Did you buy a 233 or 250 MHz Wallstreet PowerBook, perhaps hoping for an upgrade someday, or the price was right? Rumors have been swirling that a company may be able to make processor upgrades for the PowerBook G3 Series Wallstreet machines, but so far, none have been successful.
We're writing today about the closest thing you can get to an upgrade for your 233 or 250 MHz PowerBook. As you know, the PowerBook's processor resides on a daughtercard attached to the motherboard. This daughtercard has the PB's processor, ROMs, and RAM on it. So, if you put a 292 MHz daughtercard in a 233 or 250 MHz PowerBook, it runs perfectly, and automatically raises the motherboard's bus speed to 83 MHz. The problem was, you could never find these 292 MHz cards anywhere. You could purchase them from an Apple-authorized service center, but they cost ridiculous amounts of money, over $1500 at times.
However, The PowerBook Guy, a one-man exclusively PowerBook reseller, has stock of about 50 new 292 MHz daughtercards available for the reasonable price of $399, but they'll send you $100 back after you send them your current daughtercard, for a net price of $299.
A little PB history lesson: The Wallstreet I machines shipped in three processor varieties: 233 MHz/no cache/66 MHz bus speed, 250 MHz/1 MB cache/83 MHz bus speed, and 292 MHz/1 MB cache/83 MHz bus speed. Around four months later, Apple shipped "Wallstreet II" or the "PDQ" machines. These machines were 233 MHz/512k cache/66 MHz bus speed, 266 MHz/1 MB cache/66 MHz bus speed, and 300 MHz/1 MB cache/66 MHz bus speed. At this time, The PowerBook Guy only has 292 MHz upgrades for the Wallstreet I machines. Theoretically, you could put the 292 MHz card in a "Wallstreet II" machine, and it would still bump the bus speed to 83 MHz, but this is not advisable.
However, for those with aging Wallstreet I machines, the speed bump from 233 MHz with no cache, or the 250 MHz with cache to 292 MHz with cache is quite impressive, especially on the 233 MHz model, as the speed doubled when Apple added cache with the Wallstreet II machines, let alone adding 60 MHz of clockspeed.
The details: The PowerBook Guy tests each daughtercard before it is shipped out. They come with a 30 day warranty. As for installation, they include directions, and if you've added RAM to your machine, you should be able to install this yourself.
According to The PowerBook Guy himself, these have been selling very fast. Stock in the future is not guaranteed, so if you want the best speed possible for your machine available right now, head over to The PowerBook Guy.
