ibook 300 - upgrade to itunes client (panther-tiger)

redeye be · Oct 6, 2005

I changed the thread title to better reflect the help i'm currently seeking. If this bothers anybody please let me know and i'll start a new thread with this issue.
direct link down: here

Hello all,

I recently acquired a clamshell ibook 300 with 96 Mb of RAM and a 3 Gb HD. My sister, who got it as a birthday present when entering university decided she had no more use for it. Happy me. I would like to use it as an itunes client for the living room stereo - and a bit of surfing - and preX abandonware.
I think i was able to put itunes 2.1 on OS 9.2 to bad that it doesn't support shared library's nor aac playback.
So, i would like to up it to 10.3.9, the last version of X which works with these critters (without xpostfacto). And therefore am looking for some reassurance:

I can easily upgrade to 288 RAM, but read that the ibook would support 544 Mb in total (by adding 512). This would be interesting if in the future i would use xpostfacto to take it as far as i can get

512 costs more than two times the price of 256...
Any experience or ideas with or about adding 512 here?

The HD has some corrupted sections and has had it's time. Would any 12 Gb laptop drive i have work in there?
How big can i go with the drive, are there limitations (and if there are, where can i find these)?
Are there size limits or are all laptop drives alike or within some spec?

Thank you for reading so far

Cheers

California · Oct 6, 2005

redeye_be said:
Hello all,

I recently acquired a clamshell ibook 300 with 96 Mb of RAM and a 3 Gb HD. My sister, who got it as a birthday present when entering university decided she had no more use for it. Happy me. I would like to use it as an itunes client for the living room stereo - and a bit of surfing - and preX abandonware.
I think i was able to put itunes 2.1 on OS 9.2 to bad that it doesn't support shared library's nor aac playback.
So, i would like to up it to 10.3.9, the last version of X which works with these critters (without xpostfacto). And therefore am looking for some reassurance:

I can easily upgrade to 288 RAM, but read that the ibook would support 544 Mb in total (by adding 512). This would be interesting if in the future i would use xpostfacto to take it as far as i can get
512 costs more than two times the price of 256...
Any experience or ideas with or about adding 512 here?

The HD has some corrupted sections and has had it's time. Would any 12 Gb laptop drive i have work in there?
How big can i go with the drive, are there limitations (and if there are, where can i find these)?
Are there size limits or are all laptop drives alike or within some spec?

Thank you for reading so far

Cheers

You should be able to find 512k 144pin (I assume this is what the old ibooks took) on eBay for 60 to 70 bucks.

I'd put in at least a 40gig drive; I think I have heard you can safely put in a 60gig 7200rpm drive into the old thing. Remember, it's not money down the drain with a new hd; you can always switch it out later. I like Hitachi Travelstar laptop drives but I have heard that Toshiba drives have a larger 16mb cache, which access information quicker than the Travelstars. Also, new hds come with new three year warranties, so it's money well spent.

Dreadnought · Oct 6, 2005

I believe 20 GB was the maximum for these iBooks (but it could also be 12 GB, don't know for sure). The harddrive bus is a normal ATA one. So you could put any ATA laptop harddisk in there (check the app Mactracker, has all this kind of info about every Apple system ever build!). For the ram and knowing you are from Belgium, check out
http://www.tweedehandsmac.nl
Maybe your lucky and find pretty cheap second hand ram on it. That will cost you about 20 Euro's. I have the latest os X going on my iBook 700 now with only 256 mb of ram and it works like a charm. So it could be worthwhile to try it anyway, despite what Apple says (although, I can't update my G3 B&W 400 from X.4.0). But if I where you, stay with os 9.2. Os X is too big and still be pretty slow on it. It's time Apple brought a Os Xmobile version out!

redeye be · Oct 6, 2005

As for the ram
apple says the ram slot supports max 256 Mb
lowendmac however says it should support 512 Mb
Just looking for someone who has +512Mb in his/her ibook 300

HD
I'll probably put in the 12 Gb drive (that way i can add a bigger disk in the machine i'm taking it from (vaio pcg-c1ve running debian

). That way i'll be well under Dreadnought's 20 Gb limit and California is right about putting at least 40 Gb in the c1

.
Is there a surefire way of determining how big your drive can be in a particular system?

cheers

California · Oct 6, 2005

redeye_be said:
As for the ram
apple says the ram slot supports max 256 Mb
lowendmac however says it should support 512 Mb
Just looking for someone who has +512Mb in his/her ibook 300

HD
I'll probably put in the 12 Gb drive (that way i can add a bigger disk in the machine i'm taking it from (vaio pcg-c1ve running debian ). That way i'll be well under Dreadnought's 20 Gb limit and California is right about putting at least 40 Gb in the c1 .
Is there a surefire way of determining how big your drive can be in a particular system?

cheers

I think you could actually go up to 100gbs hd.

Apple said max was 256 because when those ibooks were made, no one made 512K chips that size.

The previous hesitation on laptop hard drives was heat consideration. but now, even the faster drives have been heat tested. You actually would do better with a newer, faster rpm drive than the 12 gig, unless you just want to "see if you can do it". You can pick up a laptop hard drive for 80 bucks if you search -- like I just bought a new travelstar 60 gig 5400 rpm for that price, new in wrapper. I think the 12 gig will actually be more of a "stressor" on your old machine because it is slow and old and probably hot to run. I'd just use it as an external. But that's just mho.

redeye be · Oct 7, 2005

California said:
...

points taken

I will go ahead with putting the 12Gb in the ibook i think. I only need 3 rather small partitions to run OS9 for gaming, OSX for itunes and classic for coolness. That way i can add a bigger drive in the vaio without having an unused 12Gb drive traveling between my computer&sound-parts&cables boxes. I'll just throw away (or take appart for my collection of storage media - don't ask) the 3Gb leftover.
If the 12Gb does indeed get much hotter in the ibook (the vaio has more cooling so it seems, thx for the heads-up btw) i'll have to find a newer one for the ibook. Or put it back in the vaio ... hmm ... it will be fun times

I'm not sure about the ram yet. It's a lot of money to add 512, then again...
I have some soulsearching to take care off.

cheers

Lord Blackadder · Oct 7, 2005

My Dad has a 300MHz clamshell iBook with 128MB RAM and a 3GB hard drive. It runs 10.3.9 without issues although the hard drive is almost too small to run a useful OS X system. He only needs it for surfing the 'net and running Quicken though, so he gets by. I would get a 20GB HD for it but your 12 GB should be OK as long as you don't install too many apps.

I haven't tried it yet yet but I've heard that swapping out a hard drive from a clamshell requires a lot of patience and care. So be careful.

Anyway it can't be worse than changing out the hard drive from a Powerbook 180c, which I've done.

Dreadnought · Oct 7, 2005

See the stats that Mactracker says you can update it to, so you can put 512 in there:

redeye be · Nov 4, 2005

Dreadnought said:
See the stats that Mactracker says you can update it to, so you can put 512 in there:

After checking with a 512 i could (temporarily) get my hands on i bought me one. Installed it today, works perfect.
Tomorrow i can get my hands on a cheap 40 Gb laptop drive, i'll put that in the ibook, the vaio will have to with 12 Gb for now.
Then off to installing panther and 9. It will make a fine living-room laptop.

Thx for your input all!

Quartz Extreme · Nov 4, 2005

redeye_be said:
Hello all,

I can easily upgrade to 288 RAM, but read that the ibook would support 544 Mb in total (by adding 512). This would be interesting if in the future i would use xpostfacto to take it as far as i can get
512 costs more than two times the price of 256...
Any experience or ideas with or about adding 512 here?

Goto DealRAM.com, they have the best prices, and they are pretty reliable, and you can be assured that it will work in your iBook. 256MB should be enough for Panther, and for that model of iBook, the prices of the 256MB cards offer the best value.

redeye_be said:
Hello all,
The HD has some corrupted sections and has had it's time. Would any 12 Gb laptop drive i have work in there?
How big can i go with the drive, are there limitations (and if there are, where can i find these)?
Are there size limits or are all laptop drives alike or within some spec?

There is a height limitation on the hard drive, it must be 9.5mm, some laptop hard drives are 12.5mm.

I'm not sure about logical size limitations, but I really don't think there are so you should be fine there.

Also, replacing the hard drive in my white iBook was rather intensive, I'm not sure how it is on the clamshells, but this site has great HD replacement guides: http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/

joecool85 · Nov 4, 2005

Man, unfair...I want one of those.

redeye be · Nov 4, 2005

Quartz Extreme said:
Goto DealRAM.com...

Allready have the RAM, went for 512. Not that i have money to spare, i just got a great price

Quartz Extreme said:
There is a height limitation on the hard drive, it must be 9.5mm, some laptop hard drives are 12.5mm.

Thx for this valuable piece of info!

Quartz Extreme said:
Also, replacing the hard drive in my white iBook was rather intensive, I'm not sure how it is on the clamshells, but this site has great HD replacement guides: http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/

Looks like i'll have to screw and unscrew a lot of things, damn. I was going to look up the placement info tomorrow, i did think it would have been more easy... It'll be a nice adventure

.
I'll make sure the drive is 9.5 mm max, i don't want to be closing it without making the change

. This is also an added reason for adding a bigger drive. I will probably not want to do that again once i went through it all.

joecool85 said:
Man, unfair...I want one of those.

I'll post some pics when i'm done with it

.

redeye be · Nov 10, 2005

I broke it.

I put in the 40 Gb and now it won't boot. Question mark-folder on startup. Even with a bootable CD and pressing "C". Cd does start spinning though.
I tried putting the original (with system - 10.3.9) 3 Gb drive in. Same *$§+')ç problem.

Checked and rechecked all cabling... I'm so sad right now.

I did learn how to dismantle the damn thing in under 10 min

Here are some questions for the more knowledgeable people:

-Could this problem be due to a broken IDE cable (HD to MB). I might have pushed it a little to hard (it's so damn big for the small place it should fill).Mind you, it's not booting from CD neither
-MB kaput?
-Any hints on how to solve?

Million thanks to whoever helps me fix this baby!

jwdawso · Nov 10, 2005

Sorry to hear about your problem!

I have a Tangerine 300Mhz clamshell running 10.4.3. It does not need Xpostfacto to install and boot 10.4.3. I also have an Airport card.

As far as not booting, when I upgraded my drive from 6GB to 40GB, the first time I attached the drive I did not align the cable properly, so I ended up with just one row plugged in! However, it would boot from a CD.

Recheck again that both the HD & CD are plugged in properly, including the power. Make sure the hard drive pins are properly jumpered for master/slave. Re-seat the memory also.

Good luck!

ITASOR · Nov 10, 2005

Just to let you know, my clamshell has 544MB (32+512) and it runs 10.3.9 GREAT. For internet and e-mail/ichat it's just as fast as my 1.33Ghz 12" iBook G4!

Good luck, and let us know how the HD upgrade goes, I'm thinking of doing the same.

redeye be · Nov 10, 2005

I'll re-recheck all cabling/jumpers/memory tomorrow.
Right now i have to finish a script for a flash project...

Any help is still appreciated in the mean time!

Spievy · Nov 10, 2005

redeye_be said:
I'll re-recheck all cabling/jumpers/memory tomorrow.
Right now i have to finish a script for a flash project...

Any help is still appreciated in the mean time!

Before I would freak out, check all of the cables and make sure the HD is seated properly. I am not to familiar with this particular ibook, but look for a reset switch on the mother board. If the switch is not on the mother board it might have a soft reset, were you hold the power button for 5 seconds. Anyways try and reset it.

Hope this helps

redeye be · Nov 10, 2005

Tonight's training was canceled so i went ahead and re-rechecked the cables/connections.

jwdawso said:
As far as not booting, when I upgraded my drive from 6GB to 40GB, the first time I attached the drive I did not align the cable properly, so I ended up with just one row plugged in! However, it would boot from a CD.

You officially rock dude!
Kicking myself for not noticing this. Kicking again, and again. I'm so high on endorfines i don't feel anything anyhow. Happy happy joy joy!

I did also find a reset button way down on the MB. pushed it several times. Just to be sure (this was before trying to boot it)

ITASOR: looks like a HD replacement is dead easy if you make sure the HD cable is connected as it should be (kicking myself again).

Just follow the guides Quartz Extreme posted (really nice)

Installing Panther as we speak...

EDIT: You rock jwdawso!
If you're ever in .be i'll buy you a few beers! (or if there's anything else i can do for you... let me know)

redeye be · Nov 10, 2005

Posting from the living room, via airport, on the iBook. While listening to my favorite collection of tunes, shared from my mini.

thx all!

ibook 300 - upgrade to itunes client (panther-tiger)

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