I have an Clamshell iBook (I BELIEVE it's a Paris - 366MHz, one USB, one Firewire) that I've been upgrading. I put a 30GB HD in it, maxed out the RAM with a 512MB card, installed OS9.2 AND OSX (10.3), new battery. Two things I would like to do:

- put a DVD/CDRW drive in it (not a high priority, and since money is a little tight, it can wait)
- put a new display in it (they only have 800x600 screens)

Anybody know where I could find a 12.1" display that will work in this thing? Preferably 1024x768. Would this mean replacing the video card as well? I'm kind of new to this, and I know a LITTLE bit about hardware, enough to get by, but this'll be a first.

Wicked, thanks to anyone who can help.

Jias

why not try to get an old ibook with a broken logic board or something. Buy it, take the screen from it, then sell off all of the other parts seperate. Who knows, you may even be able to make some money off of the deal. I would check ebay first.

As long as the LCD uses the same power specs and input on the logic board, you should be able to do that. But I think they have diff. specs because I remember that the inverter had some issues on Clamshells that the first Gen IceBooks did not.

I would look into that a bit more before going any further.

As far as the combo drive goes, I'm not sure if thats possible, but an external firewire or usb one is a route your willing to take, then that may be ok. Also if you are to go that route Lite-On Cd burners work nativly with macs, and os x loves them. With the display I really don't know what to tell you.

I know that there are DVD/cdrws for the clamshell. As for the screen, as far as I know you are stuck with the 800x600, which isnt so bad since it is so small. The book you have is a great one-hold onto it!
-Maestro

Yeah, I've done some research, and I know I can find combo drives of a few differnt types for it, but that's not that big a priority.

The screen, however, is a bit bigger of a problem. I love my mac, it blows my PC (which is dual-booting SuSE Linux and WinXP) out of the water based on convinience in both the interface and portabililty alone. Sure, it's a bit slower, but 366MHz is enough to browse the web, type papers - hell, it runs ProTools decently (but only in OS9, as the free version doesn't run in OSX, even in Classinc mode).

However, Garage Band (and iMovie, and a number of other apps) won't even let you install on a machine with this low a resolution. It's also a bit crowded when you're doing a few things at once - even Safari, AIM and iTunes is a bit much. The new 12" iBooks have the higher res displays, and still look good (if a bit small at times). I know GarageBand might not run so well, but I wouldn't mind giving it as shot, and besides, the only reason to NOT have a higher res screen (assuming it will work) is the money right? No harm in it if I can get it to work.

Oh, and Maestro? Don't worry - I don't plan on dumping this machine any time soon.

Shouldn't the question be does the video chip support a higher resolution.
I saw somewhere on a post here that they took an old iMac board out of the case and hooked up a higher res. monitor and it worked no problem.
But with something like a laptop I doubt that you would find such overhead room.
I could be very wrong.

You cannot make the onboard GPU output 1024x rez to the LCD, it's setup for 800x and sadly that's all it will ever do.

As for the optical, you can stick in most any slim ATAPI mechanism you like. CD/RW drives are pretty cheap these days . . . Visit xlr8yourmac.com and search the drive database to see what's worked for other folks.

dan k

Post edited by: dankephoto, at: 2005/02/19 00:29

Post edited by: dankephoto, at: 2005/02/19 00:30

Yeah, I'm aware - that's why I said I wanted to replace the display - because these LCDs only have an 800x600 res. And I've found a couple different optical drives I was thinking about... haven't really committed to doing any of this yet - no money. College will do that to you . Thanks for the input though .

what color is your ibook? if i know the color i can find the exact model and look at the video card specs.