DoctorEvil 30564's Powermac G4 Graphite Hackintosh

[doctorevil30564]

DoctorEvil 30564's Powermac G4 Graphite Customac

I won't go into a lot of specifics, as most of the methods for what I've done to my case were shamelessly stolen from the shared info from others on this forum. (Thanks guys you rock!)

I started with a semi-working Powermac G4 Graphite desktop system that I purchased on ebay.

Parts used in system
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 Motherboard
Intel Pentium G620 CPU
16GB of Patriot DDR3 ram
120GB Seagate SATA drive
PNY XLR8 1GB GTS 250 video card
homemade apple airport cart built using apple airport laptop card in mini pci-e adapter.

preparation:

I first removed all of the old and useless to me parts from the case.

Next I used a Kit I purchased from here http://www.thelaserhive.com/products/g4-powermac-conversion-products/early-g4g3-kits/kit-1/ with a Laser cut Persplex I/O backplate, a template to help me ensure I drilled the motherboard mount holes correctly, and custom made motherboard mounts with Nylon threaded locking nuts for the back.

Here is how the back of the case looks now

This is the AWESOME Crappy Soldering I did to get the front panel working.

Power and reset buttons and Power LED all work, I had originally thought I had a bad power LED because I couldn't get it to light up, but it turned out to be due to me wiring the wiring harness wrong and not due to a bad LED. It's fixed now.

Here is the wiring block that I used to wire up my power and reset buttons and the power led

And here is a picture of the wiring harness I used

if you're interested in using this same harness for a similar project search for CBL084L on ebay or amazon.

This is a wiring harness adapter for a SuperMicro brand 2U server case to allow the case to be used with a non-supermicro motherboard. I have access to these from work as we build out supermicro servers for our customers and don't use the adapter so it gets tossed.

As you can see the adapter has a lot of wires, definitely more than what I needed. What I did was use a flat headed precision screwdriver that was small enough to fit under the plastic tab that holds the pins in the wiring block and I then removed the pins for any of the wires that I didn't need. since I used two of the same wiring block I had to switch around the positions on the second harness cable so I had matching wiring on both sides of the pin header adapter block.

I used the sleeving off of another cable that we discard that comes in the supermicro server chassis to help tidy up my wires.

I forgot to mention i but I also re-wired the original case speaker with new wiring and used the same sleeve on it also for a uniform look.

more pictures of the mostly finished system.

the cuts I made to the optical drive bracket

pictures of the wiring

open case shots (note the 4 pin 12V cable isn't quite long enough to comfortable allow the case to lay open with it connected without straining the connector so it is disconnected in most of these shots)

 

[doctorevil30564]

opened case pictures continued

picture of the modified plastic back piece for ATX power supply.

Currently I am running the system without a SATA optical drive as the one I had been using was too long to work. I have purchased a 5.25 drive bay adapter that will allow me to use a SATA laptop drive instead of desktop drive, but it's going to be a while before the parts come in.

Also, You will note from looking at the pictures I decided not to put the fan bracket and fan back into the system. so far after running SETI@home for about 1 hour on this system it's running stable system temp is 53 Celsius, CPU temp 45 Celsius.

If temps go up after I have installed the adapter bracket and a laptop optical drive I will look into installing the fan bracket and either the original fan or a quieter model.

This is still a work in progress, so I will post new pictures and info as I make changes to the build.

 

[doctorevil30564]

I received the laptop optical drive 5.25" drive adapter bracket yesterday and today I received the sata laptop dvd burner drive I purchased to finish up my mod.

I wound up having to make a trip to frys to purchase a mini sata wiring adapter that allowed me to power the drive using one of the Molex power connectors on my power suppy.

The bracket was a perfect fit lengthwise, the only issue I ran into with it was that the drive bay cover plate had a retaining lip around the edge inside the fold down door and this lip was hitting the top edge of the laptop drive so it wouldn't sit flush inside the case anymore. I wound up using a pair of nibblers to remove the outer plastic lip and was able to get the cover to fit again.

All in all I am pleased with how well my mod went, considering that I had no prior experience with using a dremel to cut the metal inside of a computer case. The only thing that remains is for me to determine where I want to install my Hard drive LED

 

[doctorevil30564]

reserved for future posts

 

[doctorevil30564]

reserved for future posts

 

[doctorevil30564]

does anyone know how to edit existing posts using the new version of the forum so attached pictures show up again in your post? I'm not able to do this and want to get my first post fixed so the pictures show up again.

EDIT: I figured how to do it you will need to use

 [img]url link[/img]

and host your pictures somewhere else. I uploaded my pictures to my public folder on my dropbox account and linked to the pictures from the public url for each picture. I had to resize them too as the new forum version doesn't do any resizing and they were huge.

 

[doctorevil30564]

Does anyone know of a good source for a white LED that would be a near perfect replacement for the original white LED on the powermac G4 front panel board?

I found these on Amazon, I'm not the best at soldering so I like that these are ready to go, All I should need to do is change the plug and use my wiring block

Blue 5MM tailed LED. (I am thinking about using this one and hot gluing it in place of the programmer switch on the front so I have a Blue HD led
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003U3VPOY/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

Here is the White one I ordered.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IV6TX4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01

I've been lazy and haven't taken anymore pictures to show the progress of my mod since I haven't been able to see well enough to do anymore work on it. My vision is starting to clear up now. I'm up to 20/25 vision in my right eye but still have some double imaging blurred images and halos around bright lights. My Left eye is still around 20/40 though but that was the eye that I had undercorrected to -1.75 so I will be able to read without having to wear reading glasses later on in life when I've gotten older and my vision changes.

I will try to get some more pictures up soon. I know most folks on the forum don't really care about any of the non G5 or Mac pro case mods, so I figure it's not a huge priority.

 

[eelhead]

I will try to get some more pictures up soon. I know most folks on the forum don't really care about any of the non G5 or Mac pro case mods, so I figure it's not a huge priority.

BSSSS lol
Yeah we do! We care about all mods and I was waiting for new pics and now you make me wait longer

But I will wait patiently lol I hope your vision gets better and I look forward to see what you have been up to on the case mod.

 

[Flybye]

I guess I should chime in more often, too.
I love any mod! I even keep thinking about getting a cube, but wouldn't have much need for it since I'm building my G5 Power Mac.

Keep the pictures coming. Can't wait to see the polished finished product.

 

[minihack]

Yep, hang in there Doctorevil. Coming along really nicely and we all want to read more........