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When 128Mb is not enough

I’ve been a happy owner of Apple iBook for a few months now. The initial 128 Mb of memory was a decent amount, but having more never hurts. When I got a nice deal for a 256 Mb memory chip, the temptation was too much to resist. Time for my biggest challenge yet on the laptop world. Even though I’ve installed a bunch of stuff on pc side, I always end up messing memory installations so that they never work on the first try. I always need to adjust the module on the memory socket before getting it right. Although since the laptop memory module seems to be half the size of a desktop one, there’s 50% less chance for me to mess up, right?

Unfortunately my iBook, dating back to the beginning of the century, doesn’t like memory modules larger than 128 megabytes. To be able to use larger modules I first needed to update to the latest firmware version. Firmware was found from Apple and… it doesn’t install under OS X. Seems that I have to install OS 9 just for applying the update.

Going old school

It was time to go digging the archives and fetch good old swedish installation disc of OS 9 and install it. Despite of the swedish language, setting installation options went properly and OS 9.0 was installed. The firmware update was to begin and end. This time the update stopped on the fact that OS version needs to be at least 9.2. Luckily the 80Mb OS update I downloaded from Apple was meant to update OS 9.1 to OS 9.2. It will not update OS 9.0 to anything. Swell.

No problems, I had my Windows pc already downloading the other update, just in case. Now all I needed was to transfer the file from PC to Mac. It didn’t go as well as it did under OS X. After a few seconds of intensive thinking I had come up with a plan. Google! Search results told me that Microsoft had dropped the support for AppleTalk from Windows XP, and if I needed to connect the two computers I needed third-party software.

OS 9 file sharing functioned properly but my pc under Win XP just doesn’t know what to do. Damn you Microsoft, always tormenting, haunting bugging etc. I don’t recall ever needing AppleTalk on anything before, though. I’m not quite sure what it exactly does either but why remove it from XP? They didn’t even add proper bluetooth support until Service Pack 1 (Not that it has anything to do with this topic). Wonder if they keep some kind of development meetings on Microsoft once a month focusing solely on stuff that they don’t plan on supporting in their next OS version?

After this project I’m probably never going to need support for AppleTalk in anything, but at least now it’s absence was irritating.

I would’ve gotten the whole networking thingy to work between both machines and probably link even the Galileo-probe there by installing something and somewhere but I didn’t bother. Redownloading the 70Mb update seemed the easiest way. Will it work? Yes, the first update file updated the operating system from OS 9.0 to Os 9.1 and then the second update made it version 9.2. The progress was phenomenal.

Star of the show

After all this I even managed to install the firmware update and now my iBook supported 256 Mb memory modules . Now I don’t need OS 9 for anything anymore, but I still left it on the hard disk. Partially because it works under OS X and I might need it someday. Partially because there’d probably be five different uninstall packages that first reduce few digits from the OS version number and then rest of the system. I don’t know but I’m not going to find out.

Since the firmware was up-to-date I could move on to the next part, adding the memory module. The iBook manual fortunately has pretty straightforward instructions. First remove the battery, then the keyboard, move AirPort card out of your way, remove the two screws from protective cover over memory socket, remove the old module and replace it with new one. Not overly complicated. Most of my time went in putting the AirPort-card back, as it seemed to try fitting itself to the socket in weird positions and angles.

The cover thingy

After putting the whole package back together it was time to say few prayers and switch power back on. It worked, and – what’s even more amazing – recognized the RAM amount correctly. I managed to break absolutely nothing! Except I’m not sure about the Airport-card, since I don’t own other wireless devices to test it with. At least there’s no smoke coming out of it and it’s not making creepy noises either. Guess it’s ok.

After all this it’s fun to think about all the things I could’ve done differently (or more effectively). Most of the OS updating hell would’ve been avoidable if only had I done two things before installing OS X: 1) updated the OS 9 version to 9.2 and 2) updated the firmware. However, the swedish version of OS 9 didn’t charm me over then and I replaced it with OS X right away. That being said, the operation is now over, iBook has 320Mb of RAM and everything seems faster and better. Cheers to that.