Adapting the front speaker of G4 cases, esp the Quicksilver

[Bradamante]

So here I built a Skylake-based hackintosh into a 2001 Apple PowerMac G4 "Quicksilver" (info thread soon, little teaser pic attached). Now, what about the front speaker? Just one piece, but hey, it's Harman/Kardon if I remember correctly. The cable seems to have two wires. I don't find this mentioned anywhere ... has anybody ever tried to solder these two wires to a standard audio cable with a headphone jack?

 

[ShatteredAvenger]

I've not done anything with my Quicksilver speaker directly, but it's pretty similar to the pro speakers so yes, you could put a standard headphone cable on them. Problem is that most headphone jacks on mobos don't drive it very hard- you typically need a little bit more of an amplifier to get a good sound out of them. But maybe a little custom amp by way of adafruit or something similar? Let us know what you find, I'd love to do something similar with mine once I find the time. If I do it first, I'll let you know

 

[Bradamante]

Interesting. I've never heard of Adafruit before, but their shop looks promising. Will do some research on their site. To be honest I have no idea what I am doing ...

 

[Bradamante]

Would this help me? Just insert the audio plug into the headphone jack and connect the two pins of the front speaker to the three pings of this product? Does this 2->3 scenario work? (I have no idea of what I am doing)

 

[jmilan0302]

Would this help me? Just insert the audio plug into the headphone jack and connect the two pins of the front speaker to the three pings of this product? Does this 2->3 scenario work? (I have no idea of what I am doing)

This would work but your audio would be very quiet because your motherboard's audio out is nowhere near powerful enough. You'd need an amplifier of some sort. And you could also wire it to your motherboard's front panel audio header instead so you have nothing sticking out of the back.

 

[Elijh4]

What if it was wired to the motherboard rear ports are they more powerful then an headphone port?

 

[jmilan0302]

What if it was wired to the motherboard rear ports are they more powerful then an headphone port?

I've tried driving small speakers from my motherboard's audio out, the result absolutely pathetic. As I already said your motherboard's out is extremely weak, pretty much all speakers have a built in amplifier.

 

[tjost]

what I did was plug this speaker in the on board speaker plug. it beeps it is loud and beeps. better than nothing

 

[RedMacGhost]

You can defintely wire it to different things.

Stereo Plug

If you wired the silver plug from the speaker to the red cable on the plug, and the silver/black on speaker to silver on plug, you could plug it in and get some mono sound.

 

[jmilan0302]

You can defintely wire it to different things.

Stereo Plug

If you wired the silver plug from the speaker to the red cable on the plug, and the silver/black on speaker to silver on plug, you could plug it in and get some mono sound.

You definitely need an amplifier...