at which means you get the full selection of resolutions to choose from, it doesn't know how to handle the colorsync side of things. You can calibrate it which is fine but you do lose brightness control. There is a fix however:

Open display prefs
Click on "Color" tab
Click "Open Profile"
Scroll right down to the very bot tom and find "Apple display make and model information"
Note down Manufacturer and Model ID's
Then go to - system/library/ Displays/Overrides/ DisplayVendorID-610
Find file - DisplayProductID-9c20 - this is the file for the standard dis play
Copy file to desktop
Rename file based on figures given from you're open color pro file in my case 139f so the new file should be called DisplayProductID-139f
Go back to - system/library/ Displays/Overrides/ and see if there is a folder called DisplayVendorID-xxx (In my case 4d10). If there is not create one on the desktop
Then copy your new file into your new folder and copy the folder into - system/library/Displays/Overrides/
Reboot and you should have brightness control. You will lose some of you intermdi ate resolutions but you'll still have 1920 x 1200!