Recently, I came across something interesting: an iBook prototype. Well, more precisely, a PVT (Production Verification Test) motherboard inside a defective iBook: the power connector was dead.
In iBooks, PVT (Production Verification Test) motherboards are quite common. Even at PowerBookMedic, the illustrative board is of this type.
The motherboard
You can still see a PVT inscription, a confidential IBM CPU, and the typical iBook ports. There’s a fairly large connector at the end of the board whose purpose I don’t know, and traces for memory. A thread on MacRumors discusses these, as they could potentially allow for additional RAM. An original iBook has 32 MB on the board + one SO-DIMM slot; the later ones (like this) have 64 MB internally. But with four internal slots, it’s theoretically possible to upgrade to 512 MB (and thus 1 GB in total).
PVT
IBM Confidential
Empty RAM slots
The mysterious connector
Unfortunately, the hard drive contained nothing interesting.
