Vintage tech: iBook 2004 14"
Back when I was in school many new great electronic devices and categories emerged. Laptops, PDAs, digital portable music players. Many great devices I was not able to afford. Just twenty years later, I earn enough money to afford them, and to my advantage, these electronic devices have become dirt cheap (sometimes).
So here is my new iBook G4 from 2004, featuring a 1.2 Ghz PowerPC processor, 512MB of RAM and a 60 GB spinning hard drive.
Using such an old devices today has some downsides though: As USB C has not been invented when this computer was made, I need to use the proprietary power supply that might fail due to its age at some point, and being more than 20 years old, the battery only holds a little more than 1.5h hours charge. Which is great, but then also it's not.
After cleaning the machine up using isopropyl alcohol and magic sponges it looks nearly as good as new, minus the yellowed keyboard though.
Installing Mac OS 10.3
My iBook arrived with Mac OS pre-installed, including some user accounts and personal data I did not want any access to. So first thing was to reinstall MacOS. Thankfully the device came with installation the CDs, so booting the machine up and installing Mac OS 10.3 was easy. Using this OS version is rather limiting, as there is no spotlight search to quickly launch apps, which was only introduced in 10.4 Tiger.
Getting 10.4 was a bit more complicated, as I had to get the installation media first, and then burn it as Apples PowerPCs are not meant to boot from USB (although, there are some ways to do this using Open Firmware).
Thanks to Macintosh Garden I was able to get a backup of the generic 10.4 installation media (4 CDs), got myself some CD-Rs and burned all of the four disk with the lowest speed setting using my iBook’s internal CD combo drive. The CDs worked and updating to 10.4 was rather easy in the end. Using the Combo update that is also available on Macintosh Garden I was able to update up to 10.4.11, and update Java to 1.5 as well, in case I want to play some Minecraft on it.
As my computer came preinstalled with an Airport Extreme card, I could also span a new (rather insecure) WIFI network to let the iBook connect to it. For this, I got an old Airport Express that is perfect for the job. Now, using the browser Aquafox this device can also surf the web again (more in theory than in practice though).
A better use for the WIFI is to connect to a network attached storage, so I can share data between my more modern computers and the iBook without the need to copy everything onto an USB drive first.
Adding a USB C power supply option
Thanks to a post on TinkerDifferent I learned it is easy to build an adapter to let the iBook use a USB C PD power supply. All you need are two small boards (one to get 20V out of the USB port, a second one to step it up to 24V) and a 2.5mm headphone jack (yes, that is what Apple used in their barrel shaped plug to transfer power). I recreated the case that already was provided as I wanted a cylindrical one, just for fun. Then I soldered the boards together, adjusted everything and am now able to power the iBook with any 20V capable PD power bank or power supply. Nice.
Rebuilding the iBook G4 battery pack
Still, I had to handle the bad battery life. Sadly, there a no after-market options any more to get new batteries. So, I had to do it myself.
Searching the web, there are some resources showing a battery rebuild for the G3 clamshell models, but none dedicated to the 14" G4 I had. The process is similar nevertheless:
Remove the battery, gently pry open the battery pack, desolder the battery management system (BMS), get replacements for the eight 18650 batteries, spot weld these new batteries together and reattach the BMS.
As rebuilding the batteries takes a bit more explanation, I wrote a dedicated post for this:
Apple iBook G4 14" Early 2004 Battery rebuild process
While working on the machine, I managed to somehow loose one rubber foot. I had to replace it with a perfect 3D printed one.
I also aquired a wireless Mighty Mouse, after cleaning the scroll ball it works like new. I really like how clicky this ball is when in movement (thanks to an internal speaker).
Other shenanigans
Shortly before getting the iBook, I also found a Sony Clie TJ35. Using The Missing Link I managed to sync this device with Mac OS, which offers even more functionality than on my Windows XP machine. Shootout to Mark/Space providing me with a serial key for their old, no longer supported software.
Future plans
With a now rather good working iBook, there is only so much left to do: The hard disk will die at some point in the future, so a SSD replacement would also improve performance by quite a lot. I already did this with my 2009 Mac Pro. The iBooks are know to be not so fun to disassemble, so I wait until I have some time on hand, or I'm forced to do it.
When doing this, the RAM could be upgraded from 512MB to 1,25GB for some extra headroom in heavy duty tasks.
As the keyboard has aged not so well and yellowed a bit, retrobrighting is something I consider to let it look white again. But this has to wait until summer to get some UV light to support the process.
This post has been written on a 2004 iBook 14".