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Overclocking Your iBook to 600MHz
Cryptnotic writes: "The guys at Accelerate Your Mac have
figured out how to modify the motherboard on the recent Apple iBooks to get them to run at 600MHz with a 100MHz bus speed. There are
benchmarks comparing the OC'd iBook to some regular Apple desktop machines. However, what I am wondering most is how this overclocked G3 compares to the much more expensive Apple G4 Powerbook and if it makes it worth voiding the warranty." Remember, not recommended for your iBook.
Try actually reading the article. The author talks about battery life at the end of the article.
The G3 has been around for ages. It has long been suspected that the speeds chosen for use in iMac and iBooks are conditioned more my marketing factors then technological limitations, particularly the 66mhz system bus. Basically, IBM can clock them faster the Motorola can clock G4s, but it is unacceptable to have a faster chip in the cheaper machines (Altivec excepted).
The 3-5 degree raise in temperature seems entirely within the engineering limitations of the machine and I have to say that this mod looks very enticing indeed.
Someone finaly makes the iBook better, and what happens, the new iBooks are getting ready to be released... http://www.macosrumors.com/
place my TiPowerbook (G4 500MHz) on your lap for a three hour flight and you'll get your answer.
though the head is ambient on the powerbooks, since that;s one of the benifets of the titanium shell. I've had it running for days on AC and though it was very warm, it never effected stability.
from what i understand G3s and G4s lend themselves to overclocking quite well. I once had a Apple salesman tell me not to midrange macs since the cheapos can be overclocked so easily, but that was before a while ago, just before the first AltaVex G4s hit the shops so ?...
As the referenced article said, it reduces battery life by 15-30 minutes. This should leave you with a realistic battery life of about 3.5 to 4 hours. My own experience is that an unmodified iBook is good for over 4 hours of editing text.
The change to battery life isn't large for two reasons. Firstly the PowerPC has dynamic power management, which makes idle time cheap. Secondly, a lot of the power consumption comes from the disk and display, which are unchanged by this mod.
i just got a g4-powerbook last week (my very first mac, and first notebook computer) i was looking at the ibook seriously until i actually looked at it, sat down and played with it for a while. The deciding factor for me wasn't speed, it was the screen! the ibook is just too small, and the screen is huge on the g4. (okay its pretty fast too) but compared to my desktop 1ghz athalon i'd say its pretty comparable. was it worth the extra 700 bucks? hell yeah. i'll have this g4 for a long-ass time.
I got an airport card and a cheap-o linksys base station and i can post from the crapper now! im serious! i can sit and take a 5 hour crap while posting to slashdot on one battery! this was a minor selling point for me, but a selling point nevertheless.
ps. i'm not pooping as i type this...
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Another note: It's impossible to open the case without making ugly marks. You need at least three hands and several thin but nonflexible steel blades. Having done it twice (once for modding and once for demodding), I'm considering opening it once more in order to file down the ugly edges -- and repaint the inside in ultramarine blue. :-)
The only positive thing is that I now know how to replace the optical drive and hard disk. 10GB doesn't really cut it nowadays... I would really like one of those 48GB drives.
That's my 0.02 euro. And... if someone actually succeeds in performing the 600/350 mod, please let me know exactly what resistors you moved. :) Pleeeease!
--Bud
We need a new mod score "-1, Lazy Fuckwit".
Yes, yes, the irony that this is -1 Flamebait / Offtopic / Overrated isn't missed on me. Mod me, I am full of love.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...will be a G4. The iBook is a good machine, don't get me wrong. A buddy of mine just bought it for a cheap OS X machine. When I have the $$ to spend on a new machine, I'll first get a kicking G4 desktop and then get a G4 laptop or better (might have the G5 by that time). Why buy something that's not the latest greatest? I've always had this theory on buying computers (it works better on people mostly unlike us that can't upgrade their own computer). Buy the most RAM you can afford, even if the quantity seems very unreasonable at the time because you'll need it down the road. Buy the fastest machine you can afford (or get the one just out of your budget and wait a month to save up the extra $$ to get it) because it would be the fastest for long. That little bit of speed down the road may be a lot in your mind and make you feel better about your purchase. That said, an iBook is a good machine. It wouldn't be my first pick but it's still a damned good machine. I thought the Cube was too. Guess it didn't make the cuts. My $.02.
you should never use a mutimeter to test resistenc ein a circuit. 2 reasons for this are you are not mesearing the resistence of the resister you are mesauring the resistence of the hole circuit the resister is in. second reason multimeters in the ohms setting puts out a current to do the measuring and depending on what you tuch you could possibly fry something
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
Anyone going apple with be into media. And unless you are encoding media, which I doubt you will be donig with an iBook, you will not need mode CPU power. They are powerful enough. (But when is enough enough... search me.)
Mostly the big bottleneck on iBooks would be bus, memory and HD throughput, since it's primary use is still MM playback. And most games rely more and more on the GFX card's processing power.
The final and most important problem is heat generation on a notebook, leading to other problems like short battery life. Once again these are not good traits for that applications that this iBook excels at.
Rather chuck a couple of Durons in a SMP PC.
My 0.02
This mod's been out there for quite some time, long enough for others to have performed it. As the one poster said, It didn't work for him. I've been looking on some forums (can't remember which, macworld??) but a few others have tried this, one initially had success but it was unstable sometimes, one didn't have success at all. But according to both you can still change the bus speed to 100Mhz, you'll have to switch the multiplier down to 5. Never the less the instructions are correct!
I've been looking into this because I've been wanting an ibook myself, I want to play with OSX.
For another poster that mentioned the heat issue, this is also in the article. Turns out he added a thin aluminum plate and made it cooler than before.
madcowherd
You know, if you overclock the all-metal PowerBook G4 to a fast enough speed, put a piece of cheese in between two pieces of bread, and slam it shut between the lid and the handrests for about 5 minutes, you could make a really awesome grilled cheese sandwich.
a friendly reminder: the g4 is just a g3 with an altivec 128-but vector processing unit. afaik there are no further differences.
Except for the FPU unit which is almost 1.5 times faster.
And the fact that the backsidecache controller on the G3 can only adress about 1 mbyte of level 2 cache while the G4 can adress up to 2 mbyte of level 2 cache.
Technically the core of the G3 was based on the PPC603ev while the core of the G4 is based on the PPC604e.
The article on xlr8yourmac.com is quite old, so I am quite surprise about the big fuzz that it generates today on '/.'.
;-)
I applied the mod about a month ago, when I decided to invest into a decent and not too expensive Linux laptop. I was quite happy with the speed of the machine, but heard from a friend of mine who knew someone at Apple who told her that the machine was originally designed for 100MHz mem bus. The only thing that required Apple to move back to 66MHz was to be able to give the machine a four hour battery run as the marketing brochures showing these figures were already printing when the tests were being ran (!)
With this in mind, I just overclocked the memory bus of the machine, because I believe that it is the main bottleneck for my application of the iBook: basically watching a DVD, playing MP3 files with iTunes (great player by the way) and being able to type a report for my boss at the same time. Yes, I can do that, but the laptop had some troubles keeping up
There are a few catches though. Part of the RAM is located on the motherboard (64MB or 128MB depending on the model you get) and the memory controller would need to be reprogrammed in theory. Not doing so can will cause some RAM not to function properly and that could be the reason for the mod not to succeed. The other problem is having the speed bus directly encoded in the OpenFirmware ROM (kinda like a BIOS thing on PC.) You can patch the value by adding an extra Forth patch in non-volatile RAM, so it's ok. This is required for some OS to calibrate properly. In my case, that didn't matter because the CPU bus was the same.
Doing this mod, I ended up using the same number of resistors. I just add to move them around. If you go for another config and end up using less resistors, keep them in a safe place as you never know what is going to happen (some people want to purchase only genuine speed laptops, so you may want to revert the mod if you sell your laptop in the future.)
I didn't add the extra metal plate as it is described in the article, because I didn't want to create to much pressure on the components or get a bended keyboard (which would have made the keys touch the screen as on the TiBook.) I just added some clear heatsink paste (the one that doesn't get messy.) I never had a heat problem with this machine, before or after the mod, even under Linux. Linux kernel is not really energy savvy on the PowerPC at this time (some bugs and lots of hacks to get the fastest context switch doesn't goes along with good energy saving.)
The last point I want to cover, is that you need to make sure you are really careful about disassembling and reassembling the unit. Aesthetic is a big thing on this particular brand of machines, so don't mess with it. I used a soft flat spoon (the kind you can find at your supermarket for mixing stuff with soft flat edges) to lever the side of the machine. I also used surgeon gloves during the all operation (no pun) and worked in the kitchen area the only place without carpet in my house. I touched the fridge before putting the gloves to make sure I didn't carry any static. You are never too careful and because this mod voids the warranty you may want to think again before going for it.
-- PPA
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
DID NOT SUCCEED.
Steve, Steve, Steve, I've told you before: you do the marketing. Have Woz do this stuff for you, mmm'k?
The G4 has a better FPU unit, as well as the altivec, more cache, and a few other things I can't remember at the moment. It definetly ISN'T a "G3 with altivec"
I don't know this out of direct expereince, but a fried of mine who has a lot of experience disassembling machines says that it takes a very long time to disassemble the new (2001) iBooks. One site says it takes three hours to do this.
Since I don't have one, I can't verify this. But it may be worth thinking about if you want to speed up the CPU.
-- haaz, who has two pretty-easy-to-disassemble (Wall St.) PowerBook G3s.
-- haaz.
Why stop there? If you're certain that you're going to buy nothing buy the best when you eventually get some money, why not figure on getting a ruggedized P4 laptop with one of those phat 1600x1280 displays? I'm sure you can get one for about $7000. And maybe for your desktop you should get a Sun 450 with 4 processors for $30,000 or so.
Some of us have to live in the here and now and actually buy things we can afford. And a well-equipped iBook sells for over $1200 less than a similarly equipped and warrantied Powerbook G4. Yep, a G3 is a good 35% slower than a G4 for heavy Photoshop lifting, and yeah, an iBook can't drive two monitors--or even one high-res one. But if you don't need those things, spending an amount that can cover a mortgage payment or 4 car payments or a 5-day Caribbean vacation for two's worth of money on a "phatter" laptop comes down to personal choice.
A lot of graphics and video professionals need the power of a G4 laptop, and some don't have the luxury of getting both a desktop and a laptop. But an extra $1200 simply for the "cool toy" factor of a laptop that will likely be dead or useless in 3 years or less? Count me out.
When I said "Not that useful" I meant not that useful to overclock, since it's already sufficient.
When I said it became hot, I meant heat disipation that would primarily degrade battery life. (Which is practically the main most important thing in a notebook PC)
And finally: Supply and demand is the main reason why they are not so popular... during one of the large FPS LAN tourneys there were perhaps one Mac in about 400 entrants. Macs are an odity... they are for exclusive users. (Anything from the USA in particular is practically unaffordable...)
Apple iBook 366 (Indigo)
366MHz Power PC G3
10GB Ultra ATA
64MB RAM
CD ROM Drive
17,899.99
Wheras:
440+ Multimedia Notebook
With Internal 24X CD-ROM 8,435.00
64MB SDRAM DIMM 126.00
MHM2100AT 10GB HDD 931.00
Intel® Celeron(TM) 900 700
Working out to under 12,000.00
Hmmm.. and considernig the average high-income person's salary before taxes is about 8,000.00.
This would be quite an investment.
(You pay about 2,500 for rent and 1,500 for car and 800 for insurance and 800 for food)
Leaving you about 500 per month to pay the notebook... you may actually own it before it becomes a meuseum piece.
Now take into account the pitiful availability of software, and the abysmal availability of technical support in a third world country. BAM!
Not to mention the total lack of jobs in anything un-microsoft related. (I'm a unix programmer.. it's tough.)
Now, take into account that I still drool over the iBook and still think Macs are GREAT!
:)
So, kind sir, you misunderstand my laments.
Now that all the necessary screws on the bottom have been removed, set the iBook bottom (exposed motherboard) down on a anti static surface (I used a large motherboard anti static bag).
Um, I'm sorry, but an anti-static BAG is NOT an anti-static surface. The bag is only anti-static when something is placed within it and the bag is sealed. This is a concept known as a Faraday Cage[1]. Placing a component on TOP of an anti-static bag does absolutely nothing.
I've been guilty of the same thing myself, I hardly ever use any type of grounding/anti-static devices when handling my stuff. But that's me, when playing with my OWN equipment. When you publish a review telling people how to take their computers apart, and then don't use the proper precautions, that's just negligent.
[1] - A device that is a conductive enclosure that terminates anelectric field on the exterior so that no field exists on the inside of the enclosure.
der dee der.
Your friend bought cheap no-name RAM, and the supplier lied about its compatibility with the Mac. Most suppliers were honest enough to replace affected RAM.
No, the RAM wasn't "destroyed," it simply won't work in that machine.
Does he know he has an idiot for a friend?NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Suddenly a more acceptable reason to say:
I have a strange burning sensation in my crotch...
--
Josh
your g3 turns into apple-sauce
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
As a former Apple authorized service technician, I'd like to point out that while the warnings and such are nice (and an article that includes soldering wouldn't seem complete without it), you'd be hard pressed to find any authorized service center that would even notice the solders he was making.
Apple system repairs are done at the module level (one of the reasons it is so expensive) -- if the system doesn't start up, and you've got power from the a/c adapter, you're going to get a new logic board (unless they are doing whole-unit replacement, which is fairly common nowadays). In anycase, nobody is peering over your logic board to see that resistor R237 has been incorrectly connected to R233. The new one comes in, the old one goes in a static bag, and back to Apple via Airborne.
Not to say it won't happen that you'll get "caught" -- but it's pretty damned unlikely.
With the dollar growing all the time, the prices remain constant. Especially now with the world trade disaster my currency just plumeted about 15% in the past 4 weeks. (Whenever anything good happens, the dollar strengthens, and whenever anything bad happens, third-world countries just collapse... you gotta love it, can't win.)
Plus the 40% import tax if I had to import it myself (Not to mention shipping) would not make it worthwhile.
And, PS: That was the best iBook I could find at a respectable store...
There are some serious challenges that face Apple, and most of it comes from not licensing
their hardware platform.
Whether that is true or not is up for discussion, but the fact is licensing the hardware would (and did) create a whole slew of new problems. Apple and the Mac are both in far better strategic position today than they were when the cloners where around.
Yes, IBM allowed clones, and everybody lived happily ever after. That doesn't mean that this can be applied to other platforms with guaranteed success. In fact, the hardware/software integration is one of the key differentiating factors between x86 and Macs. This has a number of advantages, virtually all relating directly to user experience.
Apple seems to have sacrificed some serious quality issues with OSX's performance on current hardware.
This hasn't been my experience. OS X 10.1 zips right along on my sister's iBook G3/500 w/ 128MB. 10.0.4 did not provide satisfactory performance on the same hardware, mainly due to swapping. Have you actually run 10.1 on the iBook, or only 10.0.x?
the parts and bought a 700Mhz Dell with 256Mhz of RAM, a 20 Gig drive, and a 32
Meg GeForce 2 video card and DVD Rom drive (a refurbished laptop) for $300
less than the iBook
Dell and Apple have totally different business models. Dell mainly assembles parts and sells at low margins. They don't really develop products in the same sense that Apple does. If Apple adopted Dell's business model, there would be no Mac OS X, no iMovie, no FireWire, no Darwin, etc.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
If that's the corner that the battery's on, I'd recommend checking if it's what's heating up. A warm battery, although it gets less power loss, is a sign of a dying battery.
I don't think the Tibooks suffer from memory effects, but this might be one of those times to call the Apple Store. [they've got some little desk there, with a hotline to engineers to ask questions]
Heat can also be generated from other malfunctioning parts, such as a power supply, etc. Basically, if you think something's wrong with it, get it checked out while it's still under warrenty. [I did the same with a car, and even though they weren't able to figure out just why it was flaky, they were able to recreate the problem, and record that it was happening while I was still within my warrenty period, and would continue to look into the problem without charge after the warrenty had expired.]
A friend who had a sporatic issue with a old 1x0 [150?] series Powerbook finally had it looked at so many times that they sent him a 520, as his machine wasn't made any more, but it was still under warrenty. I know it was a few years ago, but it's possible that something similar could happen today, as you could be bad for PR.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.