Any good mods...

[applesuper]

to include ssd's in powerbooks out there?

It would make a ton of a difference to the thermals and speed of the devices, some of which have a lot going for them.

If only some found some ata ssds (I am sure some co will jump into this nice niche for upgrades to old machines and release some sooner than later) or some adaptor ata to sata to go along and fit in!

 

[Sneakz]

I'll be honest, just buy a new computer. No manufacturer is going to come out with an ATA133 SSD this late in the game. You said it yourself, its a niche market. Anyone with a notebook with ATA either is content with their notebook, or is looking to replace it, not upgrade it.

Edit: Okay, there are some, but they are very slow. Like hard drive speeds. Might as well buy an HDD.

 

[MWPULSE]

i'd say to mod a powerbook to make it usable it with SSD's would almost be as expensive as getting a new laptop all together.. So i dunno if there ever would be. :s

PTP

 

[Scottsdale]

Will throughput of an old ATA even benefit??? from SSD???

 

[applesuper]

PLEASE, lets not eff up this thread, it's called mods you might know of, or heard of, or are doing, it's not about discussing if such a mod is required, or suggesting other notebooks to buy, those have their place but not here, here they are completely beside the point.

I'll be honest, just buy a new computer. No manufacturer is going to come out with an ATA133 SSD this late in the game. You said it yourself, its a niche market. Anyone with a notebook with ATA either is content with their notebook, or is looking to replace it, not upgrade it.

Edit: Okay, there are some, but they are very slow. Like hard drive speeds. Might as well buy an HDD.

i'd say to mod a powerbook to make it usable it with SSD's would almost be as expensive as getting a new laptop all together.. So i dunno if there ever would be. :s

PTP

You are missing the point, it's not cheaper or more expensive or blah blah...that's like telling someone with a vintage car that wants to mod his car to buy a new one...maybe he will, maybe as in my case in computers he already has...but the point is to make a vintage piece of equipment better.

My pbook g4 is too me the perfect form factor in terms of thickness, screen size, end to end keyboard, trackpad size etc. etc. for the use that I am interested in it, that of a portable typewriter (I write a lot) and web browser, and it has a beautiful matte anti glare screen unmatched by anything right now in apple's line up. I don't want the macbook or air 13" because the hight of the screen is less than what I would require what with the stupid dvd watching ratio, nor do I like lenghty for no reason form factor and I consider the booklength powerbook much better. I doesn't matter that I have two 24" imacs, and a macbook pro 15", and an iphone or the fact that I ll be one of the first to buy the new ibook (see tablet), I want to make my vintage equipment better. Hence the thread.

Also, I have noticed that ssds currently those that do feature ata are dead slow, pity, we shall see what comes along.
\

Will throughput of an old ATA even benefit??? from SSD???

Of course it will, the busses were and are always much bigger than the hd/ssd tranfer rates
Plus, it's not the throughput that one aims at with such a mod, it's more so the safety of the non moving parts and the much better thermals wrt the hd.

 

[Sneakz]

Okay, I get what your saying. I suggested buying a new notebook because I assumed it was your only notebook. The reality is you can't do much to improve on it. A larger, faster hard drive is your best option. Those PATA SSDs are horrendously slow. Hard drives don't produce much heat. Even the 7200RPM ones.

 

[MWPULSE]

but even so, i dont know if there would ever be a point in having a company that modded powerbooks. Its like the exclusivity of the apple market, but on another, entirely more "special" market. I guess the way to see, would be to try it out, experiment.

PTP

 

[applesuper]

Okay, I get what your saying. I suggested buying a new notebook because I assumed it was your only notebook. The reality is you can't do much to improve on it. A larger, faster hard drive is your best option. Those PATA SSDs are horrendously slow. Hard drives don't produce much heat. Even the 7200RPM ones.

yeah, I was reading about it that them pata ssds where the closest thing to tying a noose around your throat, really bad products,.

Although I will disagree that the hard drives dont emit heat, they do and lot of it, I 've not quantified it but qualitatively speaking it seems self evident.

 

[applesuper]

but even so, i dont know if there would ever be a point in having a company that modded powerbooks. Its like the exclusivity of the apple market, but on another, entirely more "special" market. I guess the way to see, would be to try it out, experiment.

PTP

I was just thinking of someone coming up with a few good ata hard drives to cover the whole upgrade market, which is sizable since we are not in the early 2000s or 90s anymore, there are people out there with great machines and with great gpus and cpus that they paid a lot of money for and who don't want to or cant afford to upgrade, but would jump on a solution that would give them much better safety/speed/thermals/currency. I wasn't taking specifically about apple.

That said apple have got a few people/service staff out there doing modding to old machines of theirs.

Btw, I ve just convinced myself on a good business venture, I have the capital any korean partner please pm me!

 

[Scottsdale]

I was just thinking of someone coming up with a few good ata hard drives to cover the whole upgrade market, which is sizable since we are not in the early 2000s or 90s anymore, there are people out there with great machines and with great gpus and cpus that they paid a lot of money for and who don't want to or cant afford to upgrade, but would jump on a solution that would give them much better safety/speed/thermals/currency. I wasn't taking specifically about apple.

That said apple have got a few people/service staff out there doing modding to old machines of theirs.

Btw, I ve just convinced myself on a good business venture, I have the capital any korean partner please pm me!

But we are not talking about a "vintage" car. We are talking about OLD technology and modifications. The truth is most people buy NEW if they want a tech product. It's the way of the Western culture. Always get the newest latest and greatest that will do EVERYTHING in one solution.

Technology manufacturers make money by serving the needs of what is up-and-coming, not by making an SSD of OLD technology ATA for a Mac that a SMALL part of the market would still own. Let's say it's even 10% of them still around, that's 10% of what was originally one or two percent of all computers sold... not like a brand new star or cash cow! There's no money in OLD TECHNOLOGY.

The truth is while you may consider it "vintage" most consider it JUNK. People donate or toss out their old technology like it's junk, because it's worth NOTHING to them. You have all these great other Macs, yet you're holding onto an old Mac hopeful someone makes an outdated part with a tech of limited throughput/bandwidth that wouldn't even take advantage of the speed improvements of an SSD. It's not a Rolex, nor is it a Mercedes, it's an old computer that will not even run Flash acceptably! That is not futuristic, that's old tech, and why would ANY COMPANY spend a lot of money making something for a vintage Mac? We all know that the vintage products are vintage ONLY with VINTAGE parts... an SSD makes little to know sense from a technical aspect, and makes zero sense for a technology company trying to improve the future of computing... nor does it make sense for a public company wanting to make a PROFIT!

My advice, fund a startup and make SSDs for vintage tech buyers like yourself. And if you believe that's good advice, I have some oceanfront property here in Arizona I would sell to you.

 

[kryptonianjorel]

You are aware that ATA 133 is named such because of its max transfer rate of 133 MBps, whereas SATA 1.5 transfers at 187.5 MBps, and SATA 3 at twice that? (theoretical yields, I mean)

Putting a SSD in your powerbook is not a "mod" its an upgrade. If you wanna do a mod, its got to be something different, like booting off a CF card,

 

[Scottsdale]

You are aware that ATA 133 is named such because of its max transfer rate of 133 MBps, whereas SATA 1.5 transfers at 187.5 MBps, and SATA 3 at twice that? (theoretical yields, I mean)

Putting a SSD in your powerbook is not a "mod" its an upgrade. If you wanna do a mod, its got to be something different, like booting off a CF card,

So, an SSD's speed capabilities would NOT ever be an advantage over a 5400 rpm HDD of sorts???

 

[MWPULSE]

So, an SSD's speed capabilities would NOT ever be an advantage over a 5400 rpm HDD of sorts???

i'd say no, yea the speed difference would be noticable

PTP

 

[bolen]

Mtron SSD Mobi MSD-PATA3025 32GB is specced at R/W: 100/80 MB/s
Mtron SSD Pro MSD-PATA7025 16GB is specced at R/W: 130/120 MB/s

But as pretty much everyone has suggested; buy a new machine with SATA. Try to find a cheap, used one and you're good to go.

IMO it's not worth spending any money on upgrading such old machine.

 

[NC MacGuy]

A 5400rpm 320GB drive will feel worlds quicker than the original 4200. That and keep watching the 2GB RAM in a 12" PB thread. Not really a whole lot more you can do with the innards limitations.