Caveat: Don’t try this at home unless you feel confident you can tear apart a US$2500 piece of equipment and put it back together without pieces left over. If you would like some of the following behaviors performed on your Ti by an experienced Mac tech, this is a service I provide (to those in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area only). Contact me for exciting details.
Caveat: Don’t try this at home unless you feel confident you can tear apart a US$2500 piece of equipment and put it back together without pieces left over. If you would like some of the following behaviors performed on your Ti by an experienced Mac tech, this is a service I provide (to those in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area only). Contact me for exciting details.
Why Me
I work for the University of Michigan. (Disclaimer: The UM neither knows about nor condones this sort of thing. The opinons expressed below may not relect the belief structure of my employers.) I ordered my Ti through UM Stores (after the Federally-mandated 24-hr. cooling-off period) in January 2001, after watching Steve announce this puppy at Macworld. I got the first one of 10 that just (2/16/01) arrived in Ann Arbor. I opted for the 400MHz jobbie, intending to soup it up as soon as I got it.
I am a Web developer and Mac consultant (my UM job description sez “Alpha Mac Geek”), and intend to use this for Email, Photoshop work, and schlepping around to clients as a source of diags, etc. I also do Final Cut Pro behaviors, and may use this for that as well. I have a G4 450 tower that does most of my heavy lifting. Many of my clients have various versions of G3 PB’s, and having this Ti will help me to support them better.
Tear Down
I got my Ti home on Friday and immediately tore it apart. I replaced the existing 10 GB IBM Travelstar drive with a 20 GB Travelstar, upped the RAM to 512 MB, and installed an AirPort card. I had no problems with my bottom screws, although several of them were in pretty tight. Ditto putting them back in. In response to the problems several folks have reported with stripped screwheads on the bottom of the Ti:
This usually happens when the screwdriver doing the work is not an exact match for the screw. In this case, the oft-quoted use of a #1 Phillips is not necessarily a good match. I bought a nice one at Sears that was just loose enough to screw things up (so to speak).
A client brought me his Ti from which he’d removed all the screws but one, and that one was almost completely stripped. This prompted me to set out to find the perfect screwdriver. After months of searching on 3 continents, I stumbled upon the perfect fit at a True Value hardware store here in Ann Arbor. I took a screw from a Ti in with me and tried all the drivers on display, finding the perfect fit in their “Master Mechanic 125 187 USA TS312” model (US$2.49).
For the exciting conclusion to this tale, tune in to http://mondodyne.com/tipb.html.
