3lectr1cPPC
Well-known member
So, I've had a 1.42GHz 14 inch iBook G4 since November last year, and when I bought it it was totally stock. A couple of months ago, I added an upgrade to the maximum 1.5GB of RAM, but I still didn't touch the original slow old hard drive. Still, seeing that the only thing the extra RAM really did was improve speed in web browsing, I knew what I had to do. It was time to install an SSD!
You all probably know how hard it is to take one of these snow iBooks apart. I sure did! People say the iBook Clamshells are had to open, but I had long conquered that laptop. You see, I got my blueberry clamshell in a big haul of parts back in 2018 along with a working tangerine. The parts were enough to get it running, but it took probably 10 times of taking it apart before it was presentable. While a pain, the benefit of that is that I can now gut one of those things in about 15 minutes. Despite this, I was still dreading doing the SSD upgrade on my G4. I persisted anyway, and while it was a pain, the outcome is really good.
I must apologize for not taking many pictures during the upgrade, I only got a couple during the reassembly and that's it. Here they are though:
As I love dragging these old obsolete laptops kicking and screaming into the modern world, I knew I had to go with the most overkill SSD I could get. I went with a 120GB mSATA SSD, along with a cheap adapter to convert it down to the slow IDE. I get that the fast SSD is severely bottlenecked by the IDE bus, but I wanted the best performance I could possibly get out of this old iBook, and that's what I got!
I now have what is pretty much the ultimate iBook G4. It's the fastest model, it's got maximum memory, it's got pretty much the fastest possible storage, and even a working aftermarket battery. (The battery I must add is a cheap one of unknown manufacture date, and after a staggering 30 cycles it is already down below 70% capacity. Still, it's better than a dead one.) The only thing I didn't do was replace the thermal paste. I probably should have, but I honestly was pretty exhausted after getting the darn thing torn down this far, so I just decided to quit while I was ahead. Maybe another day.
My biggest feat during all of this in my opinion was getting all the screws installed back in, only forgetting one during the reassembly. Forgetting where screws go is probably my biggest struggle while repairing computers. I even know where the lone screw I forgot goes, so if I take it apart again I can reinstall it.
As for OS, I've gone with OS X Leopard for software support, as well as a seperate 40GB partition for Tiger, for speed and the classic environment. Leopard still chugs a bit on the G4's slow GPU with all those fancy effects. What's funny is that even though this iBook shipped with OS X 10.4.2, 10.4.0 installed fine off of my DVD, with the caveat that I had to connect an external pointing device as the trackpad didn't work. Also, closing the display didn't put it to sleep. As expected, the combo update fixed this.
So, that's it! I've got a PowerBook G4 Titanium on the way, so look out for that on Friday on my conquests thread.
You all probably know how hard it is to take one of these snow iBooks apart. I sure did! People say the iBook Clamshells are had to open, but I had long conquered that laptop. You see, I got my blueberry clamshell in a big haul of parts back in 2018 along with a working tangerine. The parts were enough to get it running, but it took probably 10 times of taking it apart before it was presentable. While a pain, the benefit of that is that I can now gut one of those things in about 15 minutes. Despite this, I was still dreading doing the SSD upgrade on my G4. I persisted anyway, and while it was a pain, the outcome is really good.
I must apologize for not taking many pictures during the upgrade, I only got a couple during the reassembly and that's it. Here they are though:
As I love dragging these old obsolete laptops kicking and screaming into the modern world, I knew I had to go with the most overkill SSD I could get. I went with a 120GB mSATA SSD, along with a cheap adapter to convert it down to the slow IDE. I get that the fast SSD is severely bottlenecked by the IDE bus, but I wanted the best performance I could possibly get out of this old iBook, and that's what I got!
I now have what is pretty much the ultimate iBook G4. It's the fastest model, it's got maximum memory, it's got pretty much the fastest possible storage, and even a working aftermarket battery. (The battery I must add is a cheap one of unknown manufacture date, and after a staggering 30 cycles it is already down below 70% capacity. Still, it's better than a dead one.) The only thing I didn't do was replace the thermal paste. I probably should have, but I honestly was pretty exhausted after getting the darn thing torn down this far, so I just decided to quit while I was ahead. Maybe another day.
My biggest feat during all of this in my opinion was getting all the screws installed back in, only forgetting one during the reassembly. Forgetting where screws go is probably my biggest struggle while repairing computers. I even know where the lone screw I forgot goes, so if I take it apart again I can reinstall it.
As for OS, I've gone with OS X Leopard for software support, as well as a seperate 40GB partition for Tiger, for speed and the classic environment. Leopard still chugs a bit on the G4's slow GPU with all those fancy effects. What's funny is that even though this iBook shipped with OS X 10.4.2, 10.4.0 installed fine off of my DVD, with the caveat that I had to connect an external pointing device as the trackpad didn't work. Also, closing the display didn't put it to sleep. As expected, the combo update fixed this.
So, that's it! I've got a PowerBook G4 Titanium on the way, so look out for that on Friday on my conquests thread.