Fixing a broken hinge on a PowerBook
Or using brute force to solve the problem of a stiff hinge. It is easy in my case when the hinge is seperate from the rest of the PowerBook.
One of my hinges broke over a year ago, the regular opening and closing of the screen with a stiff hinge caused metal fatigue at the thinnest point where the hinge joined the screen and it broke. The first time I just glued it back together using strong glue. It lasted a couple of months, then broke again. So I glued it back together again using slightly more glue. Over the next year, the hinge got stiffer and I used more glue each time to fix the problem. In the end the hinge was so stiff and the original join so badly damaged that I could not fix it by simpley glueing it back together.
So I needed to loosen the hinge, in the end I used brute force to twist the hinge and used the two prongs on the hinge to open the hinge and loosen it. The problem I open the hinge a little to much and it is a little to free, so the screen will move around when travelling on the bus. The other bad news it that because I have glued it back together so often, and there is so much glue of the join, it no longer fits together cleanly.
Moral of the story, if the hinge has broken on your PowerBook for the first time, because of a stiff hinge. Apply a tiny bit of brute force to open the hinge a little, apply some oil to the hinge and then glue back together using a generous amount of strong glue. This should give you a repair than lasts a lot longer than a couple of months and your PowerBook will look a better than mine.