SSD for iBook G3

[blesscheese]

Benchmarks later ( this weekend?)

I have a CF in my Lombard, and a CF in my Pismo. I took benchmarks a while ago with the tool that came with my Intech SpeedTools. Subjectively, the Lombard boots slowly, but performs well in regular use. The Pismo boots much quicker, and seems faster than a regular hard drive, but not much faster.

I'll post the benchmarks later when I am back home.

And....with the benefit of some Xmas Amazon cards, I "splurged" on the 120 GB Transcend SSD, so I can benchmark that in OS 9 as well

 

[megasad]

This doesn't seem to work as expected in Mac OS X 10.1 or 10.4:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k of=tstfile count=1024 && purge && dd if=tstfile bs=1024k of=/dev/null count=1024 && rm tstfile

So I ran it as two separate commands:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k of=tstfile count=1024
dd if=tstfile bs=1024k of=/dev/null count=1024

And so got these numbers for the 5400rpm Samsung MP0603H in my iBook:

Write: 23.95 MB/sec
Read: 28.48 MB/sec

So even though a PATA SSD will be limited by the ATA/66 bus, it should still be ~3 times faster, in addition to being completely silent.

However, I've found that even when I configure my wireless network to be 802.11b/g only (no a or n) and WPA/WPA2 secured, I still can't get the WiFi to work. I've read far too many people asking for solutions that only end in no-one being able to make it work…

So I think I won't get the SSD for now, as though it would be fun to have a silent iBook G3, if it can't go online I won't ever switch it on to hear said silence.

However, I will be moving house in a few months, will be getting a new ISP and so returning my current router.

Does anyone have experience using a modern Airport Extreme base station with a 2001 iBook G3? Does it work using WPA/WPA2 encryption? I won't use WEP.

 

[666sheep]

If it does help you, I have AP Express in b/g/n mode with WPA/WPA2 and all my wifi-equipped Macs do work well with it. MP, Mini, PowerBook and iBook Clamshell. All of them have Airport cards, no USB dongles. My network is also hidden. All OSes from 10.4 to 10.8.

 

[megasad]

If it does help you, I have AP Express in b/g/n mode with WPA/WPA2 and all my wifi-equipped Macs do work well with it. MP, Mini, PowerBook and iBook Clamshell. All of them have Airport cards, no USB dongles. My network is also hidden. All OSes from 10.4 to 10.8.

Thanks for the information. I've decided to install the SSD regardless of WiFi, will hopefully receive it by this weekend. But so when I move house I'll get either an AirPort Extreme or a Time Capsule, then the iBook will be able to go online too.

megasad: when you go about this project...can you take lots of pics....looking forward to seeing how this all works out. (really interested to see if will work with mac os 9+)

Will do, in the vein of those I posted in my MacBook Air thread.