I've decided to get Scannerz, the full version, for several reasons:
- It allows you to stop, start, and resume scans, which would be really good for us.
- An acquaintance told me it gets the job done faster, and he said it was picking up problems other stuff missed.
- I can likely use the tool FSE for other tasks
- I might need Phoenix
This has caused me to raise even more questions. First, a 12" PowerBook in good - excellent condition is selling in the $100 -$150 price range. We have about 10 of these. If anyone of you has ever taken one of these units apart, you'll know what I'm talking about when I tell you that replacing the optical drive is a 2-3 hour job. The system lies in what I'll call an "aluminum pan" and the system is put together from the bottom up, almost in layers. For example, once you open the unit up (5 min itself) you have to start taking apart each layer, starting with a supply board, then working your way down. It isn't a simple "open it up and replace it". The optical drive is one of the last things you can replace. Once done, you have to start putting it back together in the reverse order. I would guess the number of screws is on the order or 50-100, and they all need to go in the right place or you might find yourself "punching through" another card if the screw is too long. This is seriously time consuming.
One thing I noticed about the Scannerz package was the Phoenix tool and it's creation of a Phoenix Boot Disk. I know it's intended for creating a sort of e-drive, but in their case the e-drive has the entire OS, just minus any user add-ons. One way to get out of replacing an optical drive on a 12" PowerBook would be to extract the OS from the working volume onto a USB flash drive and then, if needed, allow the user to use Phoenix to restore the OS to the hard drive (this is doable, right???) We could then just sell the units letting the user know the optical drive wasn't working. Unfortunately, there's one critical catch: PPC units, or at least most of them, won't boot a USB unit by default.
Question 1: I know there are ways to manipulate the PRAM settings via open firmware, and I've heard some people can get some of these old PPC units to boot off a USB device using it. Does anyone know if this is possible with the 12" PowerBook models? We have a few each of 867MHz, 1.0GHz, 1.33GHz, and 1.5GHz. Anyone have any links I could try out or experiment with. It would be a lot easier, especially considering the selling price of these old PPC units to just sell them with a USB flash drive and let the user know the optical drive doesn't work. Another option I guess would be to use an old drive and put it into a FireWire enclosure and use Phoenix to copy to that. We actually have about 10 old 2.5" IDE drives about 20GB in size, never used, and this would be a perfect way to put them to use...of course, where do you get FireWire 2.5" IDE enclosures at a reasonable cost????
Question 2: Dealing with the Intel units, all of these have SATA drives (great!!) but unfortunately, some of the optical drives are ATA. Looking at a few of Apple's tech specs it doesn't specify which interface the drive uses. Does anyone know what year or model they switched from ATA optical drives to SATA optical drives. By the way my previous comment that none of these units would run anything beyond Snow Leopard was wrong. A few of the MacBook Pro's will run Lion, but none of them will run Mountain Lion.
Queston 3: Parts. Where can I get some of these parts at reasonable prices - new, not used. Especially optical drives and hard drives. Possibly some IDE 2.5" FireWire enclosures for the PowerPC units if needed. Items would likely be ordered in bulk.
Many thanks for your help.