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.

It Has Arrived!

Work begins in the morning.

...Well, after school.

Quick question, there is a little dirt on here, especially around the ports on the back. Does anybody know of any good way's of giving the white case a really good cleaning? There are also a few hairline scratches on the plastic surrounding the display. Any ideas on how to fill those?

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...

iMac Shipment

My iMac is on a UPS truck somewhere in between its previous home in Farmingdale NY and Eugene OR. It is scheduled to arrive sometime October 28. That is a wednesday. I have a midterm that day. I have a huge project due the next day. I am not happy about this.

Lesson #1

This is how tomorrow was supposed to go for me: Drive to portland, spend some quality time with the family, drop by Powell's Books to grab a couple computer modding books if I can find any, and, oh yeah, buy my iMac. Bottom line is, it's almost 5:00pm and as of now, there are no 17" iMac G4s currently up for sale on CraigsList. So tomorrow, I will still be heading up to Portland to hang with the fam, and I will still go to Powell's and look for some books. But I will not be buying my iMac.

And you're sitting there thinking I don't really care about this guy's personal problems, what's the point?

My point is, I had planned for about a week now to buy my iMac in Portland. When I discovered that Portland's supply of iMacs was fresh out, I panicked. I ravaged through eBay's collection of iMacs and, within 5 minutes, bought one. Now I'd say that all-in-all, I got a pretty good deal: 17" in good condition with a broken screen for $160 shipped. However, I didn't bother asking the seller to email me some high resolution pictures of it so I could really verify the unit's condition. This was not a super smart move. However, I have this LCD monitor laying in pieces on my desk and I just couldn't stand the idea of waiting any longer.

Now, after even more blabbling, what should you take away from this? Either have lots of patience or procure your iMac before the rest of your stuff ships and you start ripping it apart.

I'm not entirely sure when my iMac is going to get here. Hopefully next week sometime. That's another thing about eBay: so much waiting....

Oct. 2009 iMacs, MacMinis

So today, Apple unveiled their latest iMac offerings which include bigger, more beautiful displays and wonderful design refresh. During their wonderful design video, Jonathan Ive (who designed the iMac G4) speaks to how the new design makes "everything about the display, therefore everything is about your content."And this is true. This new iMac is the first iMac that's truly dissolved away the computer behind the screen.

But is that what you really want? I guess it really depends on what kind of person you are. I feel like because the new iMac lacks all unessential elements and everything has become so necessary, that it's now devoid of personality. It's been heading in that direction ever since the G5 was released and I really think it's there. And while that's fantastic for corporations and... other people, I still want my computer to have personality. Don't get me wrong, the new iMac is incredibly beautiful and elegant. But I still want my iMac G4.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh and the new MacMinis came out. I'm very excited they're now allowing for 4GB RAM, have faster processors, and have that fantastic NVIDIA GeForce 9400m graphics card that is currently powering my Aluminum MacBook.

....omg, when did they change the design of the apple remote? It's kinda ugly now...