[rescue] SPARCbook replacement plastics

[Connor Krukosky]

Hi all,

I've been a lurker here for awhile, tipped off about the list by Dave 
McGuire a few years ago now.
Recently I've acquired a few... Well ok maybe quite a few Tadpole 
laptops mostly from the 3 series, a 3, 3GX, and a P1000G.
These are all projects of their own and I have gone through and taken 
high resolution photos of the guts of each of the systems and gotten 
board scans for almost every board in the system for documentation purposes.
I'll share these later when I get them all together and hosted somewhere 
for all to see.

But the primary point of this post is to announce that I am working on 
designing and making replacement plastics for (as of now anyway) the 3 
Series chassis.
So this would include, the following machines/models:
SPARCbook 3, 3LC, 3XP, 3GX, 3TX, Server, 3000XT, 3000ST
The P1000, P1300 series Intel based laptops
RS/6000 N40
ALPHAbook

Here is a tweet with a short video of me showing the replacement hinge 
latch grips that I made for the SPARCbook 3 I have that was missing one 
and the other broke off...
https://twitter.com/ConnorKrukosky/status/979393925231403031
The next piece I am working on is the PCCARD/PCMCIA card door.
Other pieces I am planing on making:
Bottom feet, the left middle and right click buttons that always break 
at the back hinge piece!, and the battery cover latch as this seems to 
break as-well causing the bottom door to not stay latched on.
The I/O cover I will attempt to make but will be difficult due to two 
reasons:
A) Its a physically long piece, and will likely need to be two pieces, 
in which case may not be a strong enough piece depending on how I 
conjoin the two pieces.
B) Would have to be different for every different model if you want the 
I/O labels in them like the originals had, of-course I will do what I 
can for the models I have and probably make a blank one for a 
"universal" part.
Though I don't think having that back cover is really a super huge 
concern since it probably gets in the way for most people's configurations.
And well its in the back, you can't see it too much so that's a 
back-burner item.

Another piece I may try to tackle is the SCSI drive enclosure since the 
latch/cover breaks off... At-least it has on two of mine already.
I don't want to really tear my enclosures apart right now though because 
my drives all work as of now...
And I am pretty sure tearing it apart will be a pretty destructive 
process to the enclosure and I want these machines running for the time 
being so I can image the internal drives and such.

Oh and for how you can get these as I make them, I will be putting the 
models up for free to grab so you can print them yourselves if you have 
a 3D printer.
And if not I will likely be making some and selling them for a small 
amount+shipping.
I don't know exactly what I will price things like or what demand might 
be, but it takes some effort to print these nicely on my printer (have 
to baby sit some of the prints and get a fan cooling the print part of 
the way through, etc.)
So I guess please let me know if your interested in any pieces or parts 
and what parts those may be! If "all of the above" that's enough of an 
answer too :)

Anyway, I hope this is of some happy news to folks who may have these 
laptops and definitely probably have broken plastics.


-Connor K