Just in the nick of time
Well, I'm finally set up with the PowerBook again. I had reassembled it after installing the new hard disk several hours ago, but ran into a glitch -- some of the keyboard keys wouldn't work. This sent me into a panic until I did some quick searches on the Internet and discovered that others who had had their PowerBooks serviced had similar problems. As it turns out, the delicate ribbon cable that connects the PowerBook's keyboard to the motherboard had somehow worked itself a bit loose -- enough so that certain keys worked, and others didn't.
So I had to disassemble the unit and put it back together again -- fortunately I've gotten the hang of it now, so I won't have as hard a time next time.
One other thing I'd wanted to do that I didn't have the opportunity to -- adjust the tension on the hinges. The PowerBook's screen has a tendency to flop open and doesn't hold its position very well -- I can see that the screws that hold the hinges in place are a little loose. Unfortunately, they're absolutely tiny -- Torx 6, it looks like, and the smallest I have is a Torx 8. So I'll need to take a run to an electronics store before I get another hard drive to pick up some tiny tools, too.
I've spent the last few hours reinstalling software and setting it up so my system is more or less back to where it was, at least with all my mission-critical applications and as much data as I had on my desktop computer.
Yeah, and 2GB of MAME ROMs.