I understand!
I, too, have one of these (A Tangerine model bought new in 1999-2000), and it fell apart around 2005 or so (about when your charger died, coincidentaly) when I tried to repair the DC-in jack. I never got it back together because I broke the trackpad cable.
Fast forward to about 3-4 years ago, and I found another one in fairly good condition for $35. One problem, though: it wouldn't charge its battery!
No problem, though, I found a Blueberry one a few months earlier, and had managed to rebuild that one's battery. Oddly, it wouldn't charge that, either (it also wouldn't run off this battery).
OK, so after wasting time on this, I figured that maybe I should try swapping parts from my old Tangerine (which was known to fully charge its battery the last time it worked), so I swapped in the clicker/charger board. No change.
Then I swapped in the logic board. Success! It worked!
So the problem, at least in my case, was on the logic board somewhere.
There's a couple on eBay right now for fairly cheap, so maybe you can give a new logic board a try?
As for a beater, I have an Indigo iBook in pieces that could potentially work, if one were to somehow repair the backlight connector on the logic board (maybe techknight or someone can do it?).
Does this help?
c
I, too, have one of these (A Tangerine model bought new in 1999-2000), and it fell apart around 2005 or so (about when your charger died, coincidentaly) when I tried to repair the DC-in jack. I never got it back together because I broke the trackpad cable.
Fast forward to about 3-4 years ago, and I found another one in fairly good condition for $35. One problem, though: it wouldn't charge its battery!
No problem, though, I found a Blueberry one a few months earlier, and had managed to rebuild that one's battery. Oddly, it wouldn't charge that, either (it also wouldn't run off this battery).
OK, so after wasting time on this, I figured that maybe I should try swapping parts from my old Tangerine (which was known to fully charge its battery the last time it worked), so I swapped in the clicker/charger board. No change.
Then I swapped in the logic board. Success! It worked!
So the problem, at least in my case, was on the logic board somewhere.
There's a couple on eBay right now for fairly cheap, so maybe you can give a new logic board a try?
As for a beater, I have an Indigo iBook in pieces that could potentially work, if one were to somehow repair the backlight connector on the logic board (maybe techknight or someone can do it?).
Does this help?
c