Slow ibook - worth swiping parts from another machine?

gerry87

My ibook g4 is getting tediously slow these days and i'm looking for some ways to speed it up a little.

I have another ibook which has been out of action for a good while with a messed up motherboard, but overall it would have had less use. I'm pretty sure the rest of it is perfect.

Would there be any benefit in taking parts from that one and installing it in this one? Or even installing the motherboard from this one in that one?

From what i've looked up the ibook has an extra slot for ram, would it be possible to take the 512mb out of the broken one and put it in this or would it be solderded in?

pvik00

If the motherboard is faulty then forget it, even if it's the exact same model. (Otherwise you could probably have got it for spare parts)

You didn't specify what did you mean by your iBook being slow. Is it because you are trying to run today's software or is it because some other reason.
What model of iBook is it, anyway?

If your iBook is healthy, then basically all you can do is upgrade it's RAM or HDD to speed it up a little. You cannot mix and match components from newer models, especially not what's soldered on the motherboard.
More speedup can be gained by running older software and disabling various features of the OS.

gerry87

pvik00 wrote: »

If the motherboard is faulty then forget it, even if it's the exact same model. (Otherwise you could probably have got it for spare parts)

You didn't specify what did you mean by your iBook being slow. Is it because you are trying to run today's software or is it because some other reason.
What model of iBook is it, anyway?

If your iBook is healthy, then basically all you can do is upgrade it's RAM or HDD to speed it up a little. You cannot mix and match components from newer models, especially not what's soldered on the motherboard.
More speedup can be gained by running older software and disabling various features of the OS.

It's a 1.33 GHz with 512mb's of ram. (the broken one is the same).

By running slow I just mean it can't seem to handle what it used to. Sometimes with firefox, mail and adium open it beechballs a fair bit, can take like 5-10 seconds to register things like scrolling down a page, can barely handle word and excel. It can't play youtube videos anymore without pausing every few seconds. It used to do all these. Its really just seen better days.

It's running leopard, (would going back to tiger help?).

If the motherboard of the other one is damaged, does that render the rest of the components useless?

Sad Professor

You definitely need to add more RAM. 512MB isn't enough for Leopard. It's the bare minimum it needs to run. Without an enough RAM your Mac has to use virtual memory which is very slow and would cause a lot of spinning beachballs.

In the meantime cut down on how many apps/tabs you have open at once.

pvik00

gerry87 wrote: »

If the motherboard of the other one is damaged, does that render the rest of the components useless?

Pretty much, as most of the fundamental components are soldered onto it. If you can get the machine with the faulty motherboard for just a few euros the you can go for it (as long is it's the exact same model), you'll get a spare display and case for your existing machine, but if it costs real money, than forget it. The motherboard is the most important spare part you may need.

As the Professor wrote, you should max out your RAM instead. I'm running Leopard happily on my 1.42 iBook with 1.5Gb of RAM.

gerry87

Ok thanks all, ram seems cheap enough so I think i'll just order a 1 gig card. They're looking around $40-$50, is this right? Could anyone point me to the card I need, or how to find it? I don't want to get a wrong one.

pvik00

gerry87 wrote: »

Ok thanks all, ram seems cheap enough so I think i'll just order a 1 gig card. They're looking around $40-$50, is this right? Could anyone point me to the card I need, or how to find it? I don't want to get a wrong one.

This is a reliable brand and a shop pleasure to deal with (select your exact model to get to the details, the tool will tell you what type of memory you need):
http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/listmodel.aspx?pl=iBook&mfgr=Apple&cat=RAM

gerry87

Cheers, my new ram is on its way

One other quick question... The fan on this one is pretty noisy. Would it be a big job to take the fan from the broken one and put it in this one?

(i mightn't have been clear earlier, i actually have the broken, i won't need to buy it.)

pvik00

gerry87 wrote: »

Cheers, my new ram is on its way

One other quick question... The fan on this one is pretty noisy. Would it be a big job to take the fan from the broken one and put it in this one?

(i mightn't have been clear earlier, i actually have the broken, i won't need to buy it.)

This is how you do it:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/iBook-G4-12-Inch-1-33-GHz-Fan/698/1
Is your iBook 12'', by the way?

Normally you shouldn't really hear the fan. Unless you're doing something that really makes your CPU sweat it doesn't even start. You may want to clean your laptop from the inside or look out for any heavy resource consumers running in the background.

Edit: No you were clear enough that you have the other iBook, I just didn't read carefully.

Sad Professor

I almost never hear the fans on my 1GHz iBook. Maybe a dozen times in the 4+ years that I've had it. When they do kick off they are pretty noisy however.

There might be something running in the background which is causing the fans to run and contributing to the slow down. Open up Activity Monitor, click on the CPU column and see if there's anything using up a lot of CPU processes. You should also look at your login items in your user account preferences. Minus off anything you don't want automatically running.

gerry87

Cheers for the link, i got out the screwdrivers and changed the fans over, so i'll wait till it kicks in and see.

It was coming on on more than it used to, but it was loose or something so was giving a godawful BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Hope it's fixed, got a lot of looks in the library.