Touch screen iBook hackery notes (most people can just ignore this)

This is more of a note to myself… and I guess anyone who ACTUALLY cares about this stuff.

A little background: Mac portable tablets have been done and done again (and I can’t forget the Modbook)… which is actually good for me, because I don’t care about breaking new ground and would rather there be existing examples for reference. The original plan was to just turn the working iBook I have into a digital picture frame… but then I found a perfectly-sized 12.1” touch screen panel for pretty cheap, so I bit. Now that I think about it, it’d be pretty awesome to have a digital picture frame that will display other info like the weather and updates from me while I’m abroad (so the parents wouldn’t have to bug me to call) AND be able to surf the net without any additional hardware to take up space. So that’s what I’ll be making.

Anyway, while I wait for the touch screen I ordered (sketchiest website ever, but they were actually VERY responsive and sent out the order same-day), I’ve been looking around for other things I could stuff into the iBook. Besides a wireless card (which I have to fight for on eBay, apparently), I’ve decided on a tiny 4-port USB hub and a card reader (both from DealExtreme… currently down) which should fit right into the space the tray-loading CD drive will leave (it’s broken and I haven’t used a CD in YEARS… unless you count the 24 I epoxied together for a sculpture).

So to that effect, I’ve been prowling the internets for everything I can find about rerouting a USB port on the iBook. Apparently, permanently attaching a USB device to the motherboard is just a 4-point solder job (1/5 from the bottom of the page… they’re installing bluetooth, but you get the idea). Having never soldered in my life, I’m going to say I think I can pull it off… if I ask a better soldering-gun wielder very very nicely. 

BUT, I’d really like to not disable one of my external USB ports. I’ve discovered that the 56k modem in the iBook has a USB interface (according to System Profiler)… but I only see a red/black connector thingy (top right corner) for it in all the logic board pictures I can find (why does no one photograph the back left corner of the inside of the iBook in incredible detail?! Rest assure that I will), AND I can’t find anyone else who’s tried to use the supposed USB interface of the modem. 

Well, once that hurdle is jumped, I’ll need to craft some sort of opening for the 2 new USB ports (2 will be pointed IN: for the touch screen and the card reader) and card reader mess. Hopefully, the USB hub’s ports matches perfectly with the stock iBook ones, in which case I can just hack off a portion of a port cover replacement. The rest (to cover the ugly card reader I will be getting) I can model out of Fixit Sculpt (which I really, REALLY should have discovered sooner… oh the things I could have done!).

After all that, I’ll have to cut a hole in the back of the top cover and reverse-mount the LCD, with the touch screen on the outside. I don’t know how all of this will work, but it will hopefully be easier than the stuff I’m doing down by the motherboard.

Besides all that major work, there’s just a few other things I need to figure out: the speakers (they need to be pointed somewhere that WON’T be totally covered by the LCD), the sleep magnet (so the computer doesn’t sleep when I close the cover), the sleep light (might want it somewhere more visible), the mic (will probably just turn it around where it is in the monitor and drill a hole for it), the power button (probably will move it to the bottom of the case), and the color of the case (I like the white, but I think I’d like matte white more, especially if it’s supposed to display photos).

Okay, so that’s where I am right now… nowhere really. We’ll just see how this all turns out. I’ve got around 2 months to pull this off.