ibook upgrade question?

[Win2kpatcher]

Hello all! I have a friend of mine who wants to upgrade her laptop which is an ibook PowerPC G3, 600MHZ, 256MB SDRAM, 20GB Hard drive.

The first question is do standard laptop PC parts work with these ibooks? If I went on to newegg and bought a 512MB PC100 chip that didnt specifically say it was for APPLE will it work? Samen with a hard drive if I bought a standard 60GB laptop hard drive that doesnt say APPLE on it will it work? Is there an apple certified parts store where I can buy parts for this or will generic parts work?

Lastly I cant find any specs as to how far I can upgrade the hard drive to? What is the max size I can fit in this laptop? Also the max RAM I can fit is a 512MB chip can you verify it is PC100? or PC133? There is already a 128MB chip on-board, but the expandable slot will only go to 512MB...thanks!!!

 

[g5orbust]

Hard drives and RAM are not platform specific, so they need not be specifically Mac. Generic parts work just the same as any.

For the RAM, Id use a PC133 SO-DIMM.

 

[CanadaRAM]

You can go to a maximum of 640 Mb RAM in this machine, 128 mb is built in. and there is one socket that will take a 512 Mb SODIMM.

The hard drive is a 2.5" IDE 9.5mm mechanism. 12mm tall mechanisms will not work. Replacing the hard drive in the iBook G3 is difficult. Don't attempt it unless you are quite confident in computer assembly. There are approx 30 screws that have to come out, and most of the parts of the machine have to be removed

http://www.macmod.com/content/view/247/1/
http://uk.geocities.com/ibookupgrade/

If you are buying RAM for the iBook, I recommend that you get it from a seller who tests and guarantees compatibility with your model Macintosh. Besides the speed and format (PC100 or PC133 SODIMM), there is physical size, chip organization and SPD settings that need to match the Mac's requirements. You wouldn't be able to tell these from the marketing specs.

Your machine is fairly forgiving, others like the iMac G5, 17" 1 GHz and 1.33 GHz Powerbook, and Mac Mini will pitch a fit at some types of PC Generic RAM.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Awesome info guys! thanks a lot. I will most likely leave the hard drive install to someone else. I have about 10 years experience building desktops and working on laptops (I have replaced several laptop motherboards) but I always hate working with the small parts and have tried to discontinue working on them as part of my services. I have limited myself to basic upgrades for laptops which usually include hard drives, memory, monitors, keyboards etc..anything that doesnt require pulling out a bunch of parts..this sounds bad.. I will just do the memory for her thanks again.