G5 case mod - Hackintosh

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Interesting. A quick google search for hiwatts wiring reminds me a lot of the industrial control panels I used to wire. Everything was bundled and bent neatly, and even though it was just buttons that controlled relays, the wiring was way oversized so that it could handle the vibration and abuse it would take in an industrial setting.

Yeah. They are things of beauty. Apparently Dave Reeves hired Harry Joyce and a bunch of ex WW2 military wirer's. My stuff isnt in that class obviously. I just try to route wires and stuff as neatly as I can.

[John_Toolbox]

Most of the industrial wiring I've seen in more recent years isn't that nice. The one place I worked at in the 90's had been in business since the 1930's, and pretty set in their ways... so every wire was cut to the exact length, and bundled together perfectly with zip ties. They also used a lot of different colors of wire instead of wire number labels, which also made it look cool. Now you normally just see black, red, green, and white wires in the plastic wiremold channel, so they can shove any excess wire in there and hide it without obsessing over the aesthetics. I remember there was one machine that needed a really thick ground wire, and you could only get that gauge in black... so they had me cover the entire wire in green heat shrink tubing... most electricians would just wrap green tape around the ends.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by YYR123

Yes I'm going to wire tye everything nice and neat once it's up and running but I need to mount a few more things before I make everything final

But still even though I do my best job I know it won't look anything like the G5 that I took apart

That thing was beautifully put together No extra wire slack anywhere

I'm sure its going to come out great! I hope you don't think I was panning your work so far. I was just chatting with John. I like Apples aesthetics. They do a great job especially with the Mac Pro line.

Oh, more pics please.

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by YYR123

Yes I'm going to wire tye everything nice and neat once it's up and running but I need to mount a few more things before I make everything final

But still even though I do my best job I know it won't look anything like the G5 that I took apart

That thing was beautifully put together No extra wire slack anywhere

Yes, some of the old beige macs from the 90's were like that. Very well thought out, everything had a place. You don't see that in most towers, it seems even the name brand stuff has messy wiring.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

Yes, some of the old beige macs from the 90's were like that. Very well thought out, everything had a place. You don't see that in most towers, it seems even the name brand stuff has messy wiring.

I'm appalled at the stuff I see from small system builders. The big OEMs are nearly as bad. I'm only familier with G4 and up stuff as far as macs go.

[YYR123]

Yeah I couldn't wait any longer to make it look nice I had to jump in and try the installation of the software

I still need a plate to mount my hard drives

I still need to cut several pieces of the frame to install back in my DVD drives

Tomorrow hopefully

[John_Toolbox]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

I'm appalled at the stuff I see from small system builders. The big OEMs are nearly as bad. I'm only familier with G4 and up stuff as far as macs go.

The beige G3 desktop case(the horizontal one, not the tower) and beige G3 all-in-one case were pretty interesting. The desktop model had the power supply on a hinge, so you could simply slide a latch and spin it out of the way to access the RAM. The AIO G3's used the same motherboard as the desktop(which had 3 PCI slots, unlike the G3 iMacs), and the whole motherboard slid out of the back like a drawer so you could access the RAM and PCI slots. The hard drives mounted on a plastic sled that had a plastic tab you pushed on, and the whole sled just slid out. You could remove the CPU with a single lever, no tools needed. All of the wiring fit really nicely in these, you really didn't need tools to work on them other than a screwdriver to remove the hard drives from the plastic sleds. But early macs, dating back to the original macs from the 80's were all designed and marketed as long term investments that could be upgraded. This ended with the G5's, which all had the CPU's soldered to the Motherboard. (Actually the mac pro's all have socketed CPU's, but other than the 2009 and newer they are generally not worth upgrading since the motherboard architecture made such a huge improvement in 2009).

I've heard from a lot of people that old macs have a lot of gold content in them, so they have scrap value for the gold, but now it seems like their value as an antique is far more than that. I junked a lot of old macs that simply had no value at all a few years ago, but would now sell for a few hundred dollars just because there are people who collect them now. Still have my iicx though.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

The beige G3 desktop case(the horizontal one, not the tower) and beige G3 all-in-one case were pretty interesting. The desktop model had the power supply on a hinge, so you could simply slide a latch and spin it out of the way to access the RAM. The AIO G3's used the same motherboard as the desktop(which had 3 PCI slots, unlike the G3 iMacs), and the whole motherboard slid out of the back like a drawer so you could access the RAM and PCI slots. The hard drives mounted on a plastic sled that had a plastic tab you pushed on, and the whole sled just slid out. You could remove the CPU with a single lever, no tools needed. All of the wiring fit really nicely in these, you really didn't need tools to work on them other than a screwdriver to remove the hard drives from the plastic sleds. But early macs, dating back to the original macs from the 80's were all designed and marketed as long term investments that could be upgraded. This ended with the G5's, which all had the CPU's soldered to the Motherboard. (Actually the mac pro's all have socketed CPU's, but other than the 2009 and newer they are generally not worth upgrading since the motherboard architecture made such a huge improvement in 2009).

I've heard from a lot of people that old macs have a lot of gold content in them, so they have scrap value for the gold, but now it seems like their value as an antique is far more than that. I junked a lot of old macs that simply had no value at all a few years ago, but would now sell for a few hundred dollars just because there are people who collect them now. Still have my iicx though.

I actually went looking for Beige G3 pics after your post. Couldn't find any gut shots and got distracted.. The web needs a central place where people can post DAW pics and their solutions to problems. Encourage builders, support each other and raise the bar at the same time. I'm not sure the OP is appreciative of our discussion in his thread Building and modding stuff makes for some great discussion. I wonder if we can post img links in a Windows PC thread which seems a bit more appropriate than the General Discussion area.

[YYR123]

Discuss away - I moved this thread here because I was piggybacking on another thread

[John_Toolbox]

beige G3 Desktop, open:

http://www.mactech.com/2004/09/12/clear-g3-case-mod

Also note the picture below it of mac guts mounted in a fishing tackle box!

Powermac G3 AIO teardown:

http://ifixit.dozuki.com/Teardown/Po...eardown/2138/1

The All in one wiring is messier than I remember it.. but the way the back of it opened like a drawer was cool. The biggest problem with it was you couldn't fit a full length PCI card in it, but it was a great alternative to an imac for digi 001 owners. The biggest PCI card I ever fit in one was a sample cell II plus, which is about 2 inches or so shorter than a full length card, due to the RAM being soldered on. I did have to do some surgery inside the aio and cut out some metal for the SCII+ card to fit in there though.... and if I remember right it only fit in the outermost slot.

The AIO would make an interesting macquarium... though I think a G3 imac would probably look cooler.