No, it is not necessary to remove the battery.

I'll give you big kudos if you can wind that coil back up and have it work again.

One point to remember when disassembling a compact Mac: If you've installed the "Reset/programmer's buttons" over the vents at the bottom side back corner, you should pop them out before removing the case back. Otherwise, they'd tend to snag on the motherboard back plate. The buttons provided a way to reset the Mac without having to turn it off. There was also a NMI (non-maskable interrupt) button that could be useful for programmers (like a hardware ctrl-C to break into a hung program).

Ah, the Hyperdrive: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=hyperdri...

I was thinking of something like the Dove MacSnap: http://www.vintagemacworld.com/macsnap.h...

The Hyperdrive was pretty rare & expensive, whereas upgrade kits like the MacSnap eventually became cheap & common.

You're thinking of the SCSI interface upgrade. It clipped over the CPU and a ribbon cable was snaked out through the battery door. As far as installing an internal drive, you had to remember that it would be a while before 3.5" HDs would even be available, and that they were initially the same height as 5.25" 1/2-height drives (full height being about 3.25").

A USB2.0 adapter would not be suitable for fast-action video. I wouldn't count on the other options, either. You can find cheaper adapters than the one I pointed out, which was just the first I happened to come across. Another example is: http://www.ambery.com/2covivgatodv.html

Actually, looking at the specs for your notebook, you should have a DisplayPort, and you can get a cheap adapter from that to DVI-D.

You would need something like this:

http://www.datapro.net/products/vga-to-d...

It requires a converter with active electronics; a passive adapter would not work.

A different rev. of the Rift might support analog input, but this one does not appear to have the signals hooked up (based on what I can see, which isn't quite enough).

I think they are getting a little more impatient in their teardowns.

It looks like the mistake here was pulling off both the yellow/green flex circuit and the black tape at the same time. Presumably, if you'd lifted off just the black tape, you would have been able to unsolder the flex circuit from the logic board.

Could you please show an image of the other side of the motherboard?

I'm trying to understand how the battery connects to it.