cnrtechhead's "PowerHac G5"

[abelpinate]

Thanks for all the compliments, glad to know others like my build!

Now I do have a question. I'd like to get my front audio working, or at least know why it won't work. I know my front panel cable is wired correctly, as I tested it against the pinout with a multimeter and all checks out. I am currently using all the ALC889 kexts from MultiBeast for my audio. Should it work as is, or is there something I need to do to get it working? Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: I just looked in the manual for my mobo, and I'm not sure that the pinout I used when I wired up my front harness matches what my mobo's manual has. I think I got some sort of mixes AC97/HDA header config. I notice that for my mobo there is no sense for AC97 at all, and the L/R pins for AC97 are the same pins I wired my L/R to. I hooked my sense into a ground, I think, and my ground into mic. (????)

See attached. I think I definitely screwed it up. Going to re-pin when I get home after work tonight and post my results.

Well, as I know, the front audio don't work in any way. I made, but never tested because is many time I read the way like he work is different. I should connect to see what happens.

 

[abelpinate]

Ok... yes work... what I was thinking...

Ok, if you made a correctly connection, should sound, but FIRST you need toi change the output sound. Go the Preference Panel, Sound and later, where say Sound Effect, Output, Input, Choose Output and select headphones.

I don't know a more easy way... but this should work...

Regards.

 

[rdhughestech]

Project looks great, however, I don;t believe there is a workaround for the G5 front audio without running an extension from your motherboard.

 

[dddirtman]

nice job

 

[cnrtechhead]

Rewired the front panel header tonight, and I still have no detection. I don't have a way to manually switch my audio, I have 4 O/P options in Sys Prefs, "Internal Speaker" which is my green rear jack, "Line Out" which is my orange rear jack, another "Line Out" which is my gray rear jack, and then Digital Out.

System Profiler sees all the ins and outs in the system properly, I have one in there named "headphones" and 3 line outs, one of which is likely the black rear out that doesn't seem to work. I guess what I see in Sys Profiler is injected? I am using the latest non-DSDT ALC889 options from MultiBeast.

I'm going to go ahead and do what this thread: http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php ... 01&start=0
suggests I do, build a circuit. I am familiar with that level of electronics enough that I think I can pull it off. I'm going to build a nice little board with an input header and an output header and a proper power connection that will accept a floppy drive plug.

If the board works, I may consider seeing how much interest there is in them and possibly make and sell them to other members, much like people have done with the front panel cable.

 

[cnrtechhead]

Well, it's time to update my PowerHac. While I am overall quite happy with my machine, there are a few things that irritate me about it that I'm going to fix this weekend.

First, I am replacing my front intake fans with a pair of 140mm Prolimatech Blue Vortex fans. These fans move about 65CFM and run nearly silent at ~20dB. They will be replacing a pair of $3 eBay Special 120mm fans that move almost as much air but are a bit louder.

I am also going to be installing a 120mm Prolimatech Blue Vortex as my exhaust fan. I had a $3 cheapy installed but was too stupid to put a grille on it, so a USB plug jammed it one day and it burnt out. I haven't had an exhaust fan since. I have a grille for the new one, too.

If you look back to my original build photos, you will see that I placed my power supply in the middle of the bottom of the case. The biggest issue that I have been having with this is that the hot air exhausted from the PSU is being sucked right into my CPU fan, instead of the nice cool air that is being brought into my case through the front intake fans. This has to change. I will be relocating the power supply to the top shelf, where the stock HD cage is. I'm going to move that HD cage under the optical drive, and mount a second G5 cage to the bottom of it. (I only need 4 HD spots now, since replacing my RAID0 boot array with a SSD.)

This will require almost complete disassembly of my system, which is fine by me. I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity and replace my el cheapo thermal paste with some Arctic Silver 5, too.

I'll be sure to post pics at some point this weekend. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

[cnrtechhead]

As stated in my last post, I spent Saturday remodding my PowerHac. This consisted of a move of the power supply to the top tray, installation of two 140mm intake fans and a 120mm exhaust fan, and mounting of two PMG5 hard drive cages under the optical drive. Enjoy the pictures and semi-worklog.

I started with a complete teardown of the machine. Pulled everything out.

Then I determined a location above the top tray to mount my power supply, and did some rough tracing of its fan location with a permanent marker. I then made nice lines with a ruler on the other side of the tray, and then cut with a jigsaw. In order to affix the PSU to the tray I reused one of my metal straps that held it in place in its previous location, just cut down a bit and redrilled.

Next I made my plexiglass mounting panel for my 2x140mm Prolimatech blue vortex fans. These are near silent fans, spinning at 1000RPM and moving about 65CFM of air each while only producing about 20db of noise. Test fitting the fans:

Next I made a custom wiring harness for my SATA hard drives in the two Apple G5 cages. I made this harness using the original G5 wiring. I used the adapter I made previously to determine wire colors.

Here we have the finished 4-drive HD cage. All wiring with the exception of the SATA to the bottom drives runs between the two cages.

How I attached the two cages:

Wiring on the back:

Here I have mounted the 140mm fans and reinstalled the motherboard tray:

Here I have the motherboard reinstalled and have begun reinstalling components and doing wiring:

And now my video cards have been reinstalled:

Excess power cables are nestled around the optical drive:

And with the back fan installed, we are done and ready to fire 'er up:

And now comes the really, really bad part. I knew I needed to test my SATA wiring harness with a multimeter before connecting drives to it. In my haste to get the thing powered up, I only pulled one drive's SATA power connector before powering the machine on. BIG MISTAKE. As much care as I took labeling the wires to each individual SATA plug, I /mixed up the +12V and +5V lines when putting the Molex end onto the harness/ which sent a nice 12 volts in tot he 5v input of all my drives except my OS backup drive. Of all the drives to pull, I chose the least valuable one with the least valuable data. What an expensive lesson. Now I have to buy a new SSD and two new 1TB drives. I may attempt a PCB replacement on the newer 1TB drive, as it actually has a ROM chip on its PCB that I can transfer to a replacement PCB and get the drive up and running, for good really. Currently researching the viability and expected success rate of such a transfer.

I have learned several valuable lessons through my little snafu yesterday:
1) Being hasty never ends well. As much patience as I have putting the machine together, carefully measuring, etc, to mess something like that up is just uncalled for, especially when I had several opportunities to catch my mistake.
2) I should NEVER keep a main drive and backup drive in the same machine. From my research about overvolted drives, I found out that if I ever had a PSU failure that it could take my drives out as well.

The plan now is to replace both 1TB drives with 1.5TB drives, so that I can move the contents of my Media hard drive inside the computer. I will have a 1.5TB data drive and a 1.5TB media drive inside the computer, and two 1.5TB externals for backup of those drives. OS and OS backup will remain internal, as no vital user data is stored on the OS drive (120GB SSD, home folder is on data drive) and I have copies of all my program installers.

That's all for now,
Chance (cnrtechhead)

 

[minihack]

Sorry to hear about the drives mess up, but hey, that all looks really good.

Got any pictures of the new back (and welcome to the rear 120 club ( ) )?

 

[thin_soldier]

Looking good!

Top tray mount looks similar to mine Sorry to hear about the drives getting blown :S

 

[cnrtechhead]

Thanks for the compliments and sympathy, guys. It's appreciated. I put a lot of time and thought into my mod, and I'm rather proud of it.

I've got a replacement SSD ordered from Newegg. I grabbed a Crucial M4 128GB drive after reading some reviews that put it above the Vertex III I was using in terms of reliability and access time. It's not quite as fast at writing but read times are about the same. In any case, it cost me $131 shipped (including the cost of a new mounting bracket.)

It's nice to be back in the rear 120mm club. I had to leave after my fan burnt up and I didn't feel like chopping up the plastics on another fan to replace it. I figured I'd just wait till I had the time to redo the mount.

I'll take pics of the new back later tonight when I get home from work. Looks pretty cool with the fan grille and plexiglass fan mounting plate.