neilhart's G5 Short Stack - PowerMac G5 Mod

[MacTester57]

Looks good! How will you do the outer finish? With filler and aluminium spraypaint?

MacTester

 

[neilhart]

Looks good! How will you do the outer finish? With filler and aluminium spraypaint?

MacTester

Yes I have been testing different spray cans looking for something that is forgiving and easily applied and is a reasonable match. If I am not happy with what I find my options are take it to a professional painter or paint everything some shade of white.

The key challenges are still ahead. The steps immediately ahead are cutting the inner lower/rear panel to fit my sliced shell, then removing the section that will become the slide-in tray.

I will post when there is anything significant to see.

neil

 

[neilhart]

More details:

I worked on the rear/bottom inner panel assembly. As shown below, I removed the 4 slot PCI bracket assembly by breaking the mini-spot welds with the wood chisel to put stress right at each weld. I then straightened the tabs and it is ready for reuse.
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I then made the two cuts needed. The bottom portion was a simple cut to length task. The rear portion I had to section the middle of the part to retain the top and bottom bends and the right side panel release latch assembly.

Then I made up a stiffener bracket for both sides of the rear shell and used JB weld to reassemble the two parts and used the cut down outer shell to locates the all of the bits.
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The next major hurdle is to modify the right side inner panel. The desire is to retain the right side panel locking with the rear release latch functionality.
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And I now see that a removable tray is a big chunk of mechanical magic... There is the possibility that I may leave that portion of the project for a second generation of this hack concept. I have several additional chassis waiting for projects. I acquired these for a backstop should I screw up a key part and need a replacement.

Be happy with your hacks, and you have got to love OS X ! I am about to bring up my new motherboard so I again am thankful for TonyMac and his team.
neil

 

[Thebignoob]

Loving the progress Neil, this is top notch stuff!

Keep up all the great work, looking forward to more updates!

 

[kiwisincebirth]

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The next major hurdle is to modify the right side inner panel. The desire is to retain the right side panel locking with the rear release latch functionality.
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It would be a great achievement to get the door opening mechanism to work. Interesting the way you have sectioned the back IO panel and mated up the two fan ports to recreate a single fan port. Plenty of room for the PSU as well as any number of optical / SSD drives. The IO Ports in the picture appear bit out of alignment. I am sure there is a plan, look forward to your progress. Kiwi.

 

[neilhart]

As I work on this project, I am continually amazed at the mechanical engineering that went into the Apple G5 PowerMac. Having worked in the computer and network product industry for years I can really appreciate the design detail in this system that was implemented to achieve radiated emissions compliance.

The current task is to section the right side inner frame in such a manner that I can retain the rear latch and sliding lock mechanism. It would also be nice to retain the right side panel lower lip to chassis engagement. All of this needs to be coordinated with a plan to section the right side panel that retains the latch feature and the lower lip. I had never noticed before that there are two locating pins on the right side panel (top right and left corners) that engage with the right side inner frame.
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I have decided to start with cuts to the frame that will be a front edge from top to bottom (this assume normal running orientation of the product). This piece will have just a 1.5 inch stub of the latch slide support.

Then cuts to yield up the top and rear edge piece. This piece will have to butt up to the front edge piece at the top, fit to the rear edge and the latch channel cut a little longer to fit over the stub left on the front frame piece.

That would then leave the sectioning the lower edge of the right side inner frame to provide the lower lip channel. The frame height in this area is raised to help form the PSU cavity in the stock system. I do not want the added height, I just need to create a pocket to accept the lower lip of a modified right side panel.

These cuts will leave me with three pieces instead of the one piece frame. If I do this well the visual appearance will be neat joints that will not require more work. Worst case here, I would find a way to bond the parts (maybe JB Weld, sanding, and painting).

If time permits, I will start the cuts tonight. I think that I will use the Dremel tool with cut-off disks to make these cuts. The material appears to be a little harder then mild steel so I will go through a good number of cut-off disks.

- Kiwi - The rear panel area worries me as I have not worked out the details yet. I am thinking of using a Mac Pro rear fan grill with 120mm fan/water cooling rad/120mm. The details ...

And I am waiting for a CPU and GPU that I have on order. And I am still searching for a good deal on memory (as my last good deal turned out to be a "web coding error").

more later,
neil

 

[neilhart]

Keep alive update:

The bring up of the Gigabyte Z77MX-D3H with the i7-3770K, 16GB memory was a breeze with a fresh install of OS X 10.8.3 and Multibeast 5.3.0. HD 4000 was running well. I then installed the new MSI GeForce GTX 650TI and quickly had three displays running from the card. All thanks to TonyMacX86 team and great tools. That was last week.

This week was a slow week on the project for several reasons. However here it is Sunday afternoon with the Zurich Classic Pro Gulf on the HDTV and my task at the moment is fitting the IO plate and the PCI Slot bracket for best fit. Seen here are the G5 mother board short standoffs that I have through drilled and tapped the bottom portion to 6-32 and retaining the original thread in the top portion. I am using these because I didn't find any .5 inch standoffs in my miscellaneous hardware trays and repurposing these saves time and money.
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And the second photo shows that I still need to move the IO plate a little more to the right for a perfect fit (remove more material from the PCI Slot bracket.
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My immediate objective is finish fitting the IO and PCI components, mount the standoffs and check fit and alignment on the 12 x 12 x 1/8 inch aluminum plate that I intend to use. To do all of that, I have to check it setting in the sectioned chassis which is also still in a state of flux.

This is really a good hobby that keeps one focused on the tasks and the appropriate order of the tasks and dependencies . . . bla, bla, bla.

More to come
neil

 

[bstrang6]

Amazing workmanship dude, very very nice work. Theres no better feeling than making something with your own two hands!

 

[neilhart]

Amazing workmanship dude, very very nice work. Theres no better feeling than making something with your own two hands!

Well I agree when things go along as planned... which is not alway the case.

A small change of direction:

I was not pleased with the IO panel that I was having trouble fabricating. I cast about and looked at different machines to get some inspiration and decided to use a tried and true design. I have owned two Cooler Master Elite 343 Mini-Towers for several years and one has been used for several projects that and was no longer “all there”. In short I reverse assembled the chassis and yielded up the IO and PCI panel assembly.
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I then proceeded to coble together the rear panel assembly. Here seen ready to cut away the IO and PCI slot area.
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I then took the 120mm rear fan panel area from a Mac Pro case and tried to match the hole patterns and position the piece to allow a decent fit for a the 120 mm exhaust fan.
Seen here is my setup for JB Weld assembly of the rear panel pieces; glass top work table covered with clear food wrap, parts positioned with epoxy on top of that, then another layer of clear food wrap and a couple of 3.5 inch hard drives to hold things down to the flat surface.
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This is immediately after the 24 hour cure.
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And then after some sanding block work and re-drilling the blocked holes.
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The panel is certainly not perfect but at this point it still has potential for a reasonably good outcome (time will tell).

More to come.
neil

 

[djulink]

Neilhart, you're pushing modding so much further... can't wait to see the final stage