IIRC the Samsung HM160HC is a tad faster than the 7K100. I had a 7K60 (60GB 7200rpm) in my Mac mini G4 when I used that as my main machine from 2005 to 2009 and it was a lot peppier than the stock 80GB 4200rpm garbage.
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What have you done with a PowerPC today?
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True, but in my Titanium I use an M2sata drive and sadly, leopard or Sorbet does not support trim. What to do then ? I like the speed of this and don’t want to go back to mechanical drive.If you’re referring to the lack of TRIM with “SSDs can go bad over time”, that’s not nearly as much of a problem as it used to be. There’s pretty much no reason to use slow-as-molasses HDDs over SSDs these days unless you need tons of affordable storage — or like your computer to be slow.
there have been a bunch of comments in the last day or so on the main Sorbet thread. Seems like apple shut down connectivity for older version of iTunes on 11/21?
Over the weekend, I did the same for my A1139 — except after cleaning, I decided to explore something different.
The reason for doing so is the A1139 fans are engineered to run at up to nearly 7000rpm (whereas the fans in the A1138 top out at around 3500rpm). The two models use very different fan designs, despite both models being released on the same day, both with brand-new logic board designs.
There is a lot of DIY advice on using specific lubrication methods for some of the faster fans. For the A1138, I chose to keep them dry after cleaning them thoroughly. For the A1139, I opted not to use mineral oil or conventional sewing machine oil (usually, a lower viscosity mineral oil), but a synthetic oil designed for sewing machines, typewriters, and power tools (namely, drills).
The thing about working on my A1139 is I find it to be one of the most stressful to deal with. One wrong thing, more so than on other Mac laptops I have, and the system kernel panics almost immediately or the display has issues (one of at least three different ways I’ve documented in the past).
This time was no different:
the fan design uses an adhesive gasket to hold the fan and motor to its enclosure, and that adhesive, now 16 years old, isn’t strong enough to re-seal perfectly after working on the fan rotors (enter kapton tape to the rescue). The A1138, by contrast, uses screws to hold the two halves together. So after cleaning and lubricating the fans, which on the A1139 first required removal of the logic board and display assembly, I put in fresh paste (it’s amazing what three years of always-on use can do to the internals of a PowerBook).
After assembly, which itself was stressful (particularly with trying to get the display assembly reconnected correctly with the base), I tried powering on and hit both instant kernel panic and one of the previously documented display issues (a single, horizontal line which acts like the “equator” of the display). The kernel panic was virtually identical to this one, except it was Darwin 9.8.0 (not 8.1.0). But with little else to go on, other than the logic board may have been ruined inadvertently, I came back to it a day later and a night rested, with “don’t be panic” lulling me to sleep.
Next day, I disassembled again, and I backlight-inspected the board with a very bright torch (flashlight). I also inspected everything on both sides. Nothing looked burnt and no cold/bad solders could be seen. I reassembled again, and after a couple of hang-ups with the pre-inserted PC Card (an 802.11n card) preventing full start-up, the system finally booted completely. I don‘t know what was preventing it before, but I think it was probably a poorly seated bus cable (most likely the PC Card cage or the Airport/Bluetooth cable).
The “equator” display line, annoyingly, remains, which may or may not go away at some point (sometimes it’s there, and sometimes it’s not, but I think it’s probably a failing LCD; the line doesn’t show up on screen caps or Remote Desktop). Although the fans did spin prior to servicing them, they were extremely loud and would often spin to less than a third of their rated top speed, making loud, groaning noises like the laptop was dying somewhere out in a field. I’ve more or less dealt with this noise for most of the time I’ve had it.
Now, with the synthetic oil in place, they’re so much quieter, and I hope they stay that way. When I manually set them to max, they’re now running at the fastest I’ve ever seen them (roughly 200–300rpm faster than the pre-servicing max):
In hindsight, and there might be some blasphemy here, I think I prefer to work on the A1138 over the A1139, despite some of the assembly features inside the A1138 feeling like more of a kludge (given tighter space constraints). I also think I prefer to work on the internals of my 17-inch MacBook Pro (an A1261) far more than inside the A1139. The internal design of the final aluminium MBP reveals just how much refinement they could muster with this form factor after five years of incremental improvements, and I don’t get the same kind of anxiety when working on the A1261 as I do with the A1139.
Postscript: The very last upgrade I plan to do with this A1139 at some point, provided it continues to keep working, is to find and bring over a working LG 1920x1200 LCD — glossy or matte, I’m fine with either.
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The question is can it be circumvented ? If Macintosh Garden was able to get Sherlock plugins to work again, certainly this shouldn't be so hard, right ?
I’m in the process of cleaning my iMac G4 17” usb2.0. In the meantime I’m upgrading the HDD with an SSD, replacing the internal memory (256MB) with a 1GB module. Replacing the other memory module (512MB) with a 1GB module. Adding an airport Express Card.
I’m also planning to install a BSD variant and Linux, but I’m not yet sure which.
I’m also planning to install a BSD variant and Linux, but I’m not yet sure which.
Nah, you got this. ?
The iBook clamshell disassembly is an excellent ice-breaker for getting comfortable with the internals of other and subsequent portable Macs (including the internals of the Mac mini).
Other real nail-biters include the 12-inch PowerBooks, the white iBooks, and also, curiously, the 17-inch aluminium PowerBook G4.
Won't
that cause the drive to go bad ? Trim is supposed to take care of garbage collection.Just continue using it.
The iBook G4 just randomly started working for whatever reason, so now I have a G4/1.42 to install Sorbet on and use as my daily driver laptop. The battery even holds a charge, and I'm amazed how responsive it is -- almost as good as OS 9 on Oddball. I really want to repack all my laptop batteries and replace the drives with SSDs to reduce power draw to get stupidly long lasting PowerPC 'Books (and a Pentium M), but not today.
Having a noir xmas with my Sawtooth....
It's a modified Shapeshifter theme and is still a work in progress but here it is as far as I've got.
A video of my 'chocolate orange' Sawtooth....
A Kubrick Tribute, ZX Spectrum and SNES/SFAMICOM emulation plus so much more: within less than ten minutes: such diversity!
Tip of the icebergA Kubrick Tribute, ZX Spectrum and SNES/SFAMICOM emulation plus so much more: within less than ten minutes: such diversity!
That actually looks really cool, good job!
Been downloading the install media to a few OSes (8.1 through X DP2 + 10.2) to prepare for the SSDening. Finally got the iBook G4 set up enough (running on Sorbet, because why wouldn't it?) that I'm typing with it right now while waiting for 9.2.1 to download so I can harvest its video drivers for a franken-8.1 install media dedicated to my new Lombard (and play around with trying to get 8.6 booting on the iBook G3). Also watched some YouTube videos. Plus, I logged into Github and forked Crypto Ancienne to build X DP1/DP2 binaries for it. By the way, does anyone know if the Carbon analyzer mentioned in the WWDC '98 conference still exists?
Probably going to go write another blog post, or work on a manuscript or something. It's not anything artsy and I'm under no illusions about that, it's just what I think will sell a couple copies because I'm in dire need of some money.
Probably going to go write another blog post, or work on a manuscript or something. It's not anything artsy and I'm under no illusions about that, it's just what I think will sell a couple copies because I'm in dire need of some money.
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If these don’t work with 8.1 for some reason, I used the ones shipped with the Lombard’s 8.6 media.
I have both downloaded, so I'll have both in folders so I can switch them out as need be.
