Ram Issues iBook G3 Clamshell

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Level 1

1 points

Ram Issues iBook G3 Clamshell

I just finished installing a new Compact Flash Hard Drive into my iBook. Now, I had to unplug or reset the pram every other reboot, or the machine would fail to boot at all. It was very similar to what this person http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=62158 was having. I had reset the pram, nvram, and pmu to no avail. I tried booting the OS 9 disk, and I got a ram diagnostic error That got me thinking to remove the 256 mb ram stick I had installed previously. After that, it has been working fine. I wonder if this is because my firmware is messed up like it was for that guy? (The new firmware gives ibooks like mine support for 256 mb of ram) I had upgraded the firmware previously, so I can't find a way to reflash it as the installer says that the firmware is already installed. Is there another way I could force the firmware to reinstall itself?

iBook G3, Mac OS 9.2.x

Posted on Jan 4, 2011 12:11 PM

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Answer 1

bund

Level 3

809 points

Jan 5, 2011 1:52 PM in response to Super TWiT

if you want to upgrade your Clamshell, a 512MB RAM stick instead of the old ( probably defective) 256MB would be a great choice.

If the bad RAM message booting OS9 shows up, the RAM stick or the onboard RAM has a failure. When the message vanishes after pulling out the ram stick it is more likely that the onboard ram is OK.

If you have a firewire iBook you may run Apple Hardware test
CD image download to make sure your system is OK
http://www.info.apple.com/support/aht.html

When your iBook has already firmware 4.1.7 your up to date and there is no need to reflash.

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Answer 2

roofrack

Level 1

0 points

Jan 9, 2011 5:33 AM in response to bund

Hi there,

I have had similar issues with an iBook G3 Clamshell 466 Indigo and the hardware test has confirmed defective onboard RAM. Do you have any experience of replacing onboard RAM? If so could that be upgraded at the same time do you think? If anyone could point me at a physically similar but larger onboard RAM chip I'd give it a go - the thing is in bits and useless as is anyway. It would be marvellous to have a 1024 Mb RAM machine.

I would be most grateful for any suggestions.

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Answer 3

bund

Level 3

809 points

Jan 9, 2011 5:53 AM in response to roofrack

The onboard ram (32 or 64MB) consists of 4 identical chips, 2 on each side of the logicboard.
I havn't heard of someone who placed chips with more MB into the Clamshell.

I once had a logicboard with defective onboard RAM, removed the chips and put a RAM Stick into the slot. After several PRAM resets the iBook was convinced that the internal RAM slot was empty and booted.
The operation is very tricky, a friend of mine tried the same thing and had no success.

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