Uhoh, RUN! It is a Mac! ..Well, kinda :P (Dialup friendly)

[MacJunky]

I hope this is the appropriate section for this. Anyway, been messing about with the guts of one of my Macs recently and thought that some here may be interested due to the type of case I have.
The one I am talking about is the one currently in my signature.

CPU: 1Ghz 7455 (64k L1, 256k L2, 2MB L3)
Mobo: PowerMac G4 Digital Audio
RAM: 2x 512MB PC133 3.3v 168pin SDRAM (Yes, I know, don't say it.)
Graphics: Radeon 7000 64MB DDR PCI (GPU 195|VRAM 234)/Rage 128 Pro 16MB AGP (GPU 237|VRAM 146)
Other PCI: ST Lab U-143 (4+1 port USB 2.0)
HD: 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 PATA/80GB WDC WD800JB-00JJA0 PATA
CD/DVD: Pioneer DVR-112D/Matshita SR-8585F
OS: Mac OS 10.4.10/9.2.2
PSU: Antec Neopower 650 Blue (/me gives SKYMTL a friendly wave)
Case: ATX server case (6x 5.25"/2 or 5x 3.5")
Displays: 17" DELL D1028L CRT @ 1600x1024/15" ACANA Pro 15Sp CRT @ 1280x1024
External audio system: Technics SU-V6X amp (100w per chan)+60w car speakers/Yamaha YST-M7

Before we get started here I want to post before and after pictures.

I did more than you might initially guess. However, I doubt I would call any of this all that extreme.


Mkay, here we have the intake fan of my PSU. Kinda restricted don't you think? Not anymore thanks to a quick&dirty cut! :P


Here we have the intake hole on the bottom of the front panel in my case. As you can see this is not adequate for the 32.5CFM 28.8dB/A 2500RPM fan I like to keep at the bottom of the front of the case. Well, it is at least decent now! As you can also see I have chopped out the metal with a bunch of holes in it by the fan because it was restricting airflow.


Moving on we have the little dive mounting setup. It does not look like much and it really is not but it keeps the drives in one place well and means that I do not have to pull my whole case out and remove the other side panel and such to remove an HD. Also seen here are the power wires for both drives, a fan and a couple extra things should I so desire. On a side note, you _do_ _not_ want to see the mess of wires behind my mobo tray so don't expect any pictures. >_<


Here is the little 2x AA holder so I don't have to hunt down any more of those stupid 3.6v 1/2AA. Granted, two AA cells such as the ones used here are only 3v but it is enough for use in place of the PRAM battery. My small and extremely convenient clip on the back of the holder means I can easily remove the holder and replace the cells.


Some pre-boot shots. Both using the horrid incandescent bulbs on the ceiling of the room because the camera's flash only goes off in situations where it would totally ruin the picture.(yes, it is out to get me.) I decided to drill some holes between the PCI slots as well. Only problem with that however is there seems to be no attachments for a dremel here anymore so I had to use a file to clean things up in the restricted space of the exterior and things got a tad messy due to file size. Well, that and the chuck of this new drill seems to be a bit off centre coupled with no proper measurements being made for the holes. <_< >_>


And finally some first boot shots. One using same lighting as before, the other using one of them lamps with the long skinny bulbs in a smallish enclosure on a tall stand that is normally painted yellow and the correct name of I can not remember at the moment. Well placed to achieve desired lighting of course.

As you can see in that last one I was getting sick of the 50mm fan on my heatsink so I just stuck on an 80mm and things seem to be running ok with the 80mm plugged into where the 50mm was. The next time I have my CPU out I am probably going to be fitting a different heatsink and possibly fan on it anyway so I am going to just leave the 50mm there for now.

You might also notice that I extended the internal speaker's wires and placed it above my PSU. This was to help keep it out of the way, better hide it's wires and help give me an incentive for further chopping up of the case in that area. ;)
The most likely thing I will do next is get a 500GB or so SATA drive w/ SATA card. Then either at the same time or after that I want to pick up a GF7800 and better CPU heatsink somewhere and stuff them in as well. Might be cool to pick up a dual 1.4Ghz 7455 eventually(the dual 1.5-1.8Ghz 7447 ones suck) but at the moment this CPU is doing just fine.

And this concludes my set of pictures.. Provided I did not forget about something that is. Haha, I probably did. :P

Questions? Comments? Please direct them this way, I want your opinions even if they are negative. I bet I am going to take at least a little flack for that half-assed cutting and drilling job. Meh, at least I did not leave metal bits and stuff laying around the case and the chopped areas and holes are "finger-safe".
Oh dear, rambling again. /me shuts up.

[SKYMTL]

Nice to see someone doing something a bit different.

[3.0charlie]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Nice to see someone doing something a bit different.

Nice to see someone doing something very different. What do you actually do with your rig? I'm asking 'cause PC133 Ram and an ATI7000 are well, of the computer dinosaur age.

[Thund3rball]

WOW! You are a hardcore Mac Modder. I eat my words . How's Tiger on that system?

[MacJunky]

Originally Posted by 3.0charlie

Nice to see someone doing something very different. What do you actually do with your rig? I'm asking 'cause PC133 Ram and an ATI7000 are well, of the computer dinosaur age.

Why do you think I want a GF7800? Actually, I want a whole new rig but I need a job with more hours first. Anyway, I do everything a normal person does aside from run system raping games and any windows only things, for those windows only things I use my PII. Guess I should say that any really really old Mac stuff is generally done on some older Mac systems like my Mac Plus or 7300/200, 580CD, etc.

Kinda sad really, with my G4 I cannot run UT 2003, Doom III(though I did work my way through the demo @ around 5FPS or something a while back just for kicks :P ) or BF1942 and similar well enough to be playable and even Halo is pretty brutal so multiplayer is for the most part out. I can use things like Racer, AvP2, TIR, JK:JA, Dungeon Siege, Enemy Engaged, SoFII, WCIII, X-Plane 7, etc with out too much trouble though.
All the games are mostly being taken down by this Radeon 7000. It was a crap card when it came out and nothing will ever change that unless you are using it in a server or a mid to late 90s computer. My G4 does have a reasonable CPU score in GeekBench however.
My G4:
Geekbench Result Browser: Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)

Some other machines not owned by me:
(Mac)(Here I am showing the importance of large L2 or L3 cache when you have a slow bus)
Geekbench Result Browser: PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.33 GHz)
Geekbench Result Browser: PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.5/1.33 GHz)
Geekbench Result Browser: PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.5 GHz)
(PC)
Geekbench Result Browser: GBT___ AWRDACPI
Geekbench Result Browser: Micro-Star International VR330
Geekbench Result Browser: Linux PC (Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.00GHz)
Geekbench Result Browser: 75V8p 775V88+

When it comes to RAM my G4 generally gets totally pummelled but for it's specs it is still quite usable.

Originally Posted by Thund3rball

WOW! You are a hardcore Mac Modder. I eat my words . How's Tiger on that system?

Tiger runs just fine, heck, tiger runs fine on a 500Mhz G4 w/ 512MB RAM and Rage 128 Pro AGP.