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GRAHAMUK · Mar 3, 2003, 08:49 AM

I just thought I'd share this - I overclocked my iBook 500 up to 600 MHz and 100MHz bus speed according to the info at Carl Norum's site, and it absolutely rocks! Jaguar is no longer slightly sluggish, it just flies. I can't recommend this enough, though obviously only to those brave and competent enough to do it. (Luckily I'm an electronics engineer so the soldering aspect was not much of an issue for me).

It's been running flawlessly now for about 4 days, no heat or stability problems. I have a feeling that the later 600MHz iBooks are absolutely identical in every way except for the way the jumpers are set - so the crippling of the 500/66 was solely a marketing device...

Click here for Carl's site

MrNo · Mar 3, 2003, 11:15 AM

Yeah I did the same with my old iBook 500. The difference was huge, just because of the bus speed increase. However I would not recomend this to people who never soldiered anything in their life

Phoible · Mar 3, 2003, 12:33 PM

Yeah. I echo that recommendation about not trying to overclock your iBook if you don't have soldering experience. I had some experience, but managed to lose a surface-mount resistor and had to send away to Digikey for some new surface-mount resistors (soldering those things is just not fun). However, it works great now, and the speed increase makes OS X much more useful. Along with the 40GB hard drive that I put in there, my iBook should be able to last another year no problem.

suprz · Mar 3, 2003, 06:36 PM

after looking at that site and seeing what's involved, i can safely say (and yes i have soldering experience) NO F***KING WAY !!!!
i'll leave it alone when i get my ibook

x user · Mar 3, 2003, 07:53 PM

I did the same, and it did wonders for my iBook 500. I loved it

.

SpeedRacer · Mar 8, 2003, 11:02 AM

Same procedure here, several months ago, result: increasing crashing -> fried modem -> dead iBook.

At the same time, the speed difference (particularly in OS X) was *dramatic*.

Anybody know of any place (or type of business) that would take on this sort of work with a good chance of not screwing up the circuit board? I would really like to try this again, but want it done professionally.

Speed

tikki · Mar 8, 2003, 08:40 PM

I would _GLADLY_ pay a company to overclock my iBook to 600/100. I don't trust myself at all.

GRAHAMUK · Mar 9, 2003, 09:34 AM

Sound like you were just very unlucky SpeedRacer - are you saying that the iBook got fried because of damage done during the overclock (by soldering, etc), or afterwards because of the increase in clock speed? If the latter, it may be that you tried to go faster than 600 - easily done by mistake - and that damaged things, or you were just unfortunate that your CPU chip was a marginal 500MHz part. I think the modem problem is very likely to be unrelated - maybe it just got zapped by a surge by coincidence. Very unfortunate, anyway. Personally I have had no reliability issues at all, no downside of any sort in fact.

SpeedRacer · Mar 9, 2003, 11:10 AM

Sure rub it in there Graham, uh huh, ya, your iBook's better than my iBook, right, ok.

In any case, i agree about the modem issue, it may very well have been completely unrelated to the stability issues. But either way, the iBook did get progressively more unstable as time went on, ultimately culminating in a laptop that could not stay running longer than 10 seconds without kernel panic. I checked the CPU speed using a variety of techniques and it definitely was set to 600mHz (there was one jumper that never went back on.

But it'd still be great to find some company willing and able to do this service. What would you even look for in the phone book to find this type of service?

Speed

Originally posted by GRAHAMUK:
Sound like you were just very unlucky SpeedRacer - are you saying that the iBook got fried because of damage done during the overclock (by soldering, etc), or afterwards because of the increase in clock speed? If the latter, it may be that you tried to go faster than 600 - easily done by mistake - and that damaged things, or you were just unfortunate that your CPU chip was a marginal 500MHz part. I think the modem problem is very likely to be unrelated - maybe it just got zapped by a surge by coincidence. Very unfortunate, anyway. Personally I have had no reliability issues at all, no downside of any sort in fact.

escher · Mar 9, 2003, 11:59 AM

Originally posted by Phoible:
the speed increase makes OS X much more useful. Along with the 40GB hard drive that I put in there, my iBook should be able to last another year no problem.

All this talk of iBook overclocking makes me want to try this. I bought a soldering iron to fix my AirPort Base Station and barely managed to replace the two blown capacitors. But I wouldn't trust myself to open up my iBook or solder on the motherboard.

I've been tempted to buy a new 12-inch PowerBook. But if I could get a skilled solderer (?) to bump my bus and clock speeds and replace the HDD at the same time for about US$100, I think it'd be a much better option.

Escher

GRAHAMUK · Mar 10, 2003, 11:58 AM

>Sure rub it in there Graham, uh huh, ya, your >iBook's better than my iBook, right, ok.

Na-na na na naaa!!

Seriously though, I wasn't saying that - seems to me *most* 500MHz iBooks will be good for 600MHz without any problems, since they were most likely fitted with the same chips as the 600MHz model but were crippled for marketing reasons. Mine is definitely prefitted with 133MHz memory chips, I looked 'em up - so the 100MHz bus speed is definitely not an issue. However it is also possible that some batches just happened to have CPU chips that were not rated for 600MHz, in which case they might work, or not. Luck of the draw I guess, but most people seem to have been able to do this overclock without having stability problems.

P.S. How does the "quote" feature supposed to work here - nothing happens when I click the button. Maybe it's a Safari compatibility thing.

CyberGreg · Mar 10, 2003, 08:31 PM

I did my 500 about a month ago and it is indeed a pleasure to use.

Thanks to Carl and Norm for their EXCELLENT DIY guide. I would not have attempted the overclock without it.

SpeedRacer · Mar 10, 2003, 09:30 PM

Originally posted by GRAHAMUK:
...Mine is definitely prefitted with 133MHz memory chips, I looked 'em up - so the 100MHz bus speed is definitely not an issue.

Clarification... where are these memory chips you're referring to, how do i check to see if they're 133mHz, and what does this 133 clock rating have to do with runnin @ 100mHz bus / 600mHz CPU?

Speed

GRAHAMUK · Mar 11, 2003, 07:27 AM

>Clarification... where are these memory chips >you're referring to, how do i check to see if >they're 133mHz, and what does this 133 >clock rating have to do with runnin @ >100mHz bus / 600mHz CPU?

(Still have no idea how quoting is supposed to work here)

Unfortunately you need to open the case and remove the lower rf shield to see the actual soldered in memory chips. Mine are Samsung K4S561632B-TC75 chips - a quick net search using that number soon verified that they were rated at 133MHz. The additional plug-in RAM I knew was already rated for at least 100MHz.

This was good news because clearly if the chips were rated only at, say 75MHz (actually my initial thought, seeing the "TC75" suffix), then an attempt to overclock the bus to 100MHz was unlikely to succeed, though of course it would work fine at the original 66MHz. Having verified this I was happy to go ahead with the overclock. In hindsight it's probably a non-issue, since the 133MHz chips are ubiquitous and therefore a sensible cheap choice for an OEM. I was just being cautious!

escher · Mar 11, 2003, 09:27 AM

Originally posted by GRAHAMUK:
(Still have no idea how quoting is supposed to work here)

GrahamUK: You need to click on the reply icon (

)above the post that you want to quote. Thanks for sharing your overclocking experience.

Cheers,
Escher

nickday · Apr 6, 2003, 07:29 AM

Sorry to drag this thread up from the past...

I'm thinking of getting somebody in the UK to perform this overclock for me, as I would surely butcher it all up. Is the increase in performance worth the risk?

Things like the jerkiness when scrolling down a web page, Virtual PC performance - would those be improved?

Anybody in the UK who's performed this mod and wouldn't mind doing mine (for money, of course!), please reply!

Nick