Wanting to buy a Clamshell iBook and I have some questions about Clamshells

[Roba]

thedue110 congratulations.


I picked up my clamshell today from the Parcelforce depot. I had to pay nearly £60 to get it but I don't really mind I got what i wanted and paying tax is pretty inevitable when you buy higher value items overseas and get them shipped to the UK.

I am very pleased with the laptop and i think that it will be a good second laptop for the purposes that i require it for.

I ordered a 512MB memory module from a seller in France on the 3rd of August and i have mailed them to ask about the status of things but i have had no reply. The clamshell only has 64MB of memory in it right now so i am kind of restricted as to what i can do. I hope that my memory module turns up soon. I have Mac OS 9.2 installed onto my hard drive and Mac OS 10.? but i cannot access that because i do not have enough ram to tell yet what version the Mac OS is.


I bought the Buffalo card WLI-PCM-L11GP-3 in the end and it fits alright but i am just having problems connecting to the Airport right now under Mac OS 9.2. I will probably figure out what is going on later.

I have had a go at removing the hard drive but it seems a little complicated to me so i think that i may leave it and just stick with the 10GB one that is in there already. It is not like i want to put a lot of applications onto it or use it a lot either. I may try again though to change the hard drive.

I tried to remove the corporate pen mark with methylated spirits but it did not remove it so i just stuck two small green stickers over it.

Also, please discount what i wrote above the Orinoco Lucent card a few posts above. I later found out in another thread on that forum that the forum member there had to modify their laptop in order to get their Lucent card to fit. I do think though that the Proxim Orinoco Gold card maybe a better bet though because it is a slimline card unlike the Lucent card by Orinoco.

 

[thedude110]

I have had a go at removing the hard drive but it seems a little complicated to me so i think that i may leave it and just stick with the 10GB one that is in there already. It is not like i want to put a lot of applications onto it or use it a lot either. I may try again though to change the hard drive.

Give it another shot -- it's worth it. After installing all of the necessary OS and Security Updates, QuickTime updates, iTunes updates and Open Office, my 60 gig HD suddenly "only" has 43 gigs left.

It's really not terribly difficult as long as you're patient, organized, careful and fully ... discharged of static.

 

[gooffer]

Thxs for the flowers.....

Glad someone link to my review on ebay, too bay I don't carry an Clamshell parts anymore. Here a question to the Clamshell owners in the UK about the Buffalo cards.

Does the WLI-PCM-L11GP-3 card work with the normal airport card drives above 10.2.5 or do you need to get your own drivers. How about OS 9 support ?

Also has anyone tried the 802.11G version of the Buffolo card in their Clamshell ? I assume if you can get to physically fit it should work but since I haven't tried this I don't have the answer.

Any info is welcome. I wonder if the Buffolo card uses the Sony internals or the Lucent once.

 

[Roba]

Hi gooffer as you have maybe read I have this card installed in my iBook clamshell and i am running 9.2 . I don't know if this card works with 10.2.5 but i should imagine that it should. I am awaiting some memory to turn up and then i hope to be running panther sometime next week. I posted a picture of the card inserted into my iBook here. I didn't need any drivers to get it up and running in 9.2 it just picked it up itself.

This thread may interest you as well.

thedude110 I will give the hard drive upgrade another shot but i think that i will wait until my memory turns up till i try again.


Edit:
gooffer after doing some reading i believe that this Buffalo card uses the Orinoco/Hermes chip. Also i am not sure if the WLI-PCM-L11GP is the same as the WLI-PCM-L11GP-3 card. The card that i am using has this part number WLI-PCM-L11GP on it but the manuals state that it is a WLI-PCM-L11GP -3 card. I think that they maybe both be the same card but i am not sure on that.

Glad someone link to my review on ebay, too bay I don't carry an Clamshell parts anymore. Here a question to the Clamshell owners in the UK about the Buffalo cards.

Does the WLI-PCM-L11GP-3 card work with the normal airport card drives above 10.2.5 or do you need to get your own drivers. How about OS 9 support ?


Any info is welcome. I wonder if the Buffolo card uses the Sony internals or the Lucent once.

 

[Roba]

My memory arrived yesterday that i bought from a different seller from the one that i mentioned earlier in this thread and i installed that and everything was fine. I bought 512MB of Crucial ram part number CT64M64S4W75 it is not the ram that Crucial states on their website for the iBook but it works perfectly and the laptop recognises it as PC100.

I also installed the hard drive as well. That was pretty plain sailing actually. I have done upgrades before for my own PC's and members of my family laptops but for me the biggest problem that can put me of actually is getting the screws of. It took me a good while to get all of the screws of the clamshell and getting them back on to where they are meant to go was nearly just as bad. I have also got a few screws left over as well. I had to open the laptop up twice because at first i connected the lid incorrectly and it was clicking every time i opened the clamshell lid but i figured out what was wrong and sorted that out.

I tried to install Panther this morning and everything appeared to be fine. It took about 2 odd gig for the hard drive out of a 30GB hard drive so that is pretty good.
I have a bit of a problem though the problem is that i am having is that on the set up page i cannot see any of the next buttons to press. I have included a picture of what i mean.
Does anybody know how i can possibly change the resolution if it is needed so the directions are centred in the middle of the page and not the corner?
Thanks

Edit- I managed to run the setup in the end. The forward and backwards buttons where not visible to me so i just had to keep on clicking along the bottom and just hoping for the best and i got there in the end.

Also-the gooffer just to let you know yes the Buffalo airport card also works using the above software also.

UPDATE
You know i nearly ruined the clamshell. I damaged 2 pins for the display cable and this was the reason why the resolution got messed up. It also made the laptop flicker as well a little. I had to straighten out the two pins with a needle and i was worried there for a while but i managed to straighten them out enough to put the cable back on properly. If people are going to attempt this i would urge them to very careful i thought that i was but obviously i was not careful enough.

My trackpad went dead for a while also and my keyboard also became non responsive but after several attempts i got it to work again.

I am thinking that i may get some Square trade insurance for $79 and that will cover my laptop for two years if it is need of repair or if it breaks down.