Anyway, while this is going on, I'm going to begin work on preparing the base for the Mac mini. The first order of business is getting all the ports of the mini extended to the port openings on the iMac. I had first planned on doing this by getting a custom circuit board made which would be custom cut to fit and have the ports soldered onto the board and then attach extension wires from the board to the mini. In the end however, this proved to be more work than I wanted to invest considering I couldn't find anybody that I could locally take my board to and have it matched for under $1000. (yes the bid was one thousand dollars)
So I move on to plan B: PLASTICS! There's a place (probably several actually) here in Eugene that sell plastics for all sorts of applications. My plan is to take a sheet of plastic, mark it and cut it, and secure off the shelf cable extenders to it (USB, Mini Displayport, etc.)
I started at MonoPrice.com and for the very good price of $16 (shipped) I got 3 USB extenders, 2 3.5mm audio cable extenders, and 1 Mini DisplayPort extender. (all 3 feet) Not to shabby I'd say. I already have the supplies for the ethernet, I'm not sure if I'll use the dial-up modem port for anything, and I was unimpressed with MonoPrice's selection of firewire cables. (mainly, I either want an FW800 male to FW400 female cable or the 800-to-400 adapter and a 400 extension cable, none of which they had)
I did find this pretty awesome FW800-to-FW400 adapter ("Moshi's 800 to 400 FireWire adapter") for about $10 which, depending on how the Mac mini actually ends up sitting in the base, might just be the only FireWire cable I need. I'll wait on that until I actually have the Mini situated in place so I can measure the exact distances.
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeletethis is a very ambitious project and you DID master a lot of difficult edges, i do admire you for your achievements!
I´ve got a propostion for solving the sceen problem:
Why not start over all again with another neck assembly? There´s a seller on ebay (gooffer is his nickname, and he didn´t goof with me, i bought a replacement power supply from him, it has just arrived and seems fine), he offers a commplete neck assembly :
http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-iMac-G4-17-inch-display-neck-cabling-800-Mhz_W0QQitemZ280419268788QQcmdZViewItemQQptZApple_Desktops?hash=item414a4a78b4#ht_500wt_924
for US $40.
It should be easy to avoid cutting the cable this time ;-) and a very big thank you for pointing out this mishap to all of us.
According to my research the cable length and especially the shielding is an important factor when sending LVDS-signals over more than 400mm, because the signals can reach a frequency up to 1,6 MHz, so how about wrapping it up in silver tape?
For pinouts to screen inverters there is a lot of useful information and even some tutorials on www.lcdparts.net website, for instance check this page:
http://www.lcdparts.net/howto/U_PIN.aspx
Good luck for your project!
Best wishes from Germany
Ulrich Schütt
Hey Ulrich, I'm really hoping not to have to buy another neck but if it comes down to it, I'll know where to get it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm going to try your shielding idea. And thanks for the research and the links. They've proved to be extremely helpful in learning about these sorts of things.
And it's great to hear from Germany, and all the other countries people have been writing in from for that matter. I must say, I'm really looking forward to finishing this, not only so I have the worlds fastest iMac G4, but so there's a complete online guide for others to achieve the same thing without making all the mistakes that I've made and will inevitably make in the future.