hi!
i have always been a m$ w1nd0ws user and have been dying to have a shot at the apple os for ages. after a few weeks on ebay trying to haggle a cheap deal on either an early imac or ibook i have come out with a broken ibook clamshell 300mhz for £50... 
the intention is to fix the thing and have os x running on it to play with...
anyways i feel i already know quite a lot about the machine (haven't even got it yet - arrives on thursday) but i have a few questions i am hoping you people can help me with or point me in the right direction!
overclocking cpu:
i plan to eventually have the machine running at 400mhz since this seems a target that everyone tries for and pretty much always gets with no problems. would be good for os x too! what i want to know is do you have to resolder the resistors or can i just use conductive paint to create the bridges between the points? i don't want to solder and have heard somewhere that conductive paint or similar is ok to bridge the gaps - can anyone confirm this?
overclocking video:
can this be done at all?
cooling:
due to the overclocking i would hope to apply some better thermal paste to the cpu and graphics (if it has a heatsink...) - probably arctic silver or similar. is this ok to do and is cleaning the old gunk off just the same as any other (amd/intel) cpu?
thanks in advance! 
I have an old 233MHz Bondi Blue iMac that I was looking into overclocking. I took a look at the resistor that I'd have to solder and changed my mind about the hack. However, since you mentioned conductive paint as an alternative, I might look into the possibility of overclocking the iMac again.
Radio Shack sells silver pens...
Actually, I already have a pen. I just don't know that it will work. Any idea?
Magnifying glass, patience, damp cloth to get rid of mistakes...
No promises...
I used a pencil on my AMD Duron... fun...
It's impossible to overclock those machines without resoldering some resistors. You have to change some resistors place to change the cpu's speed.
Hans
i realise that. removing the required resistors is no problem it is the soldering back on that bothers me! that is why i was going to use http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=36275&doy=1m9 which is the stuff i used to unlock my amd athlon xp. i just want to know if anyone has done something similar so i know if it will work. i have a gut feeling it will if done properly and unlike pen this stuff should not come off with time!
Oh ho!
If you are capable of desoldering those resistors, you are fully qualified to resolder them. The desoldering is more technically demanding (if that's the way to describe it.) Don't bother with this 'pen' crap - err, stuff . . . do it the right way.
dan k
that I could do this with my iBook G4 1.2GHz 256MB? I wouldn't try this with it until it is out of warrenty. Does anyone have the transistors trace that I need to move?
a 100-300MHz overclock will *not* give the same results as putting a decent amount of RAM in that thing. Think 512MB upwards.
I beg to differ. Well, at least about the "Don't." part. I certainly agree OS X plays much nicer with lots of RAM.
I OC'd our Blueberry from 300 to 400MHz and it made a very noticable difference. Everything was just snappier and more responsive.
Here's what you do - Replace the HD with a modern mechanism, OC as fast as possible, and add a 512MB SODIMM. Also might as well toss a writable optical drive in there since you got it all apart . . . All those mods, taken together, will enable a Clamshell iBook to be quite usable for some time yet.
dan k
I was actually 'don't'-ing at Coius, because he already has a 1.2GHz G4, but a piddly amount of RAM.
I do agree that 100-ish MHz can make all the difference to a 300MHz G3, however.
The resistors that are required to change are 0 ohm so a simple stripe of conductive silver ink can take the place. Taking them off is difficult though.
now THAT is what i wanted to hear!!!
just so you all know here is what i hope my final spec will be - i am hoping the whole 'project' will be under £100...:
ibook clamshell blueberry - no power + not recieving charge, supposedly all else ok...
so its cost dependant - any ideas?)
100mhz overclock to 400mhz
32 + 512/256mb ram (512 mb pc100/133 sodimm's are really expensive at the moment
os x 10.3 (purchased fully boxed, etc used for £15...heh)
possibly uprated cheap disk drive 10/20gb (£20ish)
im tempted to give the silver paint a try...
Make sure you have the right resistors, and dont sue me if it explodes or anything similar, also make sure you are in a well ventilated area as too much silver can be a bad thing...
yeh thanks fynch i have used the stuff before to unlock amd processors so know what its all about. now i know the resistors are simply there to make a circuit (what i suspected) it looks pretty likely that the paint will work... now which of the imac guys are willing to risk a machine
When I oc'd my powerbook I just "jumpered" with solder. I don't trust ink in high heat areas.
The clamshell will only overclock about 2% before the USB controller gives up
What exactly does "USB controller gives up" mean? The couple of 300MHz Blueberry jobbies I've OC'ed to 400 can still use USB mice and keyboards. I haven't ever tested them with other devices though, so you may be aware of some defect of which I am not.
dan k
If you increase the core clock hardly at all, USB will stop working.
Is that the same as "bus"? Elaborate and elucidate please . . .
dan k
i cant see how upping the processors multiplier will alter the usb at all at it will be increasing the processor speed and only the processor speed. maybe if you were overclocking the ibooks 66mhz fsb (or whatever it is called in the apple world) which in turn would possibly cause corruption due to increasing overall system bandwidth and stressing components...
I haven't actually done any research on this, so I could be wrong, but I read somewhere that the resistor in question was a 0 ("zero") Ohm resistor. Essentially, nothing more than a piece of wire.
Yes, I realise that wire does have resistance, but you get the point...
I don't know what resistors are inside the iBook, but I've just checked inside a Lombard and a rev.A iMac, and these resistors are 10k ohms. And since the iMac, iBook and Lombard are based on the same hardware, I would think they are also 10k ohms inside the iBook. If the resistors should be 0 ohms, they would be marked with a "0" or "000", if they are 10k ohms, the would be marked with "103", which means 10 * 10 ^ 3 = 10000.
Hans
Like I said, that's just what I read somewhere. I haven't checked it for accuracy... I don't imagine that most people do.
Yeah, they ARE 10k resistors. I just checked, and they have "103" printed on them. I think fynch is referring to the iBook G4, which I have heard to use 0 ohm resistors.
so the chances of some conductive silver paint or similar creating the resistance needed is pretty slim then? unless of course 10k was used as it was the cheapest for mass production or similar...
All this yapping about silver pens and R values is a waste of perfectly good screen pixels. :coolmac:
Nobody needs additional resistors when doing this job, so the value of the resistors in question is irrelevant. Just desolder the resistors that need to come out and move them to the spots where resistors are needed. As I wrote before, you need to desolder the damn things to do the job anyhow. It's trivial to desolder, move resistor about 2mm, then resolder in new location. After having done 25 or 30 similar G3/G4 OC jobs I kinda know what I'm talking about.
Spend $14 on a pair of RatShack grounded irons and go to town! If you're not confident of your skills, dig around and find a junk PCB with some small SMT parts on it and practice until you are confident.
dan k
...and the Managed Resistance Prize for Clarity goes to... {opens envelope... has slight dificulty in opening envelope because envelope manufacturer used 3M's new SSI adhesive...) ...and the winner of the Managed Resistance Prize for Clarity goes to: Dankephoto.
Congratulations, Dan K. That is one of the clearest and most concise posts I've read in a long time.
that is still not answering the question though! it would be much easier with conductive paint or similar than soldering such small components. who said i would desolder the old ones? i was thinking more of cutting them, crushing them, ripping them off or anything i can do that DOSENT involve soldering. if you don't like the topic don't post in it.
i only want to know if its possible to replace the resistors with solder.
All part of the good fun we have here at AF. I'm sorry my pearls :coolmac: of wisdom were not what you sought, perhaps next time I'll be more helpful.
dan k
I can sort of answer your question. Basically, both the resistor and the conductive ink will accomplish the same task: They will both complete the circuit and allow a charge to move from one point to another.
The resistor, rated at 10 Ohm or 10K Ohms {I forget what it was
}, will reduce the current that flows from point 'a' to point 'b'. The conductive paint, while providing some resistance, will allow much more current to flow from point 'a' to point 'b'. So the question becomes not one of whether the conductive paint will work, but rather, for how long?
Basically, it's a crapshoot. The conductive paint will most definitely work. Although it will increase the electrical stress on your motherboards components and reduce the life expectancy of your machine. Perhaps even considerably shorter, i.e. minutes or hours.
P.S. I am not an electrical engineer... I'm just a hobbyist.
yeh thats what i was thinking. before such a big value resistor has been installed (could have easily used 10 or 100 ohms?) there must be a reson for it. would be good if someone could see how much power is going over that bit of the circuit...