I upgraded my iBook G4 to have an SSD

Macs of that era are so beautiful...

I have an early 2003 12" PowerBook G4 with a 512 GB M.2 SSD. Setting up NetBSD with GRUB to work around https://gnats.netbsd.org/22316>.

(The original hard drive is somewhere still; now I'm going to cover its hole, too!)

Happened to upgrade my PowerMac G4 Digital Audio model with OWC's PATA SSD (actually was SATA SSD with PATA adapter), It wasn't a slouch with the probably original PATA HDD but SSD made things even faster and I don't have to worry about 20+ years old HDD dying out that much. That SSD saturates the Ultra ATA/66 IDE Bus completely which feels awesome.

Of course when used with Mac OS Classic, the OS is the biggest bottle neck because of it's bad multi-tasking capabilities. That OS reminds me of things we take granted these days, like computer not locking almost completely when decompressing zip package.

I've performed this procedure numerous times. While it's not particularly difficult, it requires patience - a LOT of patience. Dozens of the world's smallest Philips-head screws. The iFixit guide helps tremendously.

What strikes me as nostalgic is how repairable these machines were. No proprietary screws, the HDD used a standard (at the time) form factor and interface. The batteries could even be torn down and rebuilt as they used standard cylindrical cells inside. Hell, the keyboard could be replaced without opening the cover! The only thing that was proprietary was the Airport card - which was under the keyboard along with the SODIMM slot, and both could likewise be replaced without opening the laptop. Those days are long gone.

One item of note is I suspect the older versions of OS X lack SSD TRIM support.