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Upclocking Your Titanium, a Bad Idea


Reader T. Salzano comments on the recent spate of articles on upclocking the PowerBook G4 Titanium. Go2Mac does not recommend this technique as it requires surgical soldering precision and WILL void your warranty.

I stumbled across this article while collecting info on upclocking some of the newer hardware that has come out of Apple lately. It deals with the TiBook in particular. After having accomplished a procedure much like this on my PB G3 (Kanga), I have been looking for similar information to do it on a Mercury.

I’ve always thought that if I ever purchased a TiBook, I’d get the 400Mhz model and just upclock it to 500Mhz or higher. I’d do this both to save money, and because I’m an adrenaline junkie (those that have tried the procedure, know). Just to warn anyone who may wish to try this, you will be working with surface-mount resistors that are not much bigger than 2 grains of sand laid end to end.

Those that still wish to throw caution to the wind and try this, get out your magnifying glasses and a soldering iron with a one-thousandth of an inch tip!

I can provide additional details on where to get the replacement resistors if you accidentally burn one out (an event you can just about plan on), and how to perform this ‘hardware hack’ a little easier. I actually ran ‘whisker’ wires from the board and soldered them to a much larger (ant-sized) surface mount resistor. This allowed me to run the wire to a remote switch that can be used to change Mhz speed in order to conserve battery power, or keep the Book cooler.

Stay tuned to Go2Mac for more juice on the easiest way to blow $2600.

Have you upclocked your PowerBook? Share your results with normal readers 🙂 by using the feedback link below.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.