Greetings from the year 2023. This tut is still pretty useful as I did this four times tonight!

Please note that there are some differences between the 867 MHz and the 1,5 GHz model. E.g. the memory is not interchangeable and neither are the keycaps (the whole keyboard can be swapped).

Many spare PowerBook G4 12" are missing the F1, F2, F11, and F12 key as need to be removed to get to the screws. So watch out if you buy a broken PowerBook G4 12" as a part dispenser.

Please note: the A1181 MacBook uses IDE (a.k.a. ATA a.k.a. PATA) as an internal connector for the optical drive. So it will do with this conversion, although the drive is SATA, the connection remains PATA.

macOS Big Sur is the last OS to support PATA connected drives, consider this if you plan to upgrade to an unsupported OS via Open Core Legacy Patcher (which itself only supports the MacBook5,2 with Nvidia GPU and El Capitan as maximum macOS). At the moment there is no fix to use PATA on Monterey and later (at the time of writing this).

You better stick with Big Sur, as long as it is supported (and even later it will be supported by third party software), or switch to Linux (debian does the job as best on the MacBook A1181).

it is a break-thru method, but it is doable. it saves you a lot of time, and fothermore re-adjusting all the small parts near the display-panel, but I wouldn’t use this method on a MacBook I really need to keep in good shape, I did this on a MacBook I care less about (until now).

If you try to install an SSD via SATA-IDE-adaptor, please make sure it works before re-assembling the PowerBook - this saves you a lot of time. I did this four times in a row, just to see that it didn’t work out well. May be it’s the quality of the SSD, or of the adaptor. But note two things: use the “flat” version of the adaptor; and if Leopard’s disk-utility outputs and “Input/Output-Error”, try Tiger’s disk-utility for the first initializion of the SSD. Btw. the manual here is great! Thank you!

I guess, the hardest thing is to find a trustfully shop to buy a new one. You should create a manual how to disassemle the body of the battery and replace the standard round cells inside it.

I also see this on “replacing the battery” :-)

I did this in 2010, it worked out perfectly!