Sunday, March 12, 2006
The iBook gets an Upgrade
I'm feeling a bit of pride today, because yesterday I successfully completed one of the trickier Mac upgrades: I installed a larger hard disk in my iBook (an older model, a G3/600 Late 2001 [dual USB] -- specs here).
I won't go into details, because some very smart people have already done so (including iFixit, M. Uli Kusterer, and an unnamed Geocities user in the UK. I used all three of these step-by-step documents, but still ran into a few snags of my own -- the main one being that disconnecting the power and speaker wires between the upper cover and the main logic board of the computer is much tougher than indicated. I also found a screw missing -- scary, when one step requires you to remove twelve tiny screws -- but I realized that the problem was probably left over from when Apple replaced the disk (under AppleCare) a few years ago.
I'm not going to post a series of pictures of the operation, because each of the three links above has plenty. I'll just post two, showing the computer in its most dissasembled state:
The pictures aren't very good because I had the camera in the wrong mode. Apologies there.
For the record, the disk I installed is a 40gb Toshiba purchased from Other World Computing for less than $90. I could have put in a much bigger disk, but this is an old machine and is used for recreational, around-the-house and occasional on-the-road tasks, not production. (Plus, 40gb is already so much more than the 14gb drive it replaced; upgrading to 160gb seemed downright silly for a non-production machine.)
I also bought a 512mb RAM stick from OWC for this upgrade, but it didn't work. I know the problem is not the computer, the socket, or my installation technique, because I re-installed my old 256mb RAM and it worked fine. I've requested an RMA.
I put Tiger on the iBook after the disk upgrade, and it runs nicely considering the G3 processor and the 384mb of memory. I suspect it'll be even happier at 640mb.
One postscript: in researching stuff for this upgrade, I learned that my iBook's code name was Marble. Nice, eh?
I won't go into details, because some very smart people have already done so (including iFixit, M. Uli Kusterer, and an unnamed Geocities user in the UK. I used all three of these step-by-step documents, but still ran into a few snags of my own -- the main one being that disconnecting the power and speaker wires between the upper cover and the main logic board of the computer is much tougher than indicated. I also found a screw missing -- scary, when one step requires you to remove twelve tiny screws -- but I realized that the problem was probably left over from when Apple replaced the disk (under AppleCare) a few years ago.
I'm not going to post a series of pictures of the operation, because each of the three links above has plenty. I'll just post two, showing the computer in its most dissasembled state:
The pictures aren't very good because I had the camera in the wrong mode. Apologies there.
For the record, the disk I installed is a 40gb Toshiba purchased from Other World Computing for less than $90. I could have put in a much bigger disk, but this is an old machine and is used for recreational, around-the-house and occasional on-the-road tasks, not production. (Plus, 40gb is already so much more than the 14gb drive it replaced; upgrading to 160gb seemed downright silly for a non-production machine.)
I also bought a 512mb RAM stick from OWC for this upgrade, but it didn't work. I know the problem is not the computer, the socket, or my installation technique, because I re-installed my old 256mb RAM and it worked fine. I've requested an RMA.
I put Tiger on the iBook after the disk upgrade, and it runs nicely considering the G3 processor and the 384mb of memory. I suspect it'll be even happier at 640mb.
One postscript: in researching stuff for this upgrade, I learned that my iBook's code name was Marble. Nice, eh?
