Home » forums » Hacking » Hardware Hacks

Wouldn't it be interesting if a Sonnet Company made a processor upgrade for late PB G4's ?

Submitted by seth_381 on June 1, 2008 - 12:04am. Hardware Hacks

I was thinking and wouldn't it be interesting if one of the PPC Sonnet upgrade companies made a new logic/motherboard for the PB G4? But either have it have a faster G4 Processor or try to squeeze 2 G4's in it ? I know it would pose cooling issues and space issues too. But I'm sure someone could figure it out.

» login or register to post comments | previous forum topic | next forum topic

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Dr. Webster's picture

That's not gonna happen, as a

Submitted by Dr. Webster on June 1, 2008 - 12:59am.

That's not gonna happen, as all of Apple's laptops have had their CPUs soldered to the logic boards. Even if a certain PowerBook model could handle a faster CPU, it wouldn't be cost-effective from a labor standpoint to upgrade it, especially considering how tricky working with ball-grid arrays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array) can be outside of a specially-equipped factory.

» Applefritter Admin
5 stories posted
login or register to post comments
cwsmith's picture

Re: That's not gonna happen, as a

Submitted by cwsmith on June 1, 2008 - 1:44am.
Dr. Webster wrote:
... all of Apple's laptops have had their CPUs soldered to the logic boards.

Very nearly true. Exceptions: Wallstreet, Mainstreet, Lombard, Pismo. There may be others, but none come immediately to mind.

It can be stated with certainty, however, that all of Apple's G4 and Intel laptops (as well as the entire iBook line, 680x0 PowerBooks, and most, if not all, of the early PPC PowerBooks) have had their CPUs soldered to the MLB and are not going to be easily or economically upgraded.

» 24 Macs running System 6 thru Leopard
5 PCs running Windows (3.1 thru XP Pro), Ubuntu and Fedora
Apple IIe, Apple IIgs, Color OneScanner, QuickTake 150
Black iPod nano 1G 4GB, purple iPod shuffle 1GB

login or register to post comments
Eudimorphodon's picture

Well, technically...

Submitted by Eudimorphodon on June 1, 2008 - 11:47pm.
Dr. Webster wrote:
That's not gonna happen, as all of Apple's laptops have had their CPUs soldered to the logic boards. Even if a certain PowerBook model could handle a faster CPU, it wouldn't be cost-effective from a labor standpoint to upgrade it, especially considering how tricky working with ball-grid arrays
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array) can be outside of a specially-equipped factory.

Daystar used to offer "CPU Upgrades" for a few G4 Powerbook models that involved desoldering the stock CPU and subbing the fastest pinout-compatible thing available out of the Freescale catalog. (And then overclocking it.) Here's a review of one of their fastest offerings.

They've all been discontinued, for the the obvious reasons. (The two biggest being they were labor intensive and pretty risky, and $500 to turn an obsolete and too slow machine into one that's still obsolete and only slightly less too slow and prone to constantly overheating wasn't exactly stellar value for the dollar.)

--Peace

»
login or register to post comments