Pop Goes the Logic Board. AGAIN.

I am viewing the world through Mac Internet Explorer 5.0, and it is not pretty.

Last night my iBook fried its fourth logic board.

The FOURTH.

IN 19 MONTHS.

When did it fail? About five minutes after AppleCare shut down for the evening, natch.

The only silver lining is that this morning AppleCare said they’d ship me a new iBook. (Yaaaay!)

It’s a G4, 1.6 ghz. (Double-Yaaay!)

It’s only the standard shipping model (512K RAM, 40 GB hard drive, and a combo drive). My old iBook (G3/900, 40 GB, combo drive) was maxed out with non-Apple RAM, so they won’t replace that, unfortunately. Here’s the procedure I have to follow:

  1. Apple contacts FedEx.
  2. FedEx e-mails me a link to a shipping label.
  3. I print out the label, affix it to one of the three shipping boxes I have left over from previous logic board replacements
  4. I pack my dead iBook into the shipping box and drop it off at a FedEx center.
  5. When they receive my old iBook, they’ll ship my new iBook.

Step No. 3 is a problem because my iBook can no longer receive e-mail and it definitely can’t print out anything.

I turned to Hubby’s Windows Demon, restrained for the last year-and-a-half with silver spyware chains and garlic virus wreaths (and an occasional sprinkle of holy water every now and then just to remind it who’s boss) but the Demon within has gotten too strong: it refuses to go online.

I CURSE all Microsoft products! (I’d be cursing Apple, too, if they weren’t going to send me a new iBook. 🙂 )

So the AppleCare guy talked me through dusting off an old iMac G3/400 that was sitting in my closet and getting it online. It’s running OS 9.1 and refuses to upgrade to OS 10, which means I can get my webmail, but I still can’t print anything because Canon doesn’t make OS 9 printer drivers for our printer.

I had to give the AppleCare people Hubby’s work e-mail addy. He’ll print out the labels for me… that’s what hubbies do… unless their wives leave voice mail messages every 10 minutes: “Did you check your e-mail yet? Did the FedEx e-mail come yet? How come you aren’t returning my calls?”

But back to Mac Internet Explorer 5.0, which, as I said, is not pretty.

My WordPress Quicktags don’t work and I’m a little leery of trying anything else major, so I’ll leave that alone.

I tried to do visit some of my regular reading sites, but they are unreadable. MacManx looks fine, but when I try to click on a post title, the entire post disappears and an error message appears: “Handler could not be removed.”

Nuclear Moose and Binary Bonsai show blank yellow pages with red lines, no doubt a product of K2 Beta. The only way to read them is to fire up the page source code. Podz’ site gives me a security error (as a result of the PayPal thingy) and is missing his banner image, but his comment system let me sign in.

Blogger is full of hiccups and unexpected blank dashboard pages. Hitting the Blogger comments button freezes the browser.

ProBogger looks great in Mac I.E. 5.0, though! What a relief to be able to read something legible. Just so I can spend the rest of the day without shaking uncontrollably.

Now it’s back to leaving messages on Hubby’s voicemail: “Did the FedEx e-mail arrive yet? Have you printed it out yet? Don’t forget! Call me and let me know you won’t forget!”

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6 Replies to “Pop Goes the Logic Board. AGAIN.”

  1. On second thought, iCab may be a better alternative for you. iCab is not my favorite browser, but they do have a strong commitment to providing compatibility for OS 8.5 and higher. You can find iCab here: http://www.icab.de/

    If you do choose to go with iCab, stay away from the v3.0 beta.

  2. And, just keep in mind that there is no perfect solution for OS 9, but between Mozilla and iCab, you should be able to have a some-what enjoyable web experience.

  3. Hey, James, thanks! I especially appreciate the links.

    It’s only been 19 months since I moved into OS X — I’ve completely forgotten my way around OS 9 and this old Mac IE.

  4. You know what, James, iCab is pretty darn good. It handles sites using K2 beta and I can go almost everywhere with it. It does have a few problems with pages with double scroll bars, like in the WordPress dashboard “Write Post” page, but it’s workable and fast.

    The e-mails containing the FedEx labels have not yet arrived–a pox on all Technical Specialists who promise but don’t deliver!

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