So my TiBook died, got a second? I need help in new purchase

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 2:02 pm

I got a 1Gig RAM 800mhz G4 TiBook a few years ago and the speakers died, the optical drive died, and now it looks like the hard drive died. I know I can get it fixed but I'm thinking of getting a new one instead. I don't want to dish out as much as I had before. I was looking on mac.com at rates. I looked at the regular iBooks. You can now get 1.33ghz and 1.42ghz iBooks with 512MB of RAM. I'm just wondering if I got say a 1.42ghz iBook and doubles the ram to a gig, will I get performance as I had with the TiBook, maybe a little better with the faster processor? I should be able to just buy another 512MB RAM card and install it right? What do you think? Any vendor recomendations, or is straight from mac a good idea. That is what I did the first time. This time I'll know enough to get the Apple Care as well.

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 6:06 pm

Sounds like the Ti's logic board is failing.

The new iBooks have a faster, well, everything caompared to the Ti Book.

Order it from the Apple store on-line. Get the RAM from Apple, it costs a lot more but it will be under the Apple Care coverage. After market RAM is not covered and ofter causes problems. Ramjet.com is the best bet for aftermarket RAM if you go that route. If you use a credit card, the warranty may be better than Apple Care since Apple does not cover customer abuse.

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 7:25 am

So you agree that getting a new iBook as apposed to the TiBook will give me performance that would be better that the 800mhz TiBook did?

I was also thinking about getting a G5 for home nad buying a new harddrive for the TiBook. Is there a way to know if it is the logic board and not the harddrive?

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:21 am

cleantone wrote:So you agree that getting a new iBook as apposed to the TiBook will give me performance that would be better that the 800mhz TiBook did?

All signs point to yes.

cleantone wrote:I was also thinking about getting a G5 for home nad buying a new harddrive for the TiBook. Is there a way to know if it is the logic board and not the harddrive?

You could try booting from the hardware test CD-ROM using an external FireWire optical drive (since your internal is dead). Those tests don't usually show problems though. I have yet to see a Ti Book in the shop with both a bad optical and hard drive that was not related to a failed logic. Not to say it isn't isolated to the drives, just unlikely.

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 1:23 pm

That last bit is not promising for me. Does the fact that the optical drive died 2 years ago and it has worked fine untill this past weekend mean anything? I've been waiting for 5 hours to hear back from the only local mac repair place in regards to putting a new 7200 rpm drive into the broken powerbook. They would be able to tell me if it was the logic board as apposed to the drive though right?

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 3:25 pm

cleantone wrote:That last bit is not promising for me. Does the fact that the optical drive died 2 years ago and it has worked fine untill this past weekend mean anything? I've been waiting for 5 hours to hear back from the only local mac repair place in regards to putting a new 7200 rpm drive into the broken powerbook. They would be able to tell me if it was the logic board as apposed to the drive though right?

You should ask them to diagnose if the logic works before requesting a drive. This way they will make sure the logic works before sticking you with a new drive cost.

With that much time in between, it's possible that the two bad drives are not related. Optical drives stop working over time, usually from dirt covering the laser (this can be cleaned, most techs won't clean they'll just replace). Hard drives don't seem to last as long in PBs. Must be from vibration and heat.

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 4:07 pm

I just dropped it off for emergency service to be performed tomorrow. I'll be tracking in the house all day tomorrow and should be able to grab the powerbook Thursday morning to get working on a different project that needs to be done for Monday. I would have bought a new 1.42 iBook but there is a backlog for them right now and I need to get this project done. I put a 7200 rpm drive in but could only get 40GB in the time I have. I would have prefered 60 I think. The drive better last a fair amount of time.

Thanks for the info!

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 5:09 pm

Cool, I hope all goes well. 40 isn't bad at all for tracking audio.

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 5:19 pm

I use external drives for tracking anyway. I do full live sets though so my sessions do get up over 20GB somewhat often. It would have been nice to do 60 or 80GB's while replacing it. I can't mix off the externals and sometimes it's a bitch to clear enough space for sessions.

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 7:19 pm

I noticed that with the update to 10.4.2 from 10.3.9 my external FireWire drive doubled in speed. This is only good for one drive on the ATA bus working at a time though.