After getting my iBook G4 and searching for information regarding this device, I often stumbled over the iBook G3 Snow as well. While sporting a similar design language, the transparent casing and keyboard sparked my interest.

And after a while an offer on eBay popped up. A somewhat worn G3, 500 MHz with 256 MB RAM, but coming with a second battery pack and a charger. I felt lucky and made a bid. As no one else was interested, I won the auction and added another machine to my collection.

This new machine has some advantages: I can tear it up without feeling sorry, as it's worn already – I might improve my technical skills and if something goes wrong I don't have feel too bad about it. This machine comes with a US keyboard – due to my work I mostly write in English and began to prefer the layout in general. my G4 already runs Mac OS X 10.4, I want to give Mac OS 9 a go here.

I was happy to see that of the two batteries that came with the machine, one was working pretty fine. There should be enough juice for around 3–5 hours of work, like writing this post. The second one is already completely dead, maybe if I'm lucky I can revive and rebuild it.

After receiving the Mac, the condition of the machine was better and worse than expected: Mostly it was just dirty, nothing some magic eraser could not fix. The rubber spacers on top of the display were broken and gone, and the port cover had a crack next to the modem port. There are quite a few, also deeper, scratches that I will try to remove by polishing later on.

After a first cleaning I wanted to remove the display back panel which is hold in place by four screws. Sadly, the forth screw was stuck, a bit worn and therefore – for the moment – impossible to remove. With three screws gone, I at least could clean the back panel a bit more thoroughly. As the rubber parts of the display were gone, I 3D printed some replacements and glued them into place. And while on it, I also replaced the yellowed rubber feets of the machine the same way.

After digging around in the existing Mac OS X installation, nothing of interest caught my eye. So I took my G4, got a disk image for Mac OS 9 and burned it onto a CD. From here, I was able to format the internal 10 GB drive and install Mac OS 9.2.2 – only after initializing the hard-disk after formatting it, as I learned.

Booting up Mac OS 9 for the first time was quite an interesting experience. Although not unfamiliar, using the system is quite different to Mac OS X. Multitasking works different, starting applications and in general navigating the system will take some time to get used to it. But it's nice to see that some of the keyboard shortcuts I got used to were already in place.

Praised by many, the spatial Finder still feels strange to me. Since forever I'm used to have a single Finder (or Explorer) window, in which I can navigate the folder structure. On Mac OS 9, each folder opens in its dedicated window. It also retains its position, so closing and opening it will open it again in the same space. As someone who likes to bury content in file hierarchies, it takes some effort to use.

Easier to digest is the way I can change the active application. As the Dock has not yet invented in Mac OS 9 and the system uses cooperative multitasking, switching apps happens in the top right corner. This works for me, as there is basically only one application active at the same time.

Instead of the Dock, Mac OS features a toolbar with quick access to settings like display resolution and color depth, printer selection and shortcuts to Quicktime and iTunes. The so called Control Strip can be collapsed. Did I mention that the hard disk of that machine is incredible loud? Fortunately, I can spin it down with two clicks from the strip.

With iOS, Apple moved away from using files to just using apps, with the result that teenagers can struggle when data is only offered as a file, not in an app. With Mac OS 9 it is the opposite, as you can customize menus and entries by adding or removing files or symlinks from or to specific folders.

Another fun observation: Mac OS on PowerPC architecture can go absolutely reliable into standby mode when closing the lid of the computer, and keeps on working right after opening it. Why is this something special? I have not had a single Windows laptop that could or can do this (from my Surface Pro 5 with Windows 7 up until my Legion Go running Windows 11). More often than not the PC would not start again as the OS drained the battery completely over night.

On the software side, I had to get Tomb Raider 1, Apple Works (in which I type this text) and Photoshop onto the system. It's nice to see what stuck with me learning Photoshop something 20 years ago. And yes, creating an Aqua button like i had learned with some online tutorials back then still worked fine. It is just way more complicated than doing it with any modern software.

Playing Tomb Raider brought a lot of memories back. I still remember playing some levels with my childhood friend Martin at his father's PC many moons ago. Later, having my own PC, I got Tomb Raider 2 for Christmas (and convinced my parents to let me play the game early and so ahead of Christmas eve, I had played it through already. Obviously I never told them.)

Nevertheless I have to admit that the world within the game felt way more vivid and lifelike than it does today, but that could also just be me. Thanks to the Ati Rage 128 graphics chip (predecessor to the Ati/AMD Radeon series, actually the same chipset I had in my PC) the iBook comes with, at least everything plays nice and smoothly.

Apple Works does the job just fine, although I have yet to understand how to make it my fonts render nicely. Everything looks kind out of place, I would assume this is a limitation of my screen resolution in order to keep the type sharp.

I was also intrigued surfing the web on that machine, but Internet Explorer, which comes pre-installed on Mac OS, is as bad as I have remembered on Windows. Some things never change. For some reasons downloading software from macintoshgarden was extremely slow, 20 MB would took around 2 hours – a bit too much retro feeling for my liking, so I went ahead and installed Fetch in order to access a local FTP share and get files on and off the machine.

As my machine does not feature an Airport card, I had to switch to Ethernet. That works, but having a portable computer attached to a network cable feels just wrong. With the G4 Apple switched to card's format, so I cannot transfer the Airport Extreme card of my other Mac into this machine.

While surfing and playing, the machine got warm, which is to be expected, but also something else happened: I noticed a smell, not like burned electronics, but like – old sweat?

As I learned after a quick web search, the glue that is part of the keyboard assembly in that generation of iBooks can degrade, resulting in an unpleasant smell. The smell is just strong enough to annoy me. There seems to be no universal fix, so I went ahead and tried to get rid of the glue altogether.

It is used to add a plastic layer to the back of the keyboard. Using a razor blade, I removed the layer and some of the glue as well. But there is a lot of residue still on the metal of the keyboard's backside. This is where it got tricky. Removing the glue is tedious. I tried to glue tape on top of it, in order to remove it when pulling the tape again. This to some extend works, but won't get rid of the last layer still stuck on the metal. I tried IPA, I tried heat, but nothing really worked. Neither did WD40. Regular oil seems to have a better effect, but I only felt like trying it on the residue of the plastic layer.

So physically removing everything away by hand it is. But as I'm (in the best way) lazy, I took my Dremel to the task. Still, mixed results as the effort still is extreme high. So for the moment I glued Kapton tape on the bottom of the keyboard, to replace the plastic film, and stop at least some heat go into the keyboard. This workaround actually works, to some extend.

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I will test to freeze and remove the glue this way (I learned that extreme cold can make some glues bristle and easier to remove). Watch this space for updates.

The last hardware modification was to replace the noisy 10GB hard disk drive with a flash based on, as seen here.
I was a bit afraid of taking apart the machine, as it includes a ton of steps and the need to remove the complete plastic case. To support me in my task, I took my G4 and printed some iFixit screw guides on my very old Canon printer. The good news: All went well, and only around two hours later the CF Card was installed and I was about to copy Mac OS 9 on it. I have to get used to this machine making basically no noises anymore.

Other than this smelly keyboard failure, I'm rather pleased with the iBook. It's compact, the screen is sharp and just bright enough, the keyboard is pleasant even by today’s standards and due to the hardware limitation, the iBook is a distraction free little machine to get some work and gaming done.

I don't have to tell you what social media apps, designed to keep your attention to the content and to the ads, do with your brain. You know this already.
But how do we get rid of them again, or learn how to handle those dark patterns implemented into our smarthphones and our lives? While uninstalling these apps and deleting the accounts is the most obvious answer, stil I am hooked on the connection it can bring with some people not in my immediate circle.

But every step out of this mess counts and this is how I started to approach the task: First, I started to use my smartphone less, by making it a little less convenient. Uninstalling the Instagram app helped, so I have to deal with the awful web version (which in my case is a good thing) when I want to use it on the go. Also, I got the Zune for listening to music, instead of relying purely on my phone.

And then there is one more step I took: I purchased a tiny ebook reader (that I found out about while doomscrolling on Instagram...).

The xteink x4 is a tiny, 74g light and wifi-enabled e-reader that gets the fundamentals right and does not really anything else. It shows you ebooks, that's it. It has a magnets in the back so you can stick it to your phone and a SD card to store content.

What really made me pull the trigger is the fact that there is an open source project called Crosspoint that replaces the operating system and adds a few quality of life features, like uploading ebooks via web interface, and some customization options.

After flashing the firmware via web brower, I loaded a few ebooks onto it using it's local WIFI file server. No tinkering involved, everything was fast and easy. So is the general software experience.

Reading is simple, as it should be. There are buttons to flip through the pages, both on the front and on the side. The screen (220 ppi) is good enough to read with the smallest text size available. The loading times for books are somehow slower than I remember it from last ebook reader, the Kindle Keyboard (but I could be wrong). Whenever a new chapter is loaded, it takes a few seconds to index and format it for the screen. Out of the box, every ten page turns the screen refreshes, which can be adjusted but does not bother me. The battery lasts forever it seems. It comes with a screen protector and simple case in the box, all attached to ruggedize it and make it just a tool.

Everything is great then, right? Not quite: My device has a minor physical damage, as one of the keys can get stuck. In all their promo material, you can see how the e-reader attaches to the magnetic back of your iPhone, but for me, this only works if I attached it upside down (although I've learned this seems to be true for other users as well). xteink did not reply to emails I sent to their customer support on these issues, which is a bummer as my general experience with Chinese companies has been rather positive. On the bright side: It looks like I got myself a new hardware tinker project.

Update 2026-04-26: I've learned that the buttons is connected to a rubber part. For me, the rubber did not sit correctly, so I just pushed a bit more into the button, and now it works totally fine.

On the software side, I miss some features, like adding bookmarks. But there are already PRs opened in the Github, so its only a matter of time until they arrive.

I also started exporting very long posts like this outstanding one as EPUBs to read them on the go, which is quite a pleasant experience. Converting websites into EPUB is easy with the browser extension dotEPUB.

So how did this help me ending doom scrolling then, if at all? As its so compact, I take this reader with me everywhere. I started reading books when I'm waiting for friends that are a bit late, in the subway, and whenever I need to kill some time or just outside in the sun because I want to. Without it, I would reach to my phone, check emails and end up on Instagram or Reddit. Reading about ids history or how Patrick Steward became Captain Picard hooks me even more than the next short dopamine burst.

Cute cover art by Natalia

Some time ago, a friend brought me to a thrift store in order to find some used tools. In one dark corner there something caught my eye: Something shiny and special, two big silver towers, in between used TVs, plates and cups, antique pictures and just a lot of old and grim stuff.

In that very moment I got the strong feeling there was something that was missing in my life so far. Later that day, I had bought my first Mac Pro, in quite used but okay-ish condition, without any knowledge about the machine and what to do with it, or if it would even work.

Two years later I have some answers to this. But first let's get back to the beginning.

After making a good deal (the thrift store owner had no idea what these things actually were, other than noticing that there was a big apple logo on each side), I had to bring this big and heavy thing home first. Not owning a car anymore, I instead took my bike and attached a huge basket to it, in which the Mac Pro fit quite snugly. Finally home and upon closer inspection, I learned that I got a dual core 4,1, there were an SSD, a 2 TB hard drive next to the original Apple HDD, an ATI Radeon 5770 and 14 GB of RAM installed.

I could get Mac OS installed on the SSD, but the machine ran extremely slow, even taking its age into account. Right after trying to update to El Capitan, the Mac would only boot up to a grey screen. After much debugging using the Apple Service Manual and some help from tech wizards on Reddit, I at least could not find any major hardware defect. Resetting PRAM, SMC and RTC and testing some hard configurations did not help. Removing the SSD in the end helped, so I could make it boot, although from one of the HDDs.

With a now working computer, I obviously wanted to do more stuff. Mac OS El Capitan is the last officially supported Mac OS version for the 4,1, but Open Core allows to run later versions. To really make this work, it might require a faster hard drive, and maybe also a Metal-compatible graphics card.

So I went ahead, bought a cheap SSD, 32 GB of RAM, and a used AMD Radeon RX580. Installing everything was fun and painless, although the RAM would not work and I settled on 16GB. In addition, I did some MacOS upgrades that came with firmware upgrades, ending up with a computer that was basically a Mac Pro 5,1. Working with the newly upgraded (and cleaned) machine, I noticed sound in Mac OS 10.15 was distorted, with cracking sounds across all apps. I learned that there is a bug in the OS when ran in combination with my specific Xeon CPUs. And as my CPUs were never meant to be used with 10.15, Apple never fixed it. Not much could be done.

Not much other then buying two used compatible Xeon CPUs off eBay. I opted for the Xeon X5650 (Westmere-EP), not top of the line, but pretty capable with six cores each and up to 3.06 GHz. I vividly remembered how incredible expensive these CPUs were when they got released, now they cost me less than a lunch in a mediocre restaurant. But my investment came with a catch: Intel had some metal heat spreaders soldered on their CPUs by default, Apple did not have them in their 4,1 machines.

So after receiving the CPUs, I had to remove the soldered heat spreaders. They could be removed with some special tools available online. Or they can be removed with some force, using a vice, tools to scrape the solder off the die, and liquid metal to clean everything up and remove any last solder traces. With this minor modification I crossed my fingers and hoped I did neither damaged the motherboard, nor the CPUs in the process.

To my own surprise, everything worked. And Big Sur was running on the machine just fine. Now, two and a half years later, the SSD has failed. The only reasonable thing to do this time was to upgrade even further and add an NVME SSD, a PCIE-NVME adapter and hoping it would work. As prices for used components went through the roof. I did some minor research, went to Aliexpress and got some generic parts and crossed my fingers once more. I was lucky again. The only real obstacle in the upgrade was to move my graphics card a slot up in order to makes some space for the drive.

Finally I can also answer all the questions I had in the beginning: I've learned a lot about the Mac Pro and that generation of Apple hardware (in the end this experience made me get the iBook), made myself familiar with old service manuals and have a fully working machine, that I have no productive use for – but it looks nice.

The performance of the machine would be good enough for most tasks even today (I did some light photo editing on it, tried some gaming and was more than once browsing the web). And I like the clean look of Mac OS Big Sur, as it strikes a nice balance of still looking fresh, but not as overwhelming as Tahoe.

Nevertheless, I don't use the machine a lot: It's just to expensive to run. Idling alone consumes around 150 W, going up close to 300 W when in use. Using my (way more capable) Macbook Air M2 only takes around 5W. It's not even close.

I like to think of the Mac Pro like I think of a vintage sports car. I like to look at it, and every other Sunday, if the weather is fine and I'm in the mood, I take a joyride bringing me back to simpler times.

Not only did I resurrect an old iBook, I have also bought one of my childhood dream devices from the same time period. It's a – please don't laugh – 1st gen Zune 30. Infamous for it's brown color and made somehow popular by the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise after its death, Microsoft's attempt to take on the iPod still has a lot to offer.

With the upcoming of streaming services like Spotify, music has become something that you no longer own, but rent. It's great to have nearly all the music available accessible anytime and anywhere. But for reasons like ending license deals or AI kerfuffle, music can get removed from one day to the other (looking at you, King Gizzard and Dendemann).

By actually owning music, maybe even by having physical media, no one can take these away anymore. You no longer have to rely on a stable internet connection, and don't have to be afraid your monthly renting fees fund some questionable investments.

As much as I appreciate music streaming for discovering new music with ease, listen to full albums on your music player is and feels much more intentional. Streaming some background music while working or writing? Yeah, why not. But actually listening to music for the sake of it is a different thing. Calmer, more mindful and to me also meaningful.

I still have a nice collection of digital music, some CDs and even LPs. And this is where my Zune comes into play.
One might argue that a modern MP3 player would work better, or even your smartphone. That's objectively true, but, where is the fun in that?

As there are basically no Zunes in Europe (for a "fair" price at least), ebay.com was the way to go. I received a Zune in black-blue in decent shape, fully working, from China. As usually, the battery won't last forever (around 8 hours of playback), so there is a battery swap upcoming. Albeit not too heavy, the Zune is rather chunky by today's standards. It's boxy, there is no clickwheel, but a fancy looking D-pad. The keys are decent. There is a big, low-res screen with limited color reproduction. By any means I should hate this thing. But I do not. It's pleasant to hold, pleasant to look at, and pleasant to use. I really, really like it.

Getting the software side to work is also not as bad as I thought it would be. Instead of using the Zune mediaplayer software for Windows (I also have a Sony Vaio with XP here now), I can more easily transfer the music directly from my modern Macbook – Android File Transfer for Linux got me covered with nearly fully-featured support for Zunes. Adding music is simple, removing takes some more effort though. I did not add any podcasts yet, but this should work as well.

For music, I ripped all my old CDs with the help of the iBook and iTunes. Using an external USB sound card (that I have to drive my studio speakers), I can also capture my audio from my record player and edit it with Audacity to digitalize it. One could argue that this might not be the best investment of time, but it's fun.

And how does the Zune actually sounds like? Well, quite good. I combine it with Sennheiser HD 25 most of the time, giving it a full retro feeling and satisfying audio quality. I only have to get used to the cable again, but tucking them under my shirt works quite well and stops the cable from getting caught on something.

Future upgrades
The Zune 30 is pretty tinker friendly. As mentioned, the battery is not the strongest anymore. Luckily, the Zune can use the iPods (Gen 5–7) batteries and get an upgrade of the capacity while doing so (800 mAh to 3.000 mAh in my case). And while I'm on it, I will replace the hard disk drive with an SSD and double the storage that way.

You can also wireless charging and Bluetooth 5.0 to the device, but maybe this is something for a later date.

Update
The Zune now has the 3.000 mAh battery (thick variant) as well a 64 GB SSD. The installation was extremely easy. For some reasons the Zune software could not load the firmware even with the updated resources server, so I had to dig through the internet and install a local http server, add some files and point the Zune software towards it. The files were prodvided by Andrew Howe in this Onedrive share, I loosely followed his instructions on Youtube (I only needed the server and populated the htdocs folder and point resources.zune.net to it).
As a nice side effect, the album art loads way quicker now.

Also, I wrote some code so my current music library on my Zune can be accessed from the web as well – just for fun.

Back when I was in school many new great electronic devices and categories emerged. Laptops, PDAs, digital portable music players. Many great devices I was not able to afford. Just twenty years later, I earn enough money to afford them, and to my advantage, these electronic devices have become dirt cheap (sometimes).

So here is my new iBook G4 from 2004, featuring a 1.2 Ghz PowerPC processor, 512MB of RAM and a 60 GB spinning hard drive.

Using such an old devices today has some downsides though: As USB C has not been invented when this computer was made, I need to use the proprietary power supply that might fail due to its age at some point, and being more than 20 years old, the battery only holds a little more than 1.5h hours charge. Which is great, but then also it's not.

After cleaning the machine up using isopropyl alcohol and magic sponges it looks nearly as good as new, minus the yellowed keyboard though.

Installing Mac OS 10.3

My iBook arrived with Mac OS pre-installed, including some user accounts and personal data I did not want any access to. So first thing was to reinstall MacOS. Thankfully the device came with installation the CDs, so booting the machine up and installing Mac OS 10.3 was easy. Using this OS version is rather limiting, as there is no spotlight search to quickly launch apps, which was only introduced in 10.4 Tiger.

Getting 10.4 was a bit more complicated, as I had to get the installation media first, and then burn it as Apples PowerPCs are not meant to boot from USB (although, there are some ways to do this using Open Firmware).

Thanks to Macintosh Garden I was able to get a backup of the generic 10.4 installation media (4 CDs), got myself some CD-Rs and burned all of the four disk with the lowest speed setting using my iBook’s internal CD combo drive. The CDs worked and updating to 10.4 was rather easy in the end. Using the Combo update that is also available on Macintosh Garden I was able to update up to 10.4.11, and update Java to 1.5 as well, in case I want to play some Minecraft on it.

As my computer came preinstalled with an Airport Extreme card, I could also span a new (rather insecure) WIFI network to let the iBook connect to it. For this, I got an old Airport Express that is perfect for the job. Now, using the browser Aquafox this device can also surf the web again (more in theory than in practice though).

A better use for the WIFI is to connect to a network attached storage, so I can share data between my more modern computers and the iBook without the need to copy everything onto an USB drive first.

Adding a USB C power supply option

Thanks to a post on TinkerDifferent I learned it is easy to build an adapter to let the iBook use a USB C PD power supply. All you need are two small boards (one to get 20V out of the USB port, a second one to step it up to 24V) and a 2.5mm headphone jack (yes, that is what Apple used in their barrel shaped plug to transfer power). I recreated the case that already was provided as I wanted a cylindrical one, just for fun. Then I soldered the boards together, adjusted everything and am now able to power the iBook with any 20V capable PD power bank or power supply. Nice.

Rebuilding the iBook G4 battery pack

Still, I had to handle the bad battery life. Sadly, there a no after-market options any more to get new batteries. So, I had to do it myself.

Searching the web, there are some resources showing a battery rebuild for the G3 clamshell models, but none dedicated to the 14" G4 I had. The process is similar nevertheless:

Remove the battery, gently pry open the battery pack, desolder the battery management system (BMS), get replacements for the eight 18650 batteries, spot weld these new batteries together and reattach the BMS.

As rebuilding the batteries takes a bit more explanation, I wrote a dedicated post for this:
Apple iBook G4 14" Early 2004 Battery rebuild process

While working on the machine, I managed to somehow loose one rubber foot. I had to replace it with a perfect 3D printed one.

I also aquired a wireless Mighty Mouse, after cleaning the scroll ball it works like new. I really like how clicky this ball is when in movement (thanks to an internal speaker).

Other shenanigans

Shortly before getting the iBook, I also found a Sony Clie TJ35. Using The Missing Link I managed to sync this device with Mac OS, which offers even more functionality than on my Windows XP machine. Shootout to Mark/Space providing me with a serial key for their old, no longer supported software.

Future plans

With a now rather good working iBook, there is only so much left to do: The hard disk will die at some point in the future, so a SSD replacement would also improve performance by quite a lot. I already did this with my 2009 Mac Pro. The iBooks are know to be not so fun to disassemble, so I wait until I have some time on hand, or I'm forced to do it.

When doing this, the RAM could be upgraded from 512MB to 1,25GB for some extra headroom in heavy duty tasks.

As the keyboard has aged not so well and yellowed a bit, retrobrighting is something I consider to let it look white again. But this has to wait until summer to get some UV light to support the process.

This post has been written on a 2004 iBook 14".

Due to its, age, the battery of my iBook from 2004 needed a replacement. As you can't find new ones online, I had to refurbish the one I already had in my device. Searching the web, there are some resources showing a battery rebuild for the G3 clamshell models, but none dedicated to the 14" G4 I had. The process is similar nevertheless.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, read this very good post first, as it details the general rebuild process quite well, and come back here to fill in the details regarding the G4 batteries.

As you have now learned, you can only rebuild the battery pack as long as the BMS still works correctly. To confirm this, get Coconut Battery on your device and check if the values shown there make sense. If not, you will have to hunt for a new replacement, as the BMS will not be able to work with new 18650 batteries anyways.

On batteries, I choose Samsung INR18650-35E (INR = Lithium Nickel Round, 35E = 3500 mAh) as they were readily available and offer the flat head design Apple used as well. With these batteries, the iBook should also last a little longer as an additional benefit.

I got some tools to open smartphones with which I used to open up the battery. Also, you'll need a simple spot welder and a soldering iron.

Opening the battery pack

First a word of caution: 18650 batteries can provide lots of amperes, so they are no joke if you physically damage or shortcut them as they will catch fire. Make sure your old batteries are flat before disassembling, and be careful when handling them. Having a CO2 fire extinguisher around while working on the battery pack is not a bad idea, but most likely not necessary.

With that out of the way, drain the battery pack completely, to have as little charge in there as possible. The battery pack consists of two plastic parts glued together. Some people on the internet said to heat the plastic, I preferred not to as I could not be sure I don' heat up the batteries inside too much. So i pried the two halves apart, starting at the external connections where the BMS sits. Try not to bend the plastics outside too much, just up, to make sure you can put them together again. Be careful with any sharp (metal-made) tools that could puncture the batteries.

You're in for a treat: The two halves are not only glued, but also feature some small noses to keep them together. I found no other way than to brute force my way in order to open them. I used different smartphone repair tools to tear apart the glue, then prying the two parts open. It took my around two hours to get in there, your milage may vary. I did not use heat or isopropyl alcohol or heat to make the job easier, next time I definitely would. Take a look at the picture to better understand how the parts are hold together to make your experience easier and less painful than mine.

After you're done, you will be greeted with eight 18650 cells, a BMS and some wiring.

Removing the BMS

It's always smart to take some pictures before you take something apart, so I did this first. Then, it's time to remove the batteries from the enclosure and remove the BMS. Desolder the cables. Here, use a big tip for your soldering iron as those can store more heat and should help to de-solder faster (again, you don't want to heat up the batteries too much). I've added some flux to the joints, the iron worked quite well for me at around 350°C. Before touching the joints and removing the cables, I added a bit of solder to the tip of the iron to improve heat transfer. This way it only took a second until the solder melted and I could pull the cable away.

Rebuild the strips

After you have removed the BMS form the batteries, I started to take a look at the connectors between the packs, took some nickel strip and replicated the parts. As my strips were not wide enough to accommodate the solder connections, I cut these part separately and attached them by welding to have the same shape as the original parts.
In total you should have prepared seven strips.

To make my life easier, at this point i sanded the spots where the soldering connection will take place. I added some flux to the very spots (check if you took the right side), and already added quite some solder I will later use to connect the cables. This way the soldering should be as simple as the de-soldering before. Don't be too shy with the amount of solder in this step.

Welding

Take your old batteries as templates and solder the strips onto the batteries. Double check the polarity here once more, as you don't want to mess this step up. I used tape, blu tack and some heavy objects to keep the batteries aligned and in place for the welding. Also try not to forget to put the two white spacers in place so your batteries fit perfectly when assembling everything again (and, rotate them correctly).
When done, you should have two battery packs, a 2x and 6x.

Reattach the BMS

Now, solder the wires back to you new connection points and do everything basically in the reverse order from the de-soldering process.

Put the pack back into the enclosure. I did not close the case already as I wanted to test if it works in general. The connecter moved, so I just finished everything, hoping it works and I don't have to open it up again. All went well.

Let's charge the battery up

Here, follow the blog post once more. What you want to do is fully discharge and fully charge the battery to reset the BMS values. Fingers crossed!

I had a weird problem. As the BMS was updating the numbers for the battery capacity,it only increased the existing value by 300–400mAh per full cycle. After multiple cycles I was back at 4400 mAh, which is fine to me. Too bad it only had 26 cycles on it to being with, as the preowner took good care.

Update
After a few full cycles and a PMU reset, the battery shows 99% capacity but won't go significantly higher.

Additional Sources
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/12-powerbook-battery-info-and-upgrades.1932355/
https://blog.lazd.net/rebuilding-an-ibook-g3-clamshell-battery.html
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/rebuilt-a-clamshell-ibook-g3-battery-battery-only-charges-for-12-minutes.2274217/

The other day I was asked if I would like to join a photo walk at the Oktoberfest in Braunschweig. I'm not a big fan of fairs but thought there's a good chance for taking some nice long exposure pictures.

Just the day before my new XF35mm 1.4 arrived, so I was eager to take it with me. I realized that long exposures won't work very well, because there got too much light through the lens. So I began to exposure for only 1/500s and took pictures that nicely captured my feelings towards this small and eerie fair!

Last weekend I attended my very first baseball game. There is a new team in town, and they just happen to have their first game. And boy, it was a blast! For me this sport is a super relaxing way to watch a game, but also be able to enjoy a good beer (Black Bird Lager obviously) and meet some friends I haven't seen in quite a while.

The other day we went to Hankensbüttel to visit the famous Otterzentrum. If you'd like to see pictures, just scoll down. But make sure to visit Jessie's blog to find out more about this amazing place and our visit there!

Maybe the Volkswagen T1 is one of the most beautiful cars you can own. And because there are a lot of people who own one, and even more that don't, there are regular meets of owners. Back in August there was such a meet in Wolfsburg, called the Bulli Summer Festival. But have a look for yourself!

Architecture made in Romania

Last summer we took a road trip through Romania. One of our stops was the Salina Turda, a museum and theme park built into an old salt mine. To make this place even more incredible the attractions like the carousel, the Amphitheater and the lake with its boats all look like props of a sci-fi movie from the seventies.

This weekend Ines and I are attending the Berlin Maker Faire 2016. Just after the first two hours we're totally blown away. There are so many great people with cool projects, many workshops and just too many things to touch and play with. And there is great coffee, too. I think we might move here.

As some of you may know I work with the VfL Wolfsburg e.V. to create and develop a modern brand for the Wolfsburg Marathon. After attending the run only once (I'm not the kind of running guy), this year I at least took my camera with me to take some pictures.

Although there are many photographers, most of them just try to capture the athletes while on the track. Never mind of the mixed emotions you have while running and getting over your limits.

Here is my first take on the many faces of the Marathon.

Back in May Ines, Bernd, Tobi and I took a trip to Istanbul to celebrate Ines' birthday. We visited a lot of mosques, ate a massive amount of tasty food and walked around the southern west part of Istanbul.