New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX - G4 Cube

[spence4]

Thanks for checking Neil. I have to say that both you and minihack have been unbelievably helpful in walking me through the things I need to consider before I start cutting; I really appreciate it. With regards to the proximity switch issue, I had planned on keep the board on the small side as you have done and putting the SSD with the OD in the original position. Seems I may be barking up the wrong tree. I suppose I could try to mount the board between the OD and the cube heatsink- perhaps use the same piece of Perspex to mount them both. Do you think if you nudged things a little bit in your cube you could get the switch to work or is it basically a no go on the slim side?

 

[neilhart]

spence4 - I have assembled and tested many variants of the cube. For a time I ran a version where I had the proximity switch working and achieved that by extending the overall height of the system by about 0.300 inches to gain the space. If I were to do this approach, I would extend the can (the grey metal enclosure) by adding a skirt to the bottom. This would entail metal work and some filler with lots of sanding and painting. It might be a way to go.

However, when I had this version running, I experienced living with a proximity switch. Some days the switch would work intermittently. Other days it worked as expected and yet other days it was completely non-operational. My p switches maybe marginal and not representative of "good units". Minihack has documented the conversion and has much more positive experience then I have had.

You will note that all of my hacks have front facing USB ports, LEDs and Power Switches. I have given up on optical drives (and this OD view is now being supported by Apple).

Have fun planning your hack.

neil

 

[minihack]

Spence, as Neil says Cube switches have been known to have "issues" even in their day. If you want to see some of those then head over to Cubeowner.com which is a forum for genuine Mac Cubes. Just about every problem and solution in the real switches in real Cubes is discussed (PS I recommend anyone with an interest in Cubes to go there as there are some really cool things to look at!).

I must confess I love Cubes - both original and hacked - and the switch I feel is part of the magic of it. However, when you do the maths Mini-ITX boards only just fit...and often adding the Cube switch into that is just not gonna work. In my mod.s I have been prepared to accept compromises to keep the switch - such as mounting to the "larger" side. But look at your Cube and realise that mounting to that larger side with a normal Cube means the I/O bracket will be at the front of the perspex case and can look ugly. My solution span that around....to be able to keep the I/O at the back. While what I did is not practical for a mod that keeps the original case intact, you should really look at the mod by 61mg73 who clearly also faced the same issue and managed to work around that with a bit of internal engineering and come up with a result that still looked original. Eelhead too has squeezed the original switch into place.

In my opinion the most important part of any mod are the days (and possibly weeks) before you start doing stuff. Most of my better ideas come to me after a good nights sleep and waking up with a "Oh yes, what if I did that?" feeling.

Get the Cube in your hands, spin it around, take it apart and only make those cuts when you really know what to do. I guess that is what you are doing right now......I believe though that as long as you take the time you can make a great conversion with these that goes way beyond your average beige box.

 

[spence4]

Neil,

Is this the kind of connector to which you are referring?

http://www.frontx.com/pro/cpx075_10.html

Then I just plug in the corresponding wires from the touch panel to holes 1 and 5, yes?

 

[neilhart]

Neil,

Is this the kind of connector to which you are referring?

http://www.frontx.com/pro/cpx075_10.html

Then I just plug in the corresponding wires from the touch panel to holes 1 and 5, yes?

Yes that connector housing will work for you to pick up system ground (pin 1) and 5VDC Standby Power (pin 5). You can key the connector housing to match the header.

Good luck
neil

 

[spence4]

Hi Neil,

Tanks again for checking on the voltage for me. Now I have one more question for you. I put everything together and it seems to work great... Installed Lion 10.7.3 to my old MBAir SSD, got Internet, got the resolution looking purty via HDMI, but one area in which I am struggling is wifi. I have a real airport card - Broadcom bcm94321 - that I pulled from a first gen appletv. I put it into the mpcie slot, full height of course, and the airport symbol in the menu bar was greyed out. Not empty, but had grey bars rather than black. Any ideas? I had the antenna from the ATV plugged into both of the little sockets on the card, I also switched them midway through in case that mattered. Obviously the card was seen because when I took it out I had the usual empty airport piece of pie looking thing in the menubar. Finally, the card got really hot while it was plugged in. Would appreciate any suggestions or advice. Thanks in advance.

 

[minihack]

Hi Neil,

Tanks again for checking on the voltage for me. Now I have one more question for you. I put everything together and it seems to work great... Installed Lion 10.7.3 to my old MBAir SSD, got Internet, got the resolution looking purty via HDMI, but one area in which I am struggling is wifi. I have a real airport card - Broadcom bcm94321 - that I pulled from a first gen appletv. I put it into the mpcie slot, full height of course, and the airport symbol in the menu bar was greyed out. Not empty, but had grey bars rather than black. Any ideas? I had the antenna from the ATV plugged into both of the little sockets on the card, I also switched them midway through in case that mattered. Obviously the card was seen because when I took it out I had the usual empty airport piece of pie looking thing in the menubar. Finally, the card got really hot while it was plugged in. Would appreciate any suggestions or advice. Thanks in advance.

Okay so this is a silly question, but grey bars can mean you have not set up in Network preferences (or in the menu bar) which routers that you want to connect to......i.e. if the card is compatible and not dead it means it is working but has found no connections. I guess that you have scanned for available connections and not had success is that right? Have you done this inside or outside of the metal case? If it is all inside the case and the antennae are internal then you'd need to place them behind the plastic circular plugs at the side of the case (or right at the top) to get reception because the metal of the can will shield them from getting a signal. If your antennae are outside of the metal case and the antennae connections are good then then it may be your card is faulty - I have had some cards go faulty and they seem very sensitive to handling too - i.e. electrostatic charge might kill them more easily than some other components. First though do google your specific card numbers and Lion to make sure others have been successful with it and check for people having the same problems as you......it is not unknown for some genuine airport cards to be supported in some versions of OSX and to be dropped by Apple when newer versions appear - if that is the case then a spot of kext editing might solve the problem.

 

[lolorm]

I got more or less the same configuration: dh61ag+i3 2105, hdd, wifi, etc...
Everything works ok, but there's a thing that is disturbing me:
Sleeps works perfect with the dsdt posted here, but when I wake up from sleep, the usb 3.0. doesn't works.
And another thing: When I eject a hdd conected to esata port and plug another one, this another one doesn't work, it doesn't appear in my desktop.
Any ideas?
I know this are minor things, but it's the last for me to work 100%.

Thanks.

 

[minihack]

On the USB 3.0 issue that is maybe a consequence of there being no native OSX drivers for it. There may be some hope though that the newer Macs may soon be issued with it as part of the changeover to Ivy Bridge and if it does happen there may be functionality under Mountain Lion in the final release.......

 

[neilhart]

I have not sorted out USB3.0 on this motherboard. I am waiting until Apple issues an OS that does provide support and then maybe.

As for the corner cases on eSATA. My MB does recognize my eSATA drive and is functional. However I have not tested the possible cases of hot plugging and changing devices.

neil