So, as if on cue, the next day, the nasty black fizzing lines appeared on the screen. It seemed to get worse as I tipped the screen back and forth. Ok, I’ll stop doing that. Too late, the screen died.
Checking on the XP machine, the iBook was still alive, and boots ok. I read some reports of some that haven’t been. So I start copying data across to the PC, before the machine gives out completely. I’m panicking now, and really don’t want to leave the machine on longer than I need to.
Copying stuff over wirelessly is too slow. Perhaps I can connect directly by ethernet (I have one of those ibooks that doesn’t need a crossover cable). Oh, but I can’t. I need to change the network settings, but I haven’t set up a remote login. Remind me to enable SSH next time.
So I have a cunning thought, what about target disk mode? I’d ask Paul, but oh dear, his iBook suffers from the same logic board problem 2 days later. Is this contagious? The PC at home doesn’t have a firewire card, so time to take the machine into work.
In work now; I install an evaluation of MacDrive, as the PC won’t be able to understand HFS drives. Booting up with T held down (Target Disk Mode), I connect the two by firewire (IEEE1394/iLink). Woot – my work XP machine detects it, and I proceed to copy my data off.
(This reminds me, I must get an external drive with firewire & USB for home. For backups for both my iBook and the PC. I’ll have to get a firewire card too for the home PC, or stick with USB. And buy MacDrive too. I know I could use FAT32, but seeing as I’ll probably be using the drive more on the iBook, I rather go with the most appropriate format. Even if I went for FAT32, I’d have to find a win98 disk (or something), that would allow me to format a drive to greater than 32Gb. XP won’t allow you to. It’ll quite happily let you read drives >32Gb though.)
The copying goes well until, joy, the PC crashes. Rebooting, the PC no longer detects the iBook. Perhaps something’s trashed on the iBook drive. Damn. The ibook’s screen pings into life for one last chance. I quickly fire up DiskUtility and repair the disk. I forget to enable SSH. The PC still doesn’t see the iBook. Anyway, that’s it for now. It’s time to go home, the screen has died again so I can’t try a fsck, and in the morning (20 Jan 2005) Paul and I are taking our broken babies to CRC in Huntingdon for repair. They sounded pretty clued up on the phone.
