Changing Gears

I am currently in talks with two professors who I hope will be able to help troubleshoot the LCD problem. Please don't be discouraged though! If you have any ideas, drop a comment; the more ideas, the better.

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.

Planning Ahead

Well I got a call from the website I ordered the monitor from and long story short is, it's on backorder. So, in the mean time, I've decided to do a little troubleshooting.

Here's where I am right now: Both the LCD's power supply and video board will fit at the top of the dome no problem. There is a .25" gap between the bottom of the power supply and the top of the CD Drive. And leaving me with exactly this much space to work with:

Please, bear with me. There are four posts that connect the top of the dome to it's base. Therefore, nothing can cross those four posts. As this diagram indicates, the motherboard on the Mac mini can't be more than 6" wide, or it won't fit flat inside the base. If it won't fit flat, then I have no choice but to nix the CD drive (then again, it might just nix itself in a minute here). I've looked around online a little and couldn't find anybody who had listed the actual dimensions of the mini's motherboard. The best I could tell from looking at some high resolution pictures I found is that it might just come in at 6" so Hopefully that's taken care of. 

Next, there's the mini's power supply. I really wan't to get this inside, but I'm just not sure how it's going to happen with the CD drive. From what I can from pictures online (again, nobody measures these things...), It looks to be about 6.5" tall, a little over 2" wide, and something over 1" deep. Bottom line is I really don't think it's all going to fit in there with the massive desktop sized CD drive. On the down side, that really sucks. On the bright side, who uses optical drives anymore? That just freed me up more than 60 cubic inches of space that I can use for all kinds of fantastic things! Like getting those proprietary powered sphere speakers to work!

Well, it's true what they say, it's very difficult to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Monitor Install Prep

John has brought up a fantastic and very troubling point in the comments of"Monitor Buying". While I knew the LCD power supply wouldn't fit right behind the Panel in the iMac, I was banking on being able to extend the wires to reach from the base of the iMac to the display. However, John adds that in the process of doing this, there will be a loss of current due to increased resistance over the longer cable. 


This made me sad. So, to double check, I emailed an Electrical Engineering teacher who also serves as faculty administrator of the Robotics Club. I figure if anybody should know it would be him. Here is his answer: "If you are just lengthening the power lines, you will not have any problems. There should be any 'dimming' issues." 


As you can tell, he seemed quite sure of himself. Now I'm not sure at all. A little research reveals that there is indeed a drop in current over longer lengths of wire. I'm guessing the wire on the Panel is 28 AWG, which is listed as having a resistance of about 65 milliohms per foot. However, I have no idea how much current the panel itself is pulling. I tried hooking everything back up (the panel must be plugged back in and have a source or the monitor will idol) and getting a reading with my multimeter but when I did there was something of a sparking sound and the backlight flickered on and off. I stopped at this point. It seems to still be working alright but I'd rather not take any more chances. 

At this point, I'm not exactly sure what to do. I guess I'll just extend the wires and hope for the best. Right now, I'm hoping that the ribbon cable that go from the monitor to the video card in the iMac is the same (or very similar) to the on on the LCD Panel so I won't have to worry about trying to thread a video extension cable through the neck. We'll see...

Monitor buying

So yes, I've decided to go with the 17" iMac. So now it's time to buy the monitor. Before I do however, there are a lot of things I need to consider.

1. Power supply - The first thing I would look for (maybe after price) is if it has an external power supply.  This is important because external power supplies are going to be more compact than one's built into the monitor, They'll be enclosed so you don't have to worry about protecting it, and there's already a long cord that goes from the supply to the monitor. 
2. Screen quality - Although most cheap displays have very similar panel specs, it's still a good idea to compare the static (or normal) contrast, brightness, and color gamut if you can. Lot's of sites don't bother to include this information, but you can usually find it with a little bit of searching. 
3. Built in video cable - Although fewer monitors utilize these, if you can find a monitor with a VGA cable soldered directly to the board, that's one less bulky VGA connection that has to take up room inside the dome. 
4. Simple is good - Lots of monitors these days (especially the 20 inchers) are packed with stuff you aren't going to need for this project like built-in USB hubs, speakers, and multiple video inputs. If you can avoid these things, it might make your life a little easier. Although these things shouldn't affect the panel at all, they mean extra circuitry inside the case which may or may not be modular. 

When shopping online, things like power supply and built in video cable can be hard to determine. I spent hours looking around the internet for stores that include pictures of the back of the monitor because nobody explicitly says what kind of power supply it uses.

In the end, I found a great deal on a Hanns HW173 17" widescreen monitor. It does not have an external power supply or built in video cable but it was $99 from staples.com with free shipping and when you look at the back you can see that the circuitry isn't spread out all over the place.

Now All I need is a 17" iMac to put this thing in...

Jumping Off

Before I can go any further, I have to choose which of the 3 iMac models I want.

There is the 15" square screen, the 17" widescreen, and 20" widescreen. Here are my deciding criteria:

1. Looks - Forgive me for being shallow, but I'm doing this because I want a super beautiful computer. For my money, the 15" square screen isn't that appealing and the 20" screen is too big in proportion to the dome. The 17" wins out here
2. Price and availability - As of October 2009, 15" models run about $100-$200 and are everywhere. 17" models run about $200-$350 and are pretty easy to find. 20" models run anywhere from $300-$600 and are few and far between.
• Where to buy - If you live within 3 hours of a major city, I strongly recommend Craigslist. The prices are easily $50-$100 cheaper than ebay and you don't have to worry about the $50+ shipping fee if you can pick it up yourself. 

Now that you know which model you're going to get, you'll need to find an appropriate LCD display. As with the computers themselves, the bigger the screen, the more expensive they'll be (in general). However, 20" LCD monitors are really becoming the standard so they've come down in price a lot over the last few years. This also means many fewer companies are making 17" widescreen monitors and they're becoming harder to find.

Game Plan

Here's how I'm going to approach this project:

1. Install the monitor inside the iMac shell. 
2. Prepare the iMac: modify I/O ports, DVD drive, internal wiring so it's ready to be plugged in. 
3. Get the sphere speakers working with a normal audio source. 
4. Buy the MacMini - Because it's going to be more than half the cost of the entire project, I want to put it off as long as possible. Also I'm really hoping for a spec boost sometime in the next few months. 
5. Stress test the Mini - I want to see how hot I can get it while it's still in its original enclosure so I know what to expect when it's all in pieces. 
6. Install the Mini - If I do steps 1, 2, and 3 correctly, this should just be a matter of plug everything in. I know it's not actually going to be that simple, but one should have dreams.

That is the game plan. 

Upcoming Challenges

There is obviously a reason why nobody has been able to pull this off before: the laundry list of obstacles to overcome is immense. Here is an incomplete list of problems I must overcome in the process of doing this transformation:

• Replace the Apple LCD panel with an off the shelf Computer Monitor - The panel in the iMac uses a proprietary connector type which is not directly compatible with standard VGA or DVI connection formats. It requires both the iMac's integrated graphics card and built in power supply, neither of which are compatible with the MacMini.  
• All those I/O Ports - Of course all the USB, Firewire, audio and networking ports are soldered directly to, and held in place by, the iMac's motherboard. 
• Power - I have one power cord going into the iMac's shell and at least 2 devices that will need direct AC Power (the mac mini and LCD power supplies)
• Space - It's going to be a tight one. Even though the MacMini is only a 6.5" square that's 2" tall and the iMac is ~10" dome, the two weren't designed to fit together. There's also the power supplies and probably more I'm going to have to find room for. It's going to be tricky.
• Power button - I guess it has the same problem as the I/O ports. Probably should have included it up there. Ooopse...
• DVD Drive - To keep things authentic, I'm going to be ditching the super slim slot loading drive that comes with the MacMini it favor of the full sized tray loading 5.25" drive which will eject out of the front like it's supposed to. However, not only is this devise much bigger, it requires more power than the smaller, notebook sized drive from the Mini. 
• Sleep light - I would really like to get the pulsating sleep light from the MacMini to power the existing one on the display of the iMac
• Speakers - The sphere speakers that came with the iMac plug into a special powered speaker port on the iMac. Like the monitor, all the circuitry required for these is integrated into the motherboard so you can't just plug it into the Mini. There is an adapter called the Griffin iFire but they haven't been made in years, only pop up on ebay every few months or so, and end up fetching $300+. I'm not into that and hopefully I can get the specs for the speakers and make my own amp. 
• Heating - Both the Mini and the iMac were carefully designed to move air through them in specific ways once the Mini is opened up and the parts are all over a larger area, its fans might not be enough to cool every component. 

I will be adding to this list as more problems become apparent.

Introduction

This is it. I'm going to do it. Others have tried, but as far as I have been able to find, none have succeeded. There has been a thread going on for more than 3 years at MacRumers.com of people who were interested in this, but nobody's figured it out. I plan on figuring it out.

The obvious question is "why?". The answer is simple: the iMac G4 is the most beautiful personal computer I have ever seen. Ever since its release in 2002, I have wanted one. In 2004, Apple moved on to the new, slimmer look of the G5. However, to this day, not even Apple has come out with a computer that is a worthy successor. This is why I am determined to have the best of both worlds. I want the beauty and elegance of this 7 year old computer but also the functionality of a new machine.

When I'm done, I want the transition to be seamless. My goal is to have it look and work as if it just came from apple: functioning I/O ports, single power cable, original sphere speakers, DVD drive... As close to original functionality as I can get.

This project is extremely ambitious. I am a college junior graphic design major with a love of mods but very little actual experience. I am by no means wealthy and am looking to do this with the smallest possible budget. That being said, I have no illusions; this project isn't going to be cheap.

I am going to be documenting my entire process here including pictures, commentary, lists, and I'm sure a few dumb jokes.

Wish me luck...