I picked up a 300 MHz clamshell iBook today, and I'm curious about what sort of upgrades I can make to this thing. Of course, since the CPU is soldered down, I can only overclock it or swap motherboards. I'd rather swap motherboards...
I imagine the iBook SE (original graphite 366 MHz version) board will fit just fine. Can I drop in a 366 MHz board with FireWire or the 466 MHz "SE" version? The latter, with a little overclocking on top, would be an interesting hack, if not exactly cost effective considering the price of used dual USB iBooks...
Peace,
Drew
I believe all the clamshell mobos are interchangeable, but you may have to cut holes in the case for firewire ports, etc.
I have been told by several people that the screens are not interchangable and you will fry something. I havnt confirmed this myself, but it comes from different sources.
Evidently, Apple used 3 different screens through the lifetime of the unit.
I did some looking at the screens I had, and I found the blueberry (300), tangerine (300) and graphite (366 no FW) all use the same IBM screen and can thus be swapped around. The Indigo screen (366FW/466FW) is a Samsung part and I did not try to swap that.
You can overclock by 33 MHz or so probably safely. If you want to go bonkers, a pro shop like Daystar could probably remove the G3 and put down a G4 CPU at about the same speed, maybe a little faster, as well as using faster L2 cache chips (for the no FW models).
Tom (Mad Dog on other forums)
I've been checking out screen upgrades for my Xmas Wallstreet. Seems like if you want to use a different brand screen (Samsung vs Sharp), you need a different ribbon cable rather than a different mobo.
Still, different model...
I have swapped around a number of 14" WS screens and have never run into any problems. I could just be lucky. If anyone has the apple service manual, this should dispel any confusion.
Tom
I can confirm that you definitely need the correct screen-ribbon cable-logic board combination or you can fry something. Someone I worked with was swapping parts to diagnose and we saw the puff of smoke. The ribbon cable and screen had to be replaced to fix that. Maybe it would make sense to check the location of the black wire, as that is commonly used for the ground wire.
Was this within the 14" screens, or swapping the different sized ones around ?
thanks,
Tom