Hello all...
This is my first post here but i have been lurking around for quite some time. Here is what i have had going through my mind. I am going to be purchasing a new Black MacBook Touch from Troll touch in the next month or so at which point my 12" iBook will be retired as far as daily duty is concerned. I would like to turn it into a tablet much like the modbook only slightly different. My main goal is to have a completely portable touchscreen slate style tablet to run my itunes through an airport express. Also will be used for photo editing and organizing in the field. So here is my first question...

I rarely use my cd drive so if i remove that, can i plug in a second hard drive in its place?

While i have the computer torn apart i will be replacing the current 40GB hard drive with something much much larger. I'm looking at the Western Digital 250 GB 2.5" Hard drive. I will most likely get two of those if i am able to replace the cd drive with a hard drive. I will also be maxing out the ram while i am at it. The keyboard/trackpad would be removed, the speakers as well.

Second question:

Should i attempt to source a touchscreen kit from troll touch, they did sell them for a long time, i just know that it will not be very cost effective. So if you have any other ideas please post. It will most likely get a paint job as well. So give me some thoughts!!!

quite a few views, comments anyone?

Also, i will be adding GPS (maybe) and an isight camera.

I know these dont really fit along the original needs of the tablet that i listed but i figure while it's open i might as well make it better right?

I plan on doing something similar to a 12" Powerbook G4 I just purchased.

I found this on Ebay and was planning on replacing the existing 12.1" XGA display with that.

It comes with a wacom digitizer, probably 256 or 512 levels of pressure sensitivity, I havn't looked too hard yet.

If it'll work, it's a win-win. I'd have a little mac tablet, and a 1400x1050 desktop rather than 1024x768.

I think the iBook and the PB12" have the same sized display, just throwing that out as an option for you.

For the touchscreen try these guys:

http://www.elotouch.com/Products/default.asp

However a real tablet is the way to go. head over to the OSX86 project forums and search there for the exact model of PC laptop the digitizer mentioned above came from. If it works for them it may well work for us as well. The PC tablets have 256 levels of pressure. The tablet itself is serial and will need to be hand wired to a usb adapter of some sort. The driver for the tablet is called tabletmagic. I am trying this myself as well with a 14" ibook and the screen from a gateway M275 tablet. The screen should arrive on monday. Between the group of us putting our heads together we just might pull this off.

i'll check out some of these different options. i may be putting the tablet idea aside in favor of replacing my internal hard drive with (2) 16 GB Compact flash cards and then i want to also remove the combo drive, which i rarely use, to put in a couple more CF cards. I would love to have the computer to be completely spinning disk free as it already takes some abuse. I have had the hard drive replaced three times since i've owned it. Now i'm ready to do it myself.

What interface does the stock combo drive of an ibook g4 use? I know that the hard drive uses IDE and i have found this adapter that i will be using:

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp

So my hope is that the combo drive also uses IDE, then i could use that adapter there as well. Any insight?

All of these mods will start once i get my new MacBook in about three weeks. The macbook will immediately get the 500GB hard drive upgrade from OWC and a 4GB Ram upgrade before it even gets booted up for the first time.

Well the G3 ibook has both the HD and the CDR on a single ata 66 ide bus. The G4 ibook has two separate bus connections, an ATA 100 or 133 (can't remember) for the HD and an ATA 33 for the CD. The connection for the mini optical drive is called a 50 pin JAE and is a flavor of IDE.

Mine is a G4 so it would work right? I've been look at the Samsung 16GB SSD for the main drive then a CF adapter from addonics and two CF cards.. or just dual samsung ssd's or i could get the 250GB Western digital drives. but i worry about heat with two regular hard drives. so i'm struggling on what to go with.... i'm definitely leaning towards at least one 16GB SSD and then maybe wait till prices come down and get a bigger ssd for storage?? my main thing now is, i want to just have a light fast laptop for school... i can use my new macbook for everything else. I think my main hard drive now is about to go so i'm gonna back it up and then go from there really soon... so i would love some more input from you

newegg has the samsung ssd on sale for $219 right now, so it would be a good time to pick those up... the good news is, i get my rebate check this friday

you guys are just in time for the Great Mod Challenge too. Remember the submissions will be due at the end of August. We'll have more details on judges and prizes soon.