iBook G4 upgrade questions

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Ristin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 11, 2011
26
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I was given a working iBook G4. I'm writing this post using it. :)
It's 800 MHZ with 256 ram and 27GB harddrive. The optical drive does not work.

If I upgrade to 1 GB of Ram, can I get Leopard to run on this setup? I looked up changing hard drives, and while within my technical abilities, not within my patience level.

I'm not looking to run any heavy duty software, just a more current version of Firefox or Safari and maybe stream movies from my network drive.
 
-tWv-

-tWv-

macrumors 68000
May 11, 2009
1,582
1
Ohio
I have an iBook G4 1.33ghz processor with 1.25gb RAM and it runs leopard just fine. Not sure what the difference in RAM and clock speed will mean if you tried to run leopard but just for reference. Maybe someone else with more similar specs will be able to give you a better idea.
 
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SirYossi

macrumors regular
Jan 4, 2012
117
1
Penfield
Yes u can with a little work

Ristin said:
I was given a working iBook G4. I'm writing this post using it. :)
It's 800 MHZ with 256 ram and 27GB harddrive. The optical drive does not work.

If I upgrade to 1 GB of Ram, can I get Leopard to run on this setup? I looked up changing hard drives, and while within my technical abilities, not within my patience level.

I'm not looking to run any heavy duty software, just a more current version of Firefox or Safari and maybe stream movies from my network drive.
Click to expand...
First you need to upgrade to at least 512 Ram (if unsure how much or what ram goto macsales.com and find your imac and see what the upgrade options are. Depending on the model the max ram might be 512 or 768 either or will be fine for leopard. I would maybe see if you can get a bigger Hard drive (supports up to i think 120 gig) and might as well find a compatable optical drive on ebay to put in to replace the broken one. The ibooks are kinda tricky to take apart but done it many of times. Once you get the ram upgraded you need to in your case since u do not have a optical drive need to find a PPC mac that supports Leopard to install it to the external HD and make sure you install a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner before you boot the HD to your ibook. Once you boot (has to be firewire drive USB 2 will not work) holding down the option key to select the drive. Once the external HD boots the imac clone the external Disk to the ibook. Once done go to system pres and select the internal HD as your boot drive. Shut down and then book the ibook. if all works you will be running OS Leopard. After the ibook boots do a system update. If would be best that the external HD is not the maxed out OS X.5 as when you apply the update to X.5.8 it will fix any issues with the cloning.
hope this helps
I installed Leopard on two or three unsupported macs mostly imac G4 700mhz and PowerMac G4 500mhz both run OS X.5 just fine but the imac works the best with it.
OS x.5 works well with most processor upgrades for PowerMac G4s as well
 
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Ristin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 11, 2011
26
0
Thanks for the replies.
I looked up prices to upgrade this unit and have decided not to.
320GB hard drive $169
1GB RAM $29
Optical Drive $ 129
Leopard $ this is the unknown, but seems to run about $200+?

and when all this is done, it's still an old lap top with limited usefulness. While I like the small size compared to my other 4 laptops, I really don't need it and can't justify the money. Also I saw used iBook's on Amazon with faster processors, more RAM, all ready running Leopard for around $150.

So back in the closet my little iBook goes, until I get another wild urge to waste money on a mostly useless project.
 
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