ssd for my old powerbook

Hallo!

my plan is to put an ssd in my old powerbook and thats why i want to really know what i should beware of and what i should think of or look out for when choosing the right ssd
i did a lot of research the last weeks and i see this is not an apple forum but there seems to be huge information and people knowing what they talk about...thats why i wanna compliment you...great board.

i read a lot of threads here, especially the over 10 pages threads and am aware now that though i already found answers there seem to pop out new questions day to day...and i dont want to hike other threads so i open this thread know and hope for some advice.

MY SITUATION

my laptop:
i have got a 2006 g4 ppc motorola 1,5ghz last revision 12" apple powerbook
i am planning to totally max it out and breathe life to it, with my bro's help and some parts i already have...the main performance boost i hope for has to come from the right ssd for this old laptop
the machine was the last and max version before it was replaced by macbooks with intel chips


please do not try to change my mind...i do not need and want a newer different laptop at the moment. i am not a computer nerd or apple fanboy, i just like it very much. i know opening and changing parts is a different task but thats no problem...time and patience...i can do it



ON TOPIC SSD now:

i will ask you again on how to install everything right when i got the ssd...so for now this is all about what ssd is the right one for me!

SIZE...i dont want to spend huge money but i also dont want to go under 80GB because i plan have the ssd as my only disk inside, i dont wanna replace the dvd drive, actually i will replace the old apple drive with a blu ray drive, so i could store more data on blu ray if i want

BRAND...as i am totally new to the ssd thing i dont have personal experiences...open to any brand....though i read some bad things about ocz....the ssd has to work good with the mac os of course...but i dont see why any ssd should not?

SOFTWARE / MAC OS COMPATIBILITY: is there anything i should look out for when using leopard? do some ssds somehow not work as good on macs than with windows? i have tiger at the moment but wanna go for the last leopard, as this is also the last OS that supports ppc as i understand.

TRIM / GARBAGE COLLECTION:
as i posted already in another thread "ssds and file systems", i found this Does OS X need TRIM? | bit-tech.net article that compares ssds new and then worn on windows and mac machines and comes to the conclusion that ssds working on a mac system dont need trim...looks and sounds strange and i think thats already answered...trim is better than no trim......i would need to find a good way to trim the ssd on leopard then like once in a year or so. or is there such a great ssd that has such a great garbage collection that trim is not necessary?

CONTROLLER:
INDILINX, SANDFORCE, Intel or what controller is best suited for me?
am still on to understand all the differences between those controllers....if you like explain it please

CONNECTION/BOTTLENECK:

i know my lappie is old and uses ultra ata uata pata ide whatever it is called. i know the speeds from sata ssds cannot be expected...but what is better? to buy me a pata ssd or to buy a sata one 1,8 and put a ide connector to it? from what i read its not clear but i have feeling the latter is quicker..any suggestions?
i know about those caddys that exist to put in a 1,8" ssd and put it into the powerbook
theres in interesting thread in this forum on different 1,8" ssds and zif connectors and stuff by the way

OPTIONS / SSD so far that i found.....please comment if you can say anytihng related to those ssds!

1,8" or 2,5"? i heard the 1,8" ssds are slower and less reliable than 2,5" ssds? read that from a 2010 thread in another board....is that true?

2,5" pata ssds are quite expensive...costwise a 1,8" sata drive with a connector to ide should be less expensive, right?

OWC ? MTRON ? INTEL ? PHOTOFAST ? RUNCORE ?

 

simple, dont bother.

1 PATA ssd is no faster than a good pata hard drive
2 no room for SATA to PATA adaptor like we use in toughbooks the adaptor is too deep for drive bay and wont fit
3 using anything less than Snow Leopard with an SSD is an exercise in frustration ( some if us tried )

cant. ALL bluray drives are SATA, and OSX to this day does not support BD well to top it off. Leopard never did/will as there are no drivers or support

hate to be the proverbial party pooper but get a good fast pata drive like the Western Digital WD3200BEVE or 160GB Samsung HM160HC. they were AFIK the fastest drives that are non SATA

yes leopard is the end of PPC support, I find ALL SSD's work better in windows, but OCZ, Intel and Samsung work in my Macs decently but ONLY work well in Lion/Mountain Lion, even Snow Leopard was glitchy

 

hmm not so true, i already bought it, i already read about it, it works, people have it. leopard was not meant to do but it does.
take a look here but dont buy it here FastMac | Product - Blu-ray Drive Upgrade for your Mac
way overpriced..i got the same new for under 100 bucks wasnt i reason why i should buy a non blu ray drive for the same or more money so it wasnt a stupid buy
look here Blu-Ray Drive Upgrade Slimline Slot Load Burner Drive its a panasonic UJ-225 you can still find it on ebay or amazon
software-wise i cant remember now what program is needed but i saved that "how to do blu ray on leopard" and found evidence that it works.

mind you, its not so easy...as i said i am doin research on this for quite a time now and i know people who have done it who DO say its much faster now
the task is how to use that bottleneck at best

 

thank you anyway...i am patient...i dont need it now or tomorrow but during the next weeks-2 months.
maybe i will change my mind....depends on what information and eperiences i find
btw...theres another thing i have that people say it doesnt exist...i have a fitting 2gb ram stick for my powerbook, although it should only have 1,5gb ram. but thats aa different story

looking at the numbers just, its for me understandable that a ssd should get me a performance boost. i would only need the right one that can make full usage of that pata uata 100 connection

 

I used these among others
OWC Mercury Legacy Pro SSD, SandForce Equipped, SATA, 7% Over Provisioning, IDE/ATA drive

speed increase was about 10% over a good spinner, but the systems were rather unstable, ( we tried to keep them going for a graphics company )

nice catch on BD drive, I have never seen that panny, but it still looks hard to get. i did a quick read and it looks like data support was hacked to work, but video playback never was

odd, we used to have 2 gb in LOTS of those machines. guess I never heard about a 1.5gb limit

any fast spinner like I posted above. the uata 100 interface isnt that fast, roughly 65% of SATA 1 and could be saturated easily by later mechanical drives. ( even SATA 1 was easily saturated )
the SSD would only improve access times which makes nit alot of difference real world on a machine that old as your certantly not running todays heavy applications

 

thanx again...you sound like you know what u r talking about

the 12" powerbooks only have 1 ram slot and then 0.25onboard ram...2gb sticks ddr1 200pin pc2700 or 3200 were only built for a short time and are like nowhere to be found....its the rarest thing to get
you must remember g4 powerbooks bigger than 12"..they all had 2 ram slots and then of course could get more ram
so the official limit for a 12" g4 is 1,25gb sorry i missed that...but there are 2 people i found on the net who got that 2gb stick to work


regarding blu ray...i will research that again when i have installed it...hmm yeah i remember it was a hack

ok 10% speed increase as you say is not very much...it should be more compared to my hdd i have installed..its still the 1st original..i dont even know what brand and model
the work and cost for a 10% increase is of course not that smart to do
hmm..i wonder why i read about other people in other forums praising their increases...maybe they are just a bit blinded fanboys or so....

i must say that the benefits or a ssd using less power would be good for longer battery life and the laptop would not heat up as much plus the big advantage of it being quiet. i hate that lud spinning noise
BUT unstability is a great minus....

so you tried different models...and all were unstable..hmm

 

we tried about 20 or so different ones, honestly my best adivce i can give is the Western Digital WD3200BEVE or 160GB Samsung HM160HC drives. QUIET, FAST and bigger/cheaper than the SSD, if your on the stock drive expect a 30% boost minimum on hard drive speed

odd for awhile 2GB pc2700 was common here, I stuffed it in G4's, Toughbook CF-18's, Cf-29's, Gateway Tablets, old Elitebooks and even a few WYSE stations

and yes I suspect alot of info was fanboy bragging rights. after a couple months and 5 if us trying we scrapped the whole keep the powerbooks running project. yes it worked but not stable, reliable nor could we upgrade enough fir our needs costwise. we actually resorted to hackintoshing D610's and D620's for temporary replacements

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitu...99971272?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item46031d6ec8
still runnin SL to this day

 

that 320gb hdd by western digital.....is that the biggest pata laptop drive available? is there any other equally big or bigger drive`?
i read in a forum, that a guy had used several of those scorpio blue series and none of them did more than a year....i would like to go for the wd rather than the samsung cause of the larger storage capacity though

....maybe its time to give up the ssd dream for my powerbook....the slow bus seems to be the problem and the high price/low capacity for a not much faster ssd makes no sense....so i think i will by a new hdd then

samsung or wd? or any other?

regarding the 2gb sticks...maybe this is a misunderstanding? i am not talking about 2 single 1gb sticks...there were plenty...i talk about one single 2gb stick ddr1 200pin pc2700 or pc3200 they simply seem to nearly not exist
after all what i read in different mac forums..many people are on the hunt for them but they are not to be found
i am sure cause of that you must remind sth else?

 

nope same sticks, 2GB pc2700 single stick. I wonder if they were more common here and Asia than elsewhere, but oh well theyre long gone now. ( I see there is none on ebay, I could have made a killing , I think mine were OEM panasonic specifically for CF-29's)

and that 320WD was the largest PATA drive done before everything went SATA. never had a problem with them even in old toughbooks bolted onto off-road heavy equipment.

 

ok, so then i will order a 320gb wd!

another mod i want to do is the display upgrade...if you're interested take a look here PowerBook G4 Aluminum 12" 1-1.5 GHz LCD panel upgrade - iFixit
it has got double the resolution to the spec panel

i would also need a new battery...can you recommend a cheaper aftermarket one? maybe from newer tech? or would you say stick with the apple battery?

 

You say you don't want a new notebook, but it sounds like you're going to spend an awful lot of money replacing the hard drive, RAM, optical drive, screen, and battery. For probably about the same amount, you can buy this, which will blow your Powerbook out of the water. Plus you can use an SSD and Snow Leopard/Lion.

Micro Center - Apple MacBook MB403LL/A 13.3" Laptop Computer Pre-Owned - White MB403LL/A

 

never knew you could toss that thinkpad screen in there. ( I had an x60 ) again nice find.

Batteies, As far as thry went your stuck with old tech and tge genreics were pretty bad go Apple

now im back to .... why?

screen upgrade $200-250+ shipping and chance of destroying it if your not used to internals
Hard Drive $85-140
battery $45( generic ) -$130 Apple

$350-520 to upgrade it and still be left completely unable to use later versions of iTunes, iCloud, OSX, newer software since all PPC support has been gone for 4 versions now ( 10.8 due soon)

I would say tell it its had a good life, and put your efforts into a cheap intel based hackintosh that will atleast do SL for $150-250 or look at a new challenge. Im sorry but to me your throwing good money at lifesupport for equipment that Apple abandoned years ago

decent deal on it

even this thing is 20 times faster on OSX and likes SATA SSD's, and with the bigger battery ( 9 cell ) I got 7 hours of battery with one
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitu...50355532?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item5198780d4c
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-LATITU...08354658?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item33751fdd62

900 screen and all

 

ok, i see the point and i know you are right
thanx again for the advice

by the way saturnotaku ...is your name regarded to the old sega saturn? i am planning to pimp my old saturn also...but thats a different theme(got one of those last translucent versions and wanna make it a play all regions and burned cds thing..the saturn was a great console)

it won't be that much money, cause i already have the ram, i already have the blu ray drive(got it for x-mas but wanted to install everything at once), i dont need a new battery right now and if i go for the WD hd its just 100euro for me.
ok, the screen is expensive....i found a good offer for under 100euro..but i am still waiting on reply if he really sells it to me
i also like 12" and the look and feel of the old powerbook...so its also a kind of retro thing and i sure wanna do a hackintosh desktop next later...end of the year or next year....for my mobile book i dont need to have the newest stuff and programs..though i admit you are right of course...its hard to udnerstand..but those are my reasons...i wanna give it a last push...100 bucks for the hd and maybe i even forget about the screen
thats then less money than buy a good deal newer book

i notice on the net, theres some people who cant part with their old 12"s
look here...someone spent 1200dollar on it My Powerbook G4 obsession and what I did about it - MacRumors Forums