Hi there
A few things:
iSight requirements are a minimum of 500MHz G4 - there is an Open Firmware trick to fool the iSight into running on an iBook clamshell under Mac OS X though:
1. Reboot your Mac and hold down the Cmd-Opt-O-F keys until you get a white screen with black text. This is the Open Firmware prompt.
2. Type the following lines exactly as shown below into the Open Firmware prompt. Be mindful of capitalization, spaces, zeros, etc. If the command is properly typed and understood, Open Firmware will display "ok" at the end of each line after you hit "return". What these lines do is set the CPU speed reported by Open Firmware to OS X as a 500 MHz G4 processor system.
For single CPUs, use the following two lines:
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 500000000 encode-int
3. This CPU setting is only in effect until the Mac reboots.
ALSO
• iSight performance in iChat will be poor though but it also works as a video camera in iMovie under Mac OS X and performs slightly better
• If you intend to replace the HDD, go for the larger of the two you mentioned if you are going to fit the drive yourself. There is a fair amount of dismantling to fit the HDD
• Why do you need an inverter? Is the LCD dim or totally blank? - Occasionally on eBay you can get a complete display assembly which is easier to fit
• Mac OS X 10.3 is better suited for a Clamshell (use Firefox instead of Safari for better compatibility on many websites). This assumes you are using a 466MHz clamshell
• Avoid Office 2008 and stick with 2004 or use AppleWorks 5/6 which runs on Mac OS 9 too!
• iPhoto '05 is the latest version from iLife that will run on a Clamshell due to the screen resolution
• In my experience, the best browser for OS 9/Clamshell is Netscape 7.0.2 (often the L/H side of websites will be cropped) - others will say iCab but it's slow and crashes
• Original Airport cards may not be able to join some wireless networks that use a WPA Personal password
• Replacement optical drives require modding if you want to keep the existing coloured bezel (the CD/DVD bezels are not interchangeable and only fit the original drive)
See:
http://www.ibook-clamshell.com/
http://www.pbfanatic.co.uk/pages/pbparts/clamshell.htm (know the owner of this site - fellow coworker)
Enjoy your Clamshell