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some old guy's G5

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any new updates? im doing a very similar mod and cant wait to see ur master piece finished!

P0w
 
I'd love to do something similar, in the sense that I want to integrate my motherboard tray into the back, but it looks like you need to have a ready supply of broken G5 cases to get raw material from. It would be awesome if someone could find a material with the same hole spacing that wasn't from a G5.
 
pahoran said:
any new updates? im doing a very similar mod and cant wait to see ur master piece finished!

P0w
Not much .... my life has been being run for me the last few weeks . About the only thing I've got done is to graft the G5's HDD cables to one of the Molex cables for the modular psu I'm using. Hopefully I can get a grip on things this week so I can get the case done.

Martytoof said:
I'd love to do something similar, in the sense that I want to integrate my motherboard tray into the back, but it looks like you need to have a ready supply of broken G5 cases to get raw material from. It would be awesome if someone could find a material with the same hole spacing that wasn't from a G5.

I looked all over the online metals places based in the US and couldn't come up with anything . The G5's perforations are 3mm ( .116) which is in between 3/32 and 1/8 .
Maybe there are suppliers in the metric world outside of the US who stock perforated sheet with this bore but I kinda have the feeling that is might be some proprietary Apple pattern .
 
yeah no go in Australia either.. even though i found out it was manufactured by apples line of contrators specificaaly for apple...as they do with all case constructions... :thumbup:
i am from the metals industry and no rep can find same.....
 
Finally got back to work on the case . Cut out a piece of acrylic to fit the height of the opening and with a width of a bit more than I thought I'd need for the finished bent piece
Measured out and milled/drilled/cut holes for the back mounting screws , fan hole and mounting screw holes , and a void at bottom of the housing for air intake when the front fan isn't running .
milloutopeningsinfancase.jpg

I was able to borrow an acrylic bender to heat the acrylic and then bent the heated sections over a piece of wood to get the angles that I wanted .

finishedbend.jpg

Made up a bottom flange and glued in on with the housing fixed to the back of the case.The foil is there to keep the glue from eating up the paint on the case metal parts.

glueonbottomflange.jpg


Minor problem drilling the bottom mount hole...tried to drill out the mount hole in one shot rather than make several holes of increasing size until I got to where I wanted . The drill dug in and chipped out the outer corner.

oopsie.jpg


Time for Plan B...cut back the corner with a Dremel and drill it right this time

planB.jpg

planBinplace.jpg


Made a top bracket from some 1/8x1/2 aluminum bent into an angle . Drilled and tapped
a 6-32 mounting hole to correspond with a similar hole on the outer side of the fan housing top . Then cut a slot in the other leg to allow for some adjusting to compensate for inaccuracies that occurred while bending the acrylic. The bracket attaches to the upper shelf via a threaded mounting hole I drilled earlier.

topbracketfanhousing.jpg


Sanded the scratches , glue overruns and other flaws down with 220 wet sandpaper and
sprayed side of the housing that will be visible when the side cover is off, left the other side unpainted black .

fanhousingpainted.jpg


Had to come up with some sort of speaker for startup sounds and POST warnings . Had a bunch in my junkbox but all were too big . Found a tiny one in Radio Shack . Made a bracket up from some 1/8x1 1/2 aluminum angle and attached the speaker using some
silicon adhesive I had in the garage . Speaker and bracket mount on case via a hole drilled in the case bottom.
speakerparts.jpg

speakerdone.jpg

speakerlocation.jpg


So thats it for the casework , now to get the front panel and some other wiring done , test everything and on to a final assembly .

tinworkdone2.jpg


Just as an aside , the wire dangling from the top of the fan housing is the thermal sensor for the front fan .When this thing is finally together it'll pick up temperature from the upper part of the Motherboard and trigger the front fan if the temps are over 30C . There's a similar but smaller one that will be cooling the HDD shelf.
 
Thanks ... the acrylic took me a while to figure out . The heater I was using just wasn't softening up the stock I was using enough to enable the bends , it's a borrowed heater so maybe it's just for real thin stuff , 1/16 or so . Anyway , had to use a heat gun to persuade the plastic to get soft enough to bend easily . In retrospect , I should have made a mold to accurately bend over rather than eyeballing it over a 2x4 . But it worked out OK in the end.
 
61mg73 said:
In retrospect , I should have made a mold to accurately bend over rather than eyeballing it over a 2x4 . But it worked out OK in the end.

I'd be really happy with that eyeballing.

Love the care you are taking over this build. I know it can be tempting to rush things, especially when you start to see the end in sight, but once it is done you really notice the stuff you could have done better. Don't think you'll have many regrets about this one.
 
Originally , I wanted to use the front i/o board that came with my case . It looked pretty crummy , but it's original equipment and , with a spliced cable should work as original.
So... cut the original cable in half ,and proceeded to piece together a cable to mate with my MOBO's usb , fw , and power on headers . Plugged it in ... didn't work . Checked all the connections to make sure everything had continuity , and that everything that should transmit power or ground was doing what it should . Everything seemed OK , but still no front panel/power button activity , so made another cable from the second half of the original cable . Went through the whole thing again , checking , and double checking pinouts at both ends . Still nothing so I'm assuming the i/o board's bad . :banghead: Decided to build my own using the metal shield that covers the i/o board as a framework for the usb/fw cables . I'll also incorporate a dvd release button using the headphone jack hole and a tactile switch. Had a couple of usb and FW sockets around from a project from some years back , got a piece of perfboard from the local Radio Shack and proceeded to cut out the front panel from the damaged case I'm using for parts . I'll use this piece as a pattern to make sure everything lines up .

frontpanelstuff.jpg


Cut out a small piece of perfboard and fastened the usb socket to it via the socket's tabs .Wired the ends of my motherboard to the appropriate terminals of the socket , got the pinouts from the pinouts.ru website .
USBCable.jpg

Checked everything out and then epoxied the wired down to the perfboard , and epoxied another piece of perfboard to the first to act as an insulator/spacer. Sanded the copper off the second piece before gluing. Put the metal shield into place on the cut out font panel and then epoxied the usb port into place , using a usb cable inserted into the socket through the front panel to ensure alignment.
Wired up the fw cable , but wasn't able to put the socket onto perfboard owing to the socket's increased depth .
FWcable.jpg

Had to cut a relief in the metal shield for wiring clearance. The socket was carefully directly epoxied to the shield . Had to put 2 small pieces pf perfboard between the top of the socket and the shield to shim everything into place.
Thr DVD release is a small tactile switch with two wires which will connect to the prevously attached release wires on my DVD drive . The switch is epoxied onto a piece of perfboard and the assembly epoxied to the shield .
DVDejectbutton.jpg

I turned a small aluminum pin which fits over the end of the switch and will protrude from the headphone jack hole , allowing the DVD to be released .
tinymachinedpiece.jpg

Here's the front panel assembled:
finishedfrontboard.jpg

frontpanelassembled2.jpg

Wired up the power switch and led , both work fine
powerswitchwired.jpg

Frontpanellite.jpg

So now I've just got to stick everything together .
 
Finally together!!!
The insides...
insides1.jpg


Hard Drives 1&2
oemhd.jpg


Hard Drive 3
hd3.jpg


Front
frontquarter.jpg


Back
back.jpg


It's Alive!!!
wholething.jpg


Yeah ... no Lion .... nice and stable running 10.6.7 No sense fooling around and messing things up.
aboutscreen.jpg


Some changes ... 650 watt Corsair modular PS , 250 g third drive running XP ,no bluetooth/wifi ( don't need them , got a wired mouse/keyboard and a CAT5 jack in the wall going to my router) , 2 1TB WD 3 1/2" drives for OSX and Time Machine ,probably get XP and Time Machine up and running tomorrow . Pretty happy with how it turned out ,it's fast , boots quickly ,and quiet.
 
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