Has anyone done this? I heard that the earlier, USB only clamshell iBooks have the footprint.
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Adding FireWire to clamshell iBook
- Thread starter croissantking
- Start date
i've somewhat maybe wondered a bit about the two physically alike ibooks still having different ports yet .. but never really been bothered asking as ibooks in general just didn't quite interest me much
anyhow doesn't surprise me too much about @aladds's response as I always had suspected that the clamshells had some form of "use one board for two different models and just remove the non-basic features on one model" as it seem like the imacs also had a few non-firewire models which had made me a bit suspect on the logic boards for these (disregarding that the tray imacs had none as well, but sonnet could easily make it happen tho)
anyhow doesn't surprise me too much about @aladds's response as I always had suspected that the clamshells had some form of "use one board for two different models and just remove the non-basic features on one model" as it seem like the imacs also had a few non-firewire models which had made me a bit suspect on the logic boards for these (disregarding that the tray imacs had none as well, but sonnet could easily make it happen tho)
I’m vaguely tempted to investigate, now that I have two Blueberry iBook 300s. I suppose one would have to take a later iBook and examine it.
I mean I would, of course, if I were going to do this. I’d be concerned it might look a bit cr*p.
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Do you mean to study the components used or to no longer feel motivated to mod the 300 ?… I think either would work
Anyone got a link to high res pics of the iBook motherboard, either the early or the late type?
I think so, yes. What we don’t know is how easy it would be to mod.
I had mine disassembled recently to swap the hard drive over, missed the opportunity.
I am also very interested in this project. I have some photos of an iBook Clamshell's logic board (without firewire), but I didn't get very far because I don't have an iBook logic board with firewire to compare against. I couldn't find any schematics either. If anyone has a Firewire iBook Clamshell and could scan its logic board, (or loan/sell it to me so I can scan its logic board) that would be super helpful!
Looking at the silkscreen on the bottom of the firewire-less logic board, it looks like there are a bunch of missing resistors and capacitors, a few missing inductors and transistors, and also a missing firewire chipset and voltage regulator. Without finding (or measuring) exact values for these parts it would be tricky to do this mod.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e726509f194840bf95daf39/t/6483c47c4da2c96b36cee852/1686946006104/iBook+G3+Clamshell+Logic+Board+Top+Compressed.jpg
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e726509f194840bf95daf39/t/6483c5362e060f79a3b7f78c/1686946027983/iBook+G3+Clamshell+Logic+Board+Bottom+Compressed.jpg
Looking at the silkscreen on the bottom of the firewire-less logic board, it looks like there are a bunch of missing resistors and capacitors, a few missing inductors and transistors, and also a missing firewire chipset and voltage regulator. Without finding (or measuring) exact values for these parts it would be tricky to do this mod.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e726509f194840bf95daf39/t/6483c47c4da2c96b36cee852/1686946006104/iBook+G3+Clamshell+Logic+Board+Top+Compressed.jpg
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e726509f194840bf95daf39/t/6483c5362e060f79a3b7f78c/1686946027983/iBook+G3+Clamshell+Logic+Board+Bottom+Compressed.jpg
I would be willing to potentially kill my 300 iBook for this; it's already quite a hackjob. I soldered on the smaller 2.5mm jack in place of the 3.5mm jack (power input) from a dead PowerBook's AC board when I was 15, because I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for the charger. The rest of the machine is also kind of in shambles, while it looks good on the outside.. the inside is kinda ugly. I think we would need the schematics for the board along with the correct ICs and passives to pull this off.
I don't want to sound rude, but the fun part about these projects is expanding the possibilities of existing hardware. I know it's not exactly practical or worth anyone's time for the most part, but it's fun to experiment. I love to do that a lot. Also, prices for clamshells can be kinda outrageous, starting at $150-200 at the least, without the charger. Sometimes you can find better deals but more often than not that's all you can find, sadly.
I agree. The worst part about doing anything with any iBook is taking it apart. That's why I've never bothered to fix mine forever. It works but it quickly becomes unstable. I think my 433MHz overclock pushed the L2 cache chips a lot in particular. I'm also open to finding a way to upgrade the VRAM and installing an XGA panel on the older iBooks. Also upgrading the onboard RAM to 128MB, if that's even possible at all.
(sorry for the double post, just read this)
I feel your pain. I sold a tangerine for $40 locally back in 2020, I really wish I never got rid of it. That one actually worked.
It's not rude. Each of us has their own unique perspective on the hobby and what interests us. One of the things I enjoy is unlocking the hidden/secret potential of production machines. While I could just buy an iBook DV, that's not what I'm interested in. I wanted to explore what would be involved in modding an earlier machine as a kind of proof of concept.
I mean, I've spent absolutely ages getting USB to work on the G3 Personality card. It's a bit of a pointless mod from a functional perspective as you can just use a USB PCI card, but I found the process so interesting, and learned so much through it.
I bought my Tangerine iBook for about £800 in late Spring, 2000 to complete my MPhil thesis as my PB5300 was dying. In reality, I think perhaps only the HD500 was dying and I didn't have the facilities to get a reasonably priced external SCSI HD so I could copy everything to that and then swap the drives round.. and wasn't that confident of being able to dismantle the 5300 without a suitable guide. Anyway, the tangerine iBook was fantastic and I could afford one thanks to my new job! It had the miserly 3.2GB HD; Mac OS 9.0.4, but I added 64MB of RAM and Airport, which made an incredible difference. I then used the USB and Wifi dev kit stuff from Apple to help debug the drivers on the Nokia, Symbian OS web-tablet we were developing until our monumentally unknowledgeable managers forced me to stop bringing it in, because it would "infect all the PCs"
Like, how, given my Mac ran a completely different OS with incompatible applications on a totally different CPU? Eventually I stopped bringing it in, then one of our other developers brought his Windoze laptop in and ground the whole company to a halt with the "I LOVE YOU" virus
!
