Hi everyone, I've been reading this forum for some time, but only recently signed, so I can comment on some new discoveries that I've found out while I've attempted to upgrade my Indigo iBook Clamshell. I've already maxed-out the memory and replaced the original HD with a 40 GB 5400 RPM Ultra ATA/100. I've also bought a LCD screen from an iBook G3 White so I can achieve 1024x768 but I'm trying to find Apple part #922-5368 (LG Cable) so I can connect it. But I digress, I'm interested in buying a PATA SSD, so I can benefit from a slower access time, constant speed and less heat/more battery life, while I wait for the new HD, I've been playing with different Linux distributions (Panther runs fine but with no updated web browser, but Tiger, which has updated web browsers, is really slow), the thing is that while I was trying to make 3D acceleration work with this ATI R128 (I couldn't) I've read dmesg, which is a transcript of all the boot messages and I've found something like this:
PATA-macio KeyLargo
UDMA66 supported, reverting to UDMA33 because of 40 wire cable
So, if this is true, it means that the iBook Clamshell is capable of achieving a HD transfer rate of 66 MB/s instead of 33 MB/s, because the ATA controller is capable of that, but they've used a 40 wire cable instead of the 80 wire cable required to obtain higher transfer rates. I've been doing some research to confirm my hypothesis butI think that if we replace the IDE Flex cable with one from the latter models, like the iBook Dual USB or one that supports UDMA66 and has a similar type of connector. What do you think? Is someone willing to help me test this? I know it's kind of pointless to try to squeeze every last drop of speed from this old laptop, but I really love it and if I fix most of its problems, I can use it for daily non-heavy use.
Looking forward to your suggestions.
Possible new discovery regarding iBook Clamshell ATA interface
February 13, 2013 - 10:29pm
#1
Possible new discovery regarding iBook Clamshell ATA interface
I have tried to overclock the clamshell, without success, overclocking works only on 300 ibook, not 466 SE.
I will try to replace hdd with ide ssd memory.
And i am looking for installing Léopard on this ibook, i have read Léopard is faster than Tiger.
Best regards.
jb
Any succcess with runnin 66??
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a cable with 80 pins that could work on that reduced space (it has to be really short but also thin as flex cables usually are). I was thinking of doing a little experiment of using a regular sized cable with the iBook clamshell innards wide open, but I've never tried such a thing and I'm afraid of doing more harm than good.
One more thing, schmoburger I think your iMac G3 has the same ATA controller as the iBook Firewire, so maybe you could try a more simple experiment. First, find out your ATA controller, it should appear in System Profiler, under ATA. Second, open your iMac and look for the ATA cable, see if it has 40 pins or 80, if it has 40 pins replace it with a 80 pins cable and see results.
Don't you think 466Mhz and 576mb of RAM isn't enough to run Leopard?