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Project Mac Cube

G

gordy_hand

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 1, 2001
Messages
509
I'm nearly finished on Project Little Devil ( http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/main.php?page=liquidbloo ) I just have a few minor bits still to finish when I pull my finger out.

So with that in mind I started thinking about my next project, I have two other ones on the back burner but neither of them really inspire me at the moment or suit my needs. What I really need is a fileserver that small and good looking. With this in mind I started coming up with some idea's as to what to do.

My orginal plan was to do a smaller version of Project mini me ( http://www.gordyhand.co.uk/main.php?page=minime ) which was a shuttle flex atx sized based project. I liked this idea but I couldn't decide what to do with the externals to make it nice. The plan was to spray paint it but after Project Little Devil I've had enough paint fumes in my lungs over the last few weeks to last me a lifetime hehe.

So I set about trying to find some other idea, I stumbled across Sun's Cobalt Qube 3 these would be great to convert into a file server. The only problem is they go for far too much money on ebay to make it worthwhile.

Now with my current Apple switch in progress I was having a look at older mac's on ebay to see what we could sell my girlfriends Powermac G4 for. When I did this I stumbled across some mac cubes. They are Powermac g4's crammed into a cube space. These were the very first SFF computer and are still ahead of the current sff's in many ways.

I've spent the last month or two trying to find a well priced Apple Powermac Cube and finally I found a great donor case. It was a incomplete cube with just the motherboard , cpu and psu included. This suited my needs perfectly and after a short bidding war I won the auction!

DSCF1719.jpg


Some more pics of the cube (Click on the for full 800x600 shots)







I picked up the cube two days ago from the courier and set about taking it apart. I realised the previous owner had really abused it when removing some of the components, the inner chassis was missing some parts and others were damaged grrrrrrrr. It didn't bother me too much as I wouldn't be using most of the insides anyway.

I started taking the cube apart which is no easy task, the cube drew blood in my battle with it but I finally got it into is components.

The perspex has a few scratches and has some dirt so it needs work but for the most part its in excellent condition considering its age.





I've taken out most of the parts I won't be needing now here's the parts I will be using. including the very clever handle and locking mechanism which is going to be hard to use but worth the effort.









The black item in the first picture is the heatsink believe it or not! Its massive and a structural part of the chassis. So I will have to make something up to replace it as it takes up too much room!

The orginal cube is very well built the motherboard is amazing its very nice indeed. How they shoehorned a fully working g4 in there all those years ago is amazing particularly when it was running 100% passive.







Here's a couple of final shots of the motheboard to compare it to the mini-itx board that will be replacing it and a shuttle motherboard for comparison.






The first task for me to complete was to replace the missing top chassis plate , I've started work on cutting and bending a piece of aluminium to replace this section. After that I need to find a way of replacing the huge heatsink to allow me too shoehorn 2 hard discs in there. I ideally want 500gb of storage in the cube so I will use 2 x 250gb ide hard discs along with a laptop combo drive for optical storage.

I hope you like the project so far let me know what you think.
 
Well its time for the first update on this project and its something I don't normally do thats for sure!

I had a play with the internal layout and I worked out that I can fit 2x hard discs and one laptop optical drive in the cube chassis whilst still using the heatsink/structural element with a few changes. The advantage of this is that I dont have to machine a whole new structural element. It would be a nightmare to recreate. The only issue was that the bottom section of the heatsink would have to be removed.





You can see the bottom section in the second picture above. At first I thought it was screwed into place but I quickly realised it was soldered in place. This gave me some second thoughts on the idea but I came across the idea of heating the whole heatsink till the solder melted....

So for the first time ever for me I had to use my oven for modding :dremel: 280 degrees of modding power hehe!





I wrapped the heatsink in foil to save my oven, apologises for the sorry state of the oven its in desperate need of a clean hehe. After five minutes in the oven the parts fell apart in my oven mitts!











I've also started to create the new top chassis plate along with the motherboard plate. During the creating of the motherboard plate I discovered that the chassis is 16.7cm thick on the base and bareing in mind the dimensions of the motherboard is 17.0cm that creates a small problem. I will have to sand back the area where the motherboard will fit to squeeze it in.

I've not taken any pictures of the plate so far, but I will do that tommorow.
 
I've had a chance to do a few more bits on this project, first thing to do was to make a motherboard tray after a couple of different designs I got one that worked. I had trouble finding a method of fitting it to the heatsink whilst still being able to mount the motherboard standoffs. I realised the best way round this was to use existing threads and I found three in the middle of the heatsink and even more luck they were m3 threads!

So I went about putting the heatsink and the handle mechanism back together this was far from easy!





Then the motherboard tray was attached to the heatsink. It sits flush to the heatsink which will help cooling I hope.





With the motherboard in place it works a treat.



I then did a test fit of the heatsink/motherboard tray combination and it fits perfectly. I didnt test fit the motherboard as it wont fit without the port cutouts that was next!



I've started on cutting a rectangle into the chassis, I used a nibbler tool which takes little "bites" of metal so its great for this sort of thing. The only problem is that it gives nasty blisters without gloves and I hate using gloves grrr. I'd forgotten how hard steel is compared to aluminium this was hard work. It needs finishing yet but a particularly nasty blisters has stopped me for the day.



Thats all for today I hope to get the motherboard into place tommorow and then finish up the motherboard tray.
 
After working on project little devil mainly over the last week or so it was time to get back onto Project Mac Cube. I've made some real progress over this weekend. The main task was to get the optical drive and two hard discs mounted onto the chassis, along with making a blanking plate for the motherboard ports and stuff.

The first thing I made was the blanking plate, for this I used the proper one as a template to make a copy out of aluminium. I used a nibbler , a drill and a set of needle files to create it.







I then sanded back the interior of the chassis to gain the 2-3mm I needed to fit the motherboard into the chassis. I did a quick test fit and it was perfect.



As you can see the two ps2 ports are blocked but I dont have any use for them so I'm not bothered in the slightest. I then mounted the blanking plate for a test fit. It needed a bit of fiddling with but now fits perfectly





After this I set to work on the mountings for all the drives this was far more work than I imagined. At first I tried to make it as simple as possible with all 3 drives held in by just two brackets















This was nice and easy to make well not that easy but I had to change my plans as this setup wouldnt work the inner hard disc fouled the mechanism for inserting the chassis into the cube, so it wouldn't work. grrr

So I had to make set of plates for the two hard discs and a seperate mounting for the optical drive so I could place it centrally without having the two hdd's off center. In order for the optical drive to be mounted correctly I had to use three brackets but it works perfectly and the drive allows you to insert a disc when dropped in with no problems yeaaaah!





Its a cosy fit with everything in place but when I did a test fit into the cube chassis it works perfectly! You can see the orginal handle mechanism is still working you whip the cube over and push the handle in and it pops out. Then pull the inner chassis out. A great design. This works just as it does in the orginal.





Thats the progress to date, next up on the list of things to do is to mount the power switches and led's and to look at the cabling. In the orginal cube design there is a plate on the top of the inner chassis. I'm not sure if this is actually needed other than to hold the power switch in place so I'm going to look at what is actually required. The cube came without this piece so I'm going to have to make my own if I do want to use it.

Let me know what you think so far....
 
kudos, mate - i've seen mods like this before, but hardly as clean. well done! ah yeah - and, as said before - what about the PSU?
 
Very nice dude. :eek: Wish I had time (and the materials for that fact) to do mods like this.
 
Leon2ky said:
Very nice dude. :eek: Wish I had time (and the materials for that fact) to do mods like this.
Click to expand...


It doesnt take much materials I've used a few small sections of sheet aluminium so far and dont intend to use much more.

In fact this project is one of my quickest to date but thats not saying much one took 3 years hehe :p (In my defence I completed it three times in that space but wasnt happy with the results the first two times hehe :D )
 
G5 Case modder right behind you, *watches*
This is looking very professional, can't wait to see the final thing (guess it will look like a cube haha).
 
GodSpeed said:
G5 Case modder right behind you, *watches*
This is looking very professional, can't wait to see the final thing (guess it will look like a cube haha).
Click to expand...
kinda like how yours looked like a G5? ;) :p

but it was an excellent job, btw. :)
 
TSS Modder said:
kinda like how yours looked like a G5? ;) :p

but it was an excellent job, btw. :)
Click to expand...
It's not done yet! I'm totally redoing the whole thing, maybe I should apply for a job at 3D Realms :p
 
GodSpeed said:
G5 Case modder right behind you, *watches*
This is looking very professional, can't wait to see the final thing (guess it will look like a cube haha).
Click to expand...

I'm going to try to keep it as stock as possible because its nice enough as it is without changing anything.
 
gordy_hand said:
I'm going to try to keep it as stock as possible because its nice enough as it is without changing anything.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was going for with my G5 mod. You cant tell its not a G5 unless you actually use it or look behind it.
 
Wow, excellent job! I always thought it'd be cool to put a PC inside a Cube, but I'm in no way qualified to do something like that, heh.

Keep up the good work!
 
Dude, you should take that to a MAC convention :p

Seriously, set it up so it has the MAC startup screen and all, turn up your speakers all the way, and than...The Windows startup sound! :eek:

*The convention goes silent, and suddenly everybody is looking at you*
icon_bolt.gif
 
I've recieved hatemail over mac conversions before I don't want to do that again :D

Seriously though I have mac's so this isnt a anti-mac project :)
 
Ok time for another quick update. I'm still waiting on my new ide cables which have been lost by royal fail grrr. Hopefully the replacements will be here tommorow. In the mean time I've been tidying up the metal work/brushing the aluminium and doing the wiring.

First up the brushing and tidying, I did some re filing of the edges to clean them up. I then , went on to brush the surface of all the aluminium parts I've made. I used a wire brush to start off with then finished with a high grit sandpaper to give a good finish.











Next I had to make up the wiring looms needed. I needed one for the power and then two switches and two led's. I've used a special kind of clear cable with silver inner core before now on other projects, but I discovered an amazing blue version a while back and I've been wanting to use it for some time. Its a right royal pain to work with as its thicker than standard cable but I got there in the end.





If the ide cables arrive tommorow I can get this project finish very soon.
 
This is a real clean conversion, and I am impressed with your ingenuity at getting all the pieces to fit in the minimal space. No snags so far. I'd really like to see you mount your power unit in an original cube PS case, but I guess you didn't get one of those included. Maybe you can get a dead one off ebay.
 
themark said:
This is a real clean conversion, and I am impressed with your ingenuity at getting all the pieces to fit in the minimal space. No snags so far. I'd really like to see you mount your power unit in an original cube PS case, but I guess you didn't get one of those included. Maybe you can get a dead one off ebay.
Click to expand...

I've got the power unit, its huge though! Its about 4 times the size of the mini-itx on I have . Not 100% sure how to get into it either as there is no obvious screws of clips. I guess apple didnt want their customers getting fried :D

Great idea tho :)
 
I wonder if that housing is extruded, and only the end caps come off like the ipod mini? If that were the case, you could shorten the extruded part and pop the end caps back on. Your PS might even fit in it crosswise, so you could make it really short. I'd still wire up the input cord to the original Mac socket though, to keep it clean.

I really want to see this thing finished. It's so clean you could sell the plans to others. Seriously, you should take your parts, measure them, draw them out as templates and sell them.
 
Its got two end caps with a metal body. I tried prising off the caps but they seem stuck in place. I will have a look again later but I'm not sure what the method of removing them without damage is :(
 
From what I've read on Cube threads, the PS was never meant to be serviced, and the end caps are glued on. Of course, that doesn't stop a determined modder does it? One user just kept slowly prying the edges all around the plastic until he had worked it loose. I still think it would be awesome to use the PS case (or a modified version of it) because you've done such a great job of retaining the look and function of your Cube.

As for taking this to a Mac convention and firing it up... better wear a FLAK jacket, some Mac users (myself excluded) don't have a sense of humor. ;)
 
themark said:
From what I've read on Cube threads, the PS was never meant to be serviced, and the end caps are glued on. Of course, that doesn't stop a determined modder does it? One user just kept slowly prying the edges all around the plastic until he had worked it loose. I still think it would be awesome to use the PS case (or a modified version of it) because you've done such a great job of retaining the look and function of your Cube.

As for taking this to a Mac convention and firing it up... better wear a FLAK jacket, some Mac users (myself excluded) don't have a sense of humor. ;)
Click to expand...

Cheers I will try that. There is some movement in the end caps but very little.
 
This project hasnt had an update for the last few days or so because I've been waiting on parts and hit some problems.

Last time I had completed the wiring rigs with some nice blue cable, this was fine until I tried doing a test fit of the cube and the wiring rapidly became a nightmare. I also created a plate for the switches and led's to fit into. I wanted to use the chassis itself, but drilling the led holes showed that that wasnt possible so I created a little plate to go onto the chassis like the motherboard I/O plate.





In order to fit the wires for the switches in I had to redo the wiring loom with far thinner wire. I used some nice blue and green wire but I wish I could use the blue see through stuff but it cant be done.

The parts I was using for the test fit are required for another project I am doing so I had to order a new mini-itx board and some other parts. I discovered the new VIA Epia SP8000E , this is a passively cooled mini-itx board with sata and all other new bits. Great I thought sata would be much easier to wire for. The snag I hit though was that the plug-in power supply wouldn't fit this board nor was there any other ones out there. :(

So I had to go back to my orginal plan of a VIA Epia MII6000 board. This is identical to the one I was using before but only 600mhz and passively cooled. I also got a new plug in psu for this board. I takes up no more room that the mini-itx board does already.







I've got a few more bits arriving over the next couple of days, I will redo the wiring to try to make it more managable. I've worked out that the wires will fit if I use the smaller wiring so it should all be easier this time.
 
knaSen said:
I have a mac mini. :D
Click to expand...


Great. Thanks for telling us all. Maybe comment on the worklog next time you post in a worklog thread.

gordy_hand, you're doing a fantastic job on that G4 cube case. Neat is an understatement. Keep up the good work.
 
Ok a short text update on my progress pictures will follow tommorow. The first thing is that it is now on and booting! The end is near!

I've had a few problems since my last update, the first was that the I/O I made was made worthless as the psu manufacturer decided to change the connector design grrr, So I had to remake the I/O plate with this change.

Next all the wiring was redone to allow me to fit it all in. Making all the wires fit took me several hours this evening but I got there in the end! It booted up on first try (thats a first for one of my projects hehe),but I've hit a snag the two 250gb drives are being detected as 137gb drives :( I beleive there is a solution using partition manager so I will have to see if it can be overcome.

So far the cooling seems to be fine its not getting too hot but I will have to monitor this when I get it fully up and running.
 
Time for the pictures. I've not got any shots of it hooked up yet but it looks ace. I've been out since 5am so I've not had a chance to do any proper in situ shots yet. I also need to play with the power led as its lighting at present.

Pictures of the building and it all inside the chassis, the wiring is mostly hidden from view when you remove the inner chassis. Just the bare minimum shows.











 
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