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icruise · Apr 30, 2003, 11:56 AM

Here are some pictures from a Japanese guy who has put a PC card slot into an ibook by replacing the internal CD drive. Apparently he somehow used the internal USB bus. Oh, and he has apparently also covered his ibook in leather...

He's using a wireless modem in the slot in the pictures. I don't have any other information about this mod, but I had wondered if such a thing would be possible.

escher · Apr 30, 2003, 12:36 PM

Japanese modders rule! You've got to love the leather look iBook.

I've been looking into PC Card-based data acquisition modules recently and thus have wondered about having a PC Card slot in the iBook as well. I guess there are still certain uses for that good ole' PC Card slot. I understand why there isn't one in the iBook. But there should really be one in the 12-inch PowerBook.

Escher

andretan · Apr 30, 2003, 03:03 PM

What can I say but:

Simply

icruise · Apr 30, 2003, 04:12 PM

By the way, as you can probably tell I meant "PC card slot" and not "compact flash slot" in the title of this thread... I think he probably used a USB PC card slot adapter thingy to do this.

escher · Apr 30, 2003, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by Icruise:
I think he probably used a USB PC card slot adapter thingy to do this.

I've never heard of a "USB PC Card slot adapter." Couldn't he have used a PC Card connected to the IDE bus that the optical drive was connected to before? I admit I have no idea how all these internals work.

Escher

icruise · Apr 30, 2003, 09:21 PM

I'm just guessing about this, but there are such things -- I even have one, but it only works for wireless modems and not for PC card devices in general. I don't know if his is like that or not, but since the main reason people seem to want a PC card slot is for using the wireless modems available here, it might very well be.

iamnid · Apr 30, 2003, 10:23 PM

Uh... am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous? I mean, he no longer has an internal optical drive... instead he has a pc card slot so he can hook in a wifi card? Huh? Why didn't he just use the airport slot? And the leather UGGGH!

I guess that card could be a cellular card, but does OS X even support those? I still think the whole thing is a bit strange... it'd be cool if it could be done without losing the cd-rom though.

icruise · Apr 30, 2003, 10:55 PM

It's not a wi-fi card, dude, it's a wireless modem that allows you to get online just about anywhere in Japan (yes, OS X supported). They are very cool and a lot of people want to use them with their ibooks. Actually there is now a USB version out, but it does stick out the side more.

dvd · May 2, 2003, 02:47 PM

man..i'd get a ibook if i can buy the covers painted =] ..nice mod.

Scifience · May 3, 2003, 07:34 PM

Cool!

Powaqqatsi · May 4, 2003, 02:54 PM

That leather is too cool !

bstieritz · May 25, 2003, 10:56 AM

damn that leather is spankin. Very well done, too (even the apple on the top is cut out perfectly!).

Although, for my personal uses i'd still be a little concerned about the lack of optical drive. But, as a third or fourth "recreational computer" this thing would be great to tote around the city streets.

Great Job!!

billybob128 · May 25, 2003, 03:23 PM

must say the leather looks bad to me it just dont feel right but good call on the slot.

i want to mod my iBook nxt year due to warrenty but dunno wat to do i was thinkin of black with somethin in blood red (what im like) but dunno what to have on it and what can i do in the ways of hardware
help appreciated

Dapple · May 26, 2003, 06:37 PM

The PC card is a modified PCI bus, and there's no way they could have done that without doing lots and lots (64-ish, I believe) pinouts from the internal PCI bus.

That being said, I wish I could have leather on my TiBook so I didn't have to look at the fugly scratches

tooki · May 29, 2003, 02:59 AM

Not exactly. I mean, not at all!

CardBus is an extension to PC Card (aka PCMCIA), which itself is (as of PCMCIA version 2.01, which added the "PC Card ATA Specification") became a derivative of IDE, not PCI. (In fact, PC Card predates PCI by several years.)

That's why the original Apple Airport card -- which is actually a PC Card -- is referred to as an IDE device in the technical docs. (You can insert a Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco card into an Airport slot, and Mac OS will recognize it as an Airport card.)

CardBus essentially uses PCI-like commands and signaling on the same connector as PC Card.

tooki

The Godfather · May 31, 2003, 09:50 PM

tooki, can you rephrase your whole post? It is not clear whether Cardbus is like PCI, unlike PCI, like IDE or unlike IDE.

Evinyatar · Jun 4, 2003, 06:50 AM

Originally posted by tooki:
That's why the original Apple Airport card -- which is actually a PC Card -- is referred to as an IDE device in the technical docs. (You can insert a Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco card into an Airport slot, and Mac OS will recognize it as an Airport card.)

Are you sure about that? Because on this page it says

Note: You *cannot* replace the internal Airport card on a PowerBook or iBook with a PCCard. The Airport cards use a proprietary bus that is much closer in design to an IDE interface than a PCCard and could cause hardware failure if attempted.

If you're right that would be way cool, since then I could probably replace my TiBook's AirPort card with an 802.11g card. Has anyone ever tried this?

MacNStein · Jun 4, 2003, 01:14 PM

Originally posted by Evinyatar:
Are you sure about that? Because on this page it says
If you're right that would be way cool, since then I could probably replace my TiBook's AirPort card with an 802.11g card. Has anyone ever tried this?

Yes, I've seen it. Do a little searching with Google and you'll see some hacks people have done. I saw a Ti 800 with a WiFi/g card in it at a show in Atlanta (owned by a Korean dude who is an electronics major at Georgia Tech). It was just absolutely whack!

hadocon · Jun 6, 2003, 03:34 PM

Originally posted by Evinyatar:
Are you sure about that? Because on this page it says
If you're right that would be way cool, since then I could probably replace my TiBook's AirPort card with an 802.11g card. Has anyone ever tried this?

It works. you can put in any card, but the problem is that you wont be able to close the powermac as teh apple cards are much smaller than the regular cards.