perhaps an SSD drive could speed things up?
Too expensive, there aren't that many PATA SSD's, not only that, it's limited to ATA 100 speeds so it won't make that much of a difference.
Spending $100 on a machine that is 7 years old and going back to 64 GB just won't make me happy.
Not only that, I am pretty sure they are not available where I am and ordering online makes it even more expensive.
Better would be to get a secondhand MacbookPro from 2006-2008 or so, cost more yes but would also be faster, more compatible with current software.
Maybe a low capacity PCMCIA SSD would work, but I don't even know if they exist and would probably still not make that much of a difference.
Just did a quick search, they seem to exist but finding a place where they sell them is hard.
If for instance there would be a 8-16-or even 32GB available at a reasonable price at higher speeds than the build in HD I would consider one and then move the VM to the PCMCIA.
Anyone has suggestions?
BTW, I tried tricking My powerbook into recognizing 1.5 GB of memory by mapping out the second lower memory slot in Open Firmware, but as soon as the system tries to access the second RAM the system crashes, I think the problem here is that the memory is mapped but the speed is unknown to the system.
If I go into System Profiler it sees the extra 512 MB RAM module but no mention of it's speed.
Here's the site where I found that trick:
Mapping lower slot memory