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swichd · Jan 22, 2005, 09:56 PM

I'm loving my new 1.2 GHz 12" iBook G4! Now that it's a week old, I can't help but take it apart and upgrade it!
Here is my list of things I want to do:[list=1][*]Swich the Combo drive out for a Super drive[*]Upgrade the hard drive to a 7200 RPM drive[*]Hack in a Bluetooth module[*]Extend the APX range[*]Upgrade RAM to 1.25GB[*]OverClock? Can this be done?[*]Paint it black[/list=1]
Any feedback? How much would the old Combo drive and hd be worth? TIA

nbn22385 · Jan 23, 2005, 12:48 AM

Nice purchase, i have the same (12"/1.2/1.25)

Originally posted by swichd:

Extend the APX range

Hmm, never heard of that, is it just a program or what?

Hi I'm Ben · Jan 23, 2005, 01:37 AM

Where does one buy the superdrive from?

MARINEOSX · Jan 23, 2005, 04:19 AM

that is awsome. It isn't to hard and I am not sure if you know but there is a dual layer burner available and specifiacly designed to work with iBook and iDvd. Yes I said a DUAL LAYER INTERNAL BURNER for the iBook. it is on the expensive side but they will install it for free and they are certified as well they also have hard drives and all. Something to look into. Also with the new iLife suit you would be able to burn HD 8 hour dvd's. I am going to try to do this for sure. As far as overclocking goes not looked into it but I know it is possible to do with the frontside bus in some of the older iBooks will have to see if there is anything like that for the newer ones. I will post if I find anything.

Abit667 · Jan 23, 2005, 04:10 PM

Can you give some more information about how you plan on extending the AirPort range? I've never heard of this being done before.

swichd · Jan 23, 2005, 05:34 PM

Well, basically I planned on adding an external antenna jack through the security slot, allowing me to add a better antenna. My range sucks compared to a Dell Inspiron D300 subnotebook. The Dell has a mini pci card a/b/g wifi card in it. It goes about 2x as far as mine does. I thought about this for a while and now think a better choice would be to try the dell wifi card in the ibook. I think it has a linux driver, so i'm guessing i can compile it for darwin. IIRC, it is a 75 mW card. Oh yeah, i'd love that dl drive, but it's so darn costly. Find one for under $250 and I'll install it myself.

swichd · Jan 23, 2005, 09:15 PM

Here's the Dell WiFi card spec sheet

Goldfinger · Jan 27, 2005, 01:14 PM

Originally posted by swichd:
Here's the Dell WiFi card spec sheet

No bloody way that you can hack that into an iBook

afireinside · Jan 27, 2005, 10:50 PM

I want to go 7200 RPM hdd, super drive, and paint soon aswell. Not sure what color. If you find a super drive or DL burner for an affordable price let me know. Same with 100 gig 7200 rpm laptop drives. Would the ibook even support a 100 gig drive? Where will you get a BT moduel?

I HAD a gfx OCing thread bookmarked a while back but I reformated my PC so I lost the link. If anyone has the link to the app or any way to OC the CPU please post it. When I crack this sucker open I plan on heatsinking the 9200 chip and the ram chips for it aswell and maybe slap a low profile server copper heatsink on the CPU. Might weigh to much though. Would be nice if I could do that and OC this sucker up to like 1.4-1.5ghz and speed up the graphics card :O

Are there any probes on the CPU or GPU for temp monitering?

swichd · Jan 30, 2005, 12:26 PM

Would the ibook even support a 100 gig drive?
Yes

Where will you get a BT moduel?
Hack a dongle

Are there any probes on the CPU or GPU for temp monitering?

There are 4 probes:
One for ps/mem, one for processor, one for battery, and one on the graphics chip

afireinside · Jan 30, 2005, 11:36 PM

Ok well how do I get the readings of these probes?

MARINEOSX · Jan 31, 2005, 06:28 AM

The temp. monitor is nice to have. Here is the LINK.

This will show you everything about your system and the temperatures. Free and it is a small program so it doesn't take up any room.

ghporter · Jan 31, 2005, 09:29 AM

I believe (haven't seen actual specs, just seen reports) that the real range issue between AE and other WiFi "G" cards is that the Apple card simply transmits at a lower power than some of the other cards do. The antenna in an iBook is actually pretty good-it's better than the one in my Dell Inspiron 8200.

One other issue with the AE card is that it only has one antenna port, where a lot of other mini-PCI cards have two. A two antenna system will almost always beat a single antenna system in terms of range.

In other words, the more effective range extending mod would probably be one that tells the card to use a higher transmit power.

What drive capacity are you looking at in a 7200 RPM hard drive?

swichd · 05:55 PM

That's why I was looking for another card. I'm looking at a 60GB drive with 16MB cache. I'd much rather have an 80GB, but I cannot find one for under $400. I found this DL drive for under $160 at another site! and Here's another one
Edit: fixed tag, added second drive

Phiber · Feb 1, 2005, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by ghporter:
I believe (haven't seen actual specs, just seen reports) that the real range issue between AE and other WiFi "G" cards is that the Apple card simply transmits at a lower power than some of the other cards do. The antenna in an iBook is actually pretty good-it's better than the one in my Dell Inspiron 8200.

One other issue with the AE card is that it only has one antenna port, where a lot of other mini-PCI cards have two. A two antenna system will almost always beat a single antenna system in terms of range.

In other words, the more effective range extending mod would probably be one that tells the card to use a higher transmit power.

What drive capacity are you looking at in a 7200 RPM hard drive?

Upping the power shouldn't be such a hard ordeal. The best thing you could do, however, is to use an external antenna. Too bad there is no such option unless you wanna do a custom job.

swichd · Feb 1, 2005, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by Phiber:
Upping the power shouldn't be such a hard ordeal.

How can this be done?

The best thing you could do, however, is to use an external antenna.

I might do this too.

ghporter · Feb 1, 2005, 06:21 PM

Originally posted by Phiber:
Upping the power shouldn't be such a hard ordeal. The best thing you could do, however, is to use an external antenna. Too bad there is no such option unless you wanna do a custom job.

You'd have to make sure you got an antenna that you could mount so that it would not be blocked by any of the computer's structure. This is taken into account in the design of Apple's laptop antennas (especially since they learned so much with the TiBook!

). There are antennas around, but you have to be very careful in buying them. Often, you'll have to specify the connector you want on the end of the antenna cable-and cable length is a major issue! RF signals in the 2.4GHz range leak through coaxial cable like water through a sieve.

SSharon · Feb 2, 2005, 01:35 AM

I don't know how to up the power usage of the AE card in the ibook, but it must be possible. You do know that it will affect battery life significantly right? I know it will help because I remember looking into this stuff when I was thinking up changing the output power on my linksys wrt54g. Its default is 25mW I think but has a max around 80mW that can be changed with a new (non-supported) firmware hack. As you can see there is a lot of space to move around there and I wouldn't be surprised to find similar, but lower numbers for the AE card. Personally I don't think its worth it because I like my battery life. Similalry I would rather get an external dvd-rw for my ibook (the superdrive became standard 2 months after I got mine) for under $100 rather than go through the trouble and cost of having an internal one. A faster HD on the other hand is a great idea and will be my first upgrade once my ibook is out of warranty. good luck with the upgrades.