To Upgrade a PowerBook
I bought a 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 last semester. While it’s certainly nowhere close to a fast computer, it’s faster than the computer I received from my school, and it’s a Mac. I do most of my video/animation/photoshop work on here, and it gets the job done. That being said, part of the reason I was up until 6 AM this morning working on a video was because this computer is pretty slow. Still, it’s a lot better than nothing and I don’t have the money for a better computer right now.
Because of what I use this computer for, you can imagine my horror when I found out that the lower RAM slot had failed, bringing me down to 1 GB from 2 GB. This obviously makes using Photoshop/AfterEffects/Final Cut Pro very, very slow. They’re already slow enough, I don’t need half my RAM disappearing on top of it. Apparently this is an epidemic among all Aluminum PowerBook G4 users. So I set about fixing this, which requires replacing the logic board (aka mother board/system board). But it occurred to me that Apple hadn’t changed the design of the model much at all until the MacBook Pros came out, so I decided to see if I could put a better board in this computer. Sure enough, according to Apple Fritter, the 1.0/1.25 GHz PBG4 board are compatible with the 1.33/1.5 GHz PBG4 boards. On eBay, they all cost the same amount, so I was pretty happy. 250 MHz increase along with an upgrade to the video card (Radeon M 9600 to 9700) is not a bad thing, especially when one can do it for the same price as getting the same board one already has. The only other thing I needed to do was get the matching heat sink. Apparently the Radeon 9700 runs hotter enough than the 9600 that it requires a thermal paste connection to the metal of the heatsink instead of the paraffin wax pad the 9600 has.
I ordered the board and heat sink off of eBay for under $200 total, not a bad price for this kind of repair. Once they came in, I got started working. I used iFixit.com’s excellent guide, if you’re taking apart a Mac and don’t have the service manual, I highly recommend their guides. This is what I found myself with once I took off the top of the computer:
If nothing else, these computers are put together exceptionally well. There is almost no wasted space that I can see. This also means they can be difficult to get apart. The process, from start to finish, probably took me about 3.5 hours, though I had some decent breaks in there and did lots of pausing to look at things in the computer I found interesting. Working straight through, I probably could have done it in 2 hours, and I might be able to get it down to 1.5 hours now that I’ve done it before. Eventually, I got the logic board out. Here’s how it compares visibly to the new one (the new one is the upper, the old the lower):
Needless to say, there’s very little difference between the two. The biggest difference is between the two ATI cards. Replacing the heat sink was more work than I thought it would be. After taking out every screw I could find, the heat sink wouldn’t budge. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the mounts for the LCD hinge go into and through the heat sink itself. Each hinge has 2 torx screws keeping it down, one screws into the heat sink, and one goes through it and into the internal frame. This makes for a strong connection. You can see how it is set up:
Putting the computer back together was simply a matter of reconnecting cables and putting the right screws back in the right places. I didn’t have any screws left over after finishing; when that happens, you know you can feel good about a job well done. The computer booted right up, and I was able to log in. No need to reinstall the OS or anything like that.
So what are the caveats of doing such a procedure? Well, the clock got reset to 1969, so all the security certificates for my email accounts (I have Mail set to launch on startup) return an error of “Warning: This certificate is not yet valid.” and a couple other things kind of freaked out, but once I set the date/time correctly and restarted the computer, that was fine. All your programs, though, will believe that they’re on a different computer and it’s essentially true. MacTracker sees my computer as the 1.5 GHz model, Adobe CS3 made me activate again, FCS asked for the serial number again, and I had to reauthorize iTunes.
But the benefits are nice. The biggest benefit, of course, is that I once again have 2 GB of useable RAM available to the system. I haven’t noticed a perceptible difference between 1.25 GHz and 1.5 GHz, but I expected that. Startup, shutdown, and especially sleep times are a bit faster, though. The graphics card, however, is noticeably better. GUI elements that rely on the graphics card are definitely snappier and the games I’ve got seem to run faster or smoother.
Overall, it was a worthwhile upgrade because the logic board needed to be replaced anyway, but it wouldn’t be worth the money and time required if you’re simply looking for more power out of your PowerBook. For your viewing and geekiness pleasure, here are some before and after pictures:
