webPC - iMac G3 Modernization

[XCVG]

EDIT: I have a logo now!

So, uh, yeah. I'm back. After a long hiatus from modding, being busy with other things and just generally unmotivated, I'm starting up a new project. Honestly, I don't know why I'm doing this one, maybe nostalgia (I used iMacs like this a lot in elementary school). Basically, I'm taking an old iMac G3, ripping all its guts out, and throwing in an LCD and a new PC.

I have a budget of about $300 for this build. Preliminary setup is an AMD A6-5400K on an MSI FM2-A55M-E33 motherboard, one of the smaller mATX motherboards that should fit. I'll pair that with 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and whatever hard drive I can find, in addition to a new slotloading optical drive to replace the old one. I'm going to use a SFF power supply of some kind, not sure if I'll be going with SFX or TFX at this point.

The motherboard will be mounted in the top compartment above the power supply, behind the LCD. A BitFenix Spectre Pro 200mm cooling fan will ventilate the PC through the top vents, preventing the overheating that plagued the original. Ports (4 USB, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI) will be brought out to the original panel. Under the RAM replacement panel on the bottom will reside a pair of USB ports for wireless dongles and the LCD control board.

Parts List:
iMac G3 - $20

TOTAL: $350 or so, will calculate... tomorrow

The victim:

Not the nicest condition, but it was cheap and I could get it right away. It should clean up nicely.

I just finished tearing it apart, but I'm too tired to post pics right now.

EDIT: Ordered the PC. Proper update coming... tomorrow.

 

[XCVG]

Okay, it's been a couple days since I actually tore it down, so I'm kinda going by memory here. First off, though, a couple of pictures of the beast before I tore it apart:

Port panel. Obviously, two USB isn't enough. I had to plug in a hub to get a USB flash drive connected. I plan to basically redo this part. I really wanted USB3.0 and digital audio (Thunderbolt would have been nice too) but the cheap motherboard I bought doesn't have either. The current plan is four USB 2.0 ports, one RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI. Analog audio will be through the front connectors (one mic, one headphone).

The vents are actually about the perfect size for a 200mm fan. The rounded indent that lets you grab the handle should do a decent job of directing airflow through the vents. This sucker is not going to have any convection-cooling related overheating issues.

The bottom. About to crack open this sucker. Note the two removable panels. The one with the large blue lock is supposed to cover up the memory and AirPort slots and will cover up the monitor controls and a few extra USB ports. The other one, closer to the back, hides the VGA port.

The big bottom piece is gone. There's an EMI shield underneath. That's something that won't be reinstalled, though the material is kind of neat.

And now the guts are exposed. The way the optical drive and hard drive are connected is really weird. Apple used a normal connection for the hard drive, but a proprietary one that provides power and data for the CD-ROM. You can see the antenna connector for an AirPort card coming out from underneath the weird-shaped logic board. The big heatsink is for the GPU I think, not sure what the other chips do but I'm guessing the big one is the chipset. The power supply actually is a down-converter board as far as I can tell, with the AC converted to 28VDC on the PAV board (getting to that) and then stepped down. The IO shield is thankfully a separate piece- actually, two pieces.

The illogic board was actually really hard to remove. I watched a video showing how one guy did it, which was to remove all the screws from it and then simultaneously release the clip on the down-converter board's connector and pull to the right. That didn't work. I referred to the Apple service manual, which is very informative and surprisingly easy to get, and found out that the logic board and down-converter board are meant to be removed as one unit. I kept missing screws and didn't realize that there were connectors on the underside holding things up, but eventually got it out. This is the result. If you ever wondered why these units kept overheating, the little aluminum square on the lower left is your answer. The CPU is heatsinked to the metal tray (which is heated by the CRT) through that piece, all using the flaxtiest thermal... crap I've ever seen. But Steve Jobs didn't want a fan, or so the story goes.

It took me forever to get this out, because I took out all the wrong screws and missed the ones I had to take out. The optical drive is a slim CD-ROM that I'm replacing with a slimmer DVD-RW. It's expensive ($26 used!) but the disc drive is central to the iMac and I really want a usable one. The hard drive is a Seagate, actually very similar to the ones I've pulled out of XBOXen. This one's 10GB, not 8GB, though. It'll be replaced with a crappy 500GB SATA drive in the same spot.

Speakers gone. They are actually kind of strange to remove. The service manual tells you to twist them back and forth until they come off. Actually, you have to twist them back and forth until they're loose, then slide them off to the sides. They're held in with plastic clips that lock into the metal. After I got them off, I took a break before tackling the top half.

 

[samjc3]

Good grief that thing is convoluted on the inside. Also, you should give that thing an insane sound system. You could probably fit a 10" sub in there.

 

[XCVG]

Good grief that thing is convoluted on the inside. Also, you should give that thing an insane sound system. You could probably fit a 10" sub in there.

Yeah, it's pretty Dang complicated. The Apple service manual is extremely helpful, without it I'd probably break the thing.

I actually considered jamming a subwoofer inside, and I could, but with the exclusion of everything else. I thought about the possibility of loading the entire case, as well. But I think I'll stick with the stock speakers, driven with an amp pulled from some PC speakers (gotta salvage some).

Also, how are you? I haven't heard from you in, like, forever

More pics... tomorrow. I've got things to do right now

 

[Zero]

I'd probably put a beefier APU in there since they're dirt cheap and you'd still be well under budget. This looks really neat though, looking forward to see it done.

 

[XCVG]

I'd probably put a beefier APU in there since they're dirt cheap and you'd still be well under budget. This looks really neat though, looking forward to see it done.

I wanted a better APU, but I have next to no budget. So far I've ordered:
MSI FM2-A55M-E33 mATX FM2 A55 DDR3 1PCI-E16 1PCI-E1 1PCI SATA2 HDMI USB2.0 Motherboard
AMD A6-5400K APU Dual Core Processor Socket FM2 3.6GHZ 1MB 65W Retail Box
Kingston KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX 8GB Kit 2X4GB 1600MHz DDR3 240PIN DIMM Unbuff Hmp HyperX CL9
Bitfenix Spectre Pro BFF-LPRO-20025B-RP 200MM Blue LED Case Fan 900 RPM 148.72 CFM 27.5 dbA
Apex AL-8250SFX SFX12V 250W Power Supply 20/24PIN 3.94X4.92X2.5IN *for Mi MIINI-ITX Series Only*
For about $220 shipped. Add to that the $20 iMac and the $25 optical drive, I'm already going to go over budget. I still need to order a few cables and things, and get a monitor and hard drive.

Gonna finish the worklog tomorrow, maybe.

 

[XCVG]

The PC has arrived! Well, most of it, anyway.

Huge box, not a lot in it. On the far left is the motherboard, which is cheap and small and thus perfect for this build. It's covered by an airbag (the whole thing was packed with those) which is really fun to pop. In the middle is the very large and very awesome fan, and to the right of that is the APU and in the generic looking brown box, the power supply.

This is the power supply. It's a generic (this one's Allied, I think) SFX power supply with a 250W rating. That puts it somewhere between horribly inadequate and barely acceptable.

It is, however, cheap and small like the motherboard. That's about where it'll go, maybe back a bit. The cables should hopefully reach. I should note at this point that they are horribly thin, probably 22AWG rather than the usual 18 or 16.

The motherboard box is glossy and advertises a few features. This is a very basic motherboard, so there isn't much to advertise. It does use UEFI and includes one touch overclocking, which I doubt will work very well.

This motherboard is very, very small. I made the paper template barely visible below the motherboard and figured that it couldn't be right. Well, actually, the motherboard is that small. There isn't much on it.

The star of the show, the A6-5400K APU. I laughed a little at the "Recommended with AMD A75 Chipset" text. I bet there are people who jam the A10-5800K in the bottom-of-the-line motherboard I bought. Anyway, the processor comes with a very nice case badge (which I plan to use) and a pleasantly surprising low-profile cooler.

An unexpected bonus- the fan is almost exactly the same colour as the case!

 

[XCVG]

Today was a good day for webPC.

I went to the local Salvation Army and picked out an LCD (they had three). It's a Dell 15", only VGA unfortunately but the picture is surprisingly good. I also bought a hard drive from a friend. Despite the fact that I have other things to do, I hooked it up. Still waiting on the RAM, so I pulled half of my main PC's RAM (same stuff, 1.65V, ugh) and used that.

The setup. The motherboard is really small, I know I've said that but it really is really small. The power supply hasn't had any issues, fortunately. That EFI BIOS looks cool but it's kind of cumbersome to use.

Installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64. No Hackintoshing here, I actually want to be able to use the thing when I'm done

The custom theme I made for this machine. I think Aero Glass matches the iMac's look nicely, with the rounded edges and transparency. Maybe a little too nicely...

As an aside, I had to do some tweaking to get the fan to throttle down. Smart fan control was disabled in the BIOS, so I had to re-enable it to quiet the system down. It still runs nice and cool. While I was in there, I enabled XMP (bringing the RAM up to DDR3-1600 speeds) and gave the video 1GB of memory. It runs fairly smooth, bottlenecked by the hard drive mostly. If I could afford an SSD...

Currently installing software.

 

[vskid3]

Looking good. Can't wait til you get it in the iMac. Total spent so far is $250-300?

 

[XCVG]

Looking good. Can't wait til you get it in the iMac. Total spent so far is $250-300?

About $300. It's going to go over budget, but not by a lot.

I put together a bit of a comparison between the iMac and the webPC. There's really no contest.

 

[samjc3]

Ah, the march of progress.

 

[XCVG]

Sorry for the lack of updates, been rather busy with other things. This is kind of a secondary project, other, more immediate things take priority.

So I got an order in today from HL Technology...

20 USB/Firewire slot brackets is pretty big and heavy. Ten of those are for a friend who wanted some, the rest are for me (2 for this project). Hey, they were ten cents each. Also, my dad ordered that mouse which was cheap but not very good. The webcam is for webPC.

It's pretty tiny, but not tiny enough.

A lot of unscrewing, cutting, and pulling later revealed a tiny board. Fortunately, this design does work on Windows 7 x64, but unfortunately does not include a microphone. My current plan is to bore a tiny hole beside the original mic hole (now used for webcam) and mount a mic behind it.

The keyboard. It's one of those retarded slim kind with all the useless multimedia keys that get in the way and a squashed layout. But hey, it's still usable, and matches the iMac case pretty well. It cost less than $20 as opposed to the $60 (even used is $40 or so!) Apple ripoff. For a mouse, I'll use my main mouse for actual lanparty gaming and the Apple mouse I got with it for show.

 

[XCVG]

I got the optical drive in the mail yesterday. Thankfully, the bomb squad did not blow it up at the border. That's the good news.

Yeah. That's the bad news. I'm going to need to build some kind of bracket.

 

[XCVG]

So, I've been too lazy to update, but I've done a bit more on this project. The optical drive is mounted (I jammed it in the old one's case) and so is the HDD, completing the drive assembly. I've disassembled the monitor and am currently working on making it fit and mounting it. Pics... tomorrow.

 

[XCVG]

The monitor is now in.

Too tired to post more.

 

[t1m1d]

The monitor is now in.

Too tired to post more.

This is the greatest win.

 

[DK]

Been meaning to do this for ages with the G4. By far the prettiest computer I've seen.

 

[XCVG]

Fan is in.

I built a power supply bracket but I don't like it so I'm making another one soon.

EDIT: Yeah, I know I installed it upside down. I'ma go fix it now.

 

[watsug]

Everything looks so cleanly installed, like it's supposed to be there! Especially the fan.

I wanted to do this when I found a cheap iMac but my mom wouldn't let me buy it. Says I have to finish my other projects first, which is true I guess.

This will be awesome when finished for shure

 

[XCVG]

Got some more work done on the weekend, but didn't have time to post until today.

New power supply bracket, not a good shot I know. This one is nicer looking than the old one. I lost the fourth screw, don't think it would fit anyway. I suck at getting things lined up.

The motherboard tray is a piece of laser-cut acrylic. It's kind of hard to see. The motherboard holes matched perfectly, the mounting holes didn't line up to anything (except a gaping hole in one instance). I ended up getting my dad to drill new ones. I have a bad record with drills.

Mocked up for your enjoyment.

Also wired up the microphone. It works, but I didn't take any pictures. At this point, I basically just have to build a mounting board for some ports and controls on the bottom, and tackle the nightmare that is the IO port area. And, of course, wire it all up.