Woooyeah! I don't have to wait for MacBooks with bated breath because iBook is alive! Thanks to a teensy bit of surgery (do bear with the page, the bit you want is entitled "White G3 iBook Reed Switch Self-Repair by Justin Granger" and is the fourth article).[0] I had the problem whereby the machine was working fine, but no display and no backlight after deteriorating performance over a few months where the angle of the hinge determined whether I got display or not.
No reed switch means I have to put it to sleep and wake it up manually, but I don't care about that. It sure beats spending a few hundred quid on a new bit of Apple hardware right now. And my boyfriend is great[1]. Apparently ;o)
[0] - Basically, if you know your way around the insides of a G3 (USB) iBook, take the battery out first, lift the keyboard, take out the Airport card, lift the RAM cover (2 screws) and look at the top connector on the right hand side. There are three - the bottom, orange one, is the trackpad cable; the next one up (black) is the keyboard connector; the one above that one - small light grey one - this is the puppy. The bottom two wires are the offenders, the ones closest to the keyboard connector. You can gently pull them free from the connector, whilst holding the plastic connector down, tape them up with insulating tape and put iBook back together again. The iBook will not automatically sleep on closing or automaticaly wake on opening after all of that.
[1] - he found the fix!
