I recently got my hands on a G3 iBook 500 MHz which is in really good condition except for some things I noticed:
1) The harddrive is probably dying - really noisy and I would like to swap it for an ssd. I have seen several adapters on amazon but which are compatible? They all seem to have some sort of IDE to SATA bridge onboard.
I run one of the red board IDE-to-mSATA adapters on my clamshell iBook 466 (I no longer remember the brand, if there was one, but it was spendier than a cheaper, green board adapter which was faulty from the outset). Mind you, I bought that five years ago when mSATA was the dominant, small form factor blade SSDs (in terms of price and availability). These days, obviously, the m.2 SATA form factor is most common and prices for those are lower, in most cases, than mSATA stock still out there.
The IDE-to-m.2 adapters I use in my two PowerBook G4s are the generic ones (from eBay/Amazon/Aliexpress) which come with either a white or black 2.5-inch HDD-style case. They’ve worked flawlessly and uneventfully for me since 2019. Those boards are also green, but bear no relationship to the green ICE-to-mSATA adapter I tried back in 2018.
2) I would like to hook up an external display but I am not sure which adapter to buy - is Mini DVI right?
The dongle you need is the mini-VGA-to-VGA adapter 603-0607/922-4554. As you probably already know, the mini-VGA-out on that iBook mirrors what’s on the main display — not unlike the mirror feature on my clamshell predecessor (which uses a different method for composite-out).
3) When I installed MacOS 9.22 on this machine it got really, really hot. Is it normal for these iBooks? I thought about re-applying thermal paste but I fear breaking the plastics in the process. My MacBook from 2006 is already crumbling away.
The ice iBook G3s were the first iBooks to have a fan in them. Even so, all the designed components were packed into a tight case (something the clamshell design didn’t have to struggle with).
First thing first, you’ll need to look into whether the fan inside your is still functional and/or is powering on at a certain temperature threshold. Whatever the case, if it hasn’t been done before, it’ll need a clean-out. But chances are also probably likely that it no longer freely spins when power is sent to it (as a lot of these older fans are prone to do).
Applying fresh thermal paste is going to need to happen anyway, especially if you’re disassembling it for a thorough clean-out/tune-up.
4) How do you think about buying a new battery these days? I guess these do not sell well and are probably years old if you buy new. I am intrigued to repack the battery with new cells - has anyone ever done this before successfully?
If you can find a working battery, go for it. There’s a company on places like eBay whose “brand” is to show the aftermarker battery and generic box against a Photoshop-yellow background. Having bought one of these for my clamshell iBook, just before their prices nearly quadrupled in 2019, I would avoid them at all costs. My battery began to have failing cells about two/three months after purchase, and the final cells failed within six months.
In 2019, I bought eight 18650 lithium cells to attempt a cell re-pack. I ended up having the eighth getting very close to thermal runaway as I finished the connections. Fortunately, that didn’t occur, but the polarity on that cell completely reversed and was, effectively, ruined. I never bothered after that because, frankly, that’s a lot of energy to be dealing with should something go sideways, and I don’t think I can come close to replicating mass-production conditions (including the arc-weld which typically affixes the series plates between cells) in the confines of my home work space. So I have seven good, basically unused cells sitting around with nothing to do and little desire to try that again anytime soon.
That said, if the idea of re-packing seems like a bit too much to try on a lark, you might want to keep your eye on old iBook G4 12-inch models which people are disposing on your local used web sites (CL, etc.), as I
think those batteries can be used in the iBook G3 ice/opaque models. At this point, you’d be better off salvaging used iBook batteries from those used laptops, as some will have batteries with good serviceable life left in them. This route, of course, may look aesthetically off, as the G4 batteries are of the opaque white plastic finish, but it should give you portability.
One positive thing, though: iBooks don’t, in the absence of a working battery, downclock the way PowerBook G4 models of the time period (the models with an L3 cache) do in the absence of a working battery, so even if you need to carry a power adapter, you’d be getting full power out of your 500MHz PPC750CXe CPU.
Let us know how everything goes.
