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Offline sovietTopic starter

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Home made morphos box
« on: August 21, 2013, 01:28:17 AM »
Hi i have a dream a nice,silent,fast,expandable and cheap morphos box :D.
So i decided to build my own.
I bought a Powermac G4 Digital Audio motherboard including a 466 cpu and heatsink total cost 15 usd + shipping.
Then i got a big case 80 usd not cheap at all including a 500 watts psu.
I already got a sonnet 1.4 ghz accelerator board.
Then i modified a molex 24 to 20 atx adapter to the powermac psu the connector is the same but some wires carry diferent voltages/signals the modification is very simple.
The wiring diagram is here.
http://www.entremaqueros.com/bitacoras/roshardware/archives/g4-digital-audio-atx-adaptar-la-fuente-atx/
http://atxg4.com/gige-da.html
http://www.mactech.com/category/type-article/macmod-web-site/powermac?page=1
http://www.smps.us/power-connectors.html
The only deference i found is that the most easy way is connect the mac sense +28v line to the purple +5v ATX wire the firewire port will not work this way also adc monitors cannot be use but who cares. I connected the reset and power buttons to the case buttons and left the power led and hard disc led disconnected.
The ATX case need extra holes to acommodate the MAC motherboard the screws don't fit ATX standar case.
Also flashed and cuted the traces from a ATI Radeon 9200 256 PC edition, works great on 2D but i get some graphic glitches on 3D i will post extra deatails on this later when i get home maybe someone can give me a hand.
The only issue i got is that i got the chord chimes every time the computer start. But the onboard sounds works randomly if i reboot 5 time 1 of the five times i got sound working maybe someone have an idea of this issue.
Posting pics leather when i got home of the build process and results :D.





















































 

Offline sovietTopic starter

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Re: Home made morphos box
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2013, 02:13:44 AM »
I know, but on my country for some reason G5 macs are very expensive a 1.6 model costs like 350 USD and the dual 2.0 gos like 500 usd.
The G4 1.4 is almost as fast as the G5 1.6 and i can get the board on ebay for 15 bucks ! :D
 

Offline sovietTopic starter

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Re: Home made morphos box
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2013, 06:07:43 PM »
I got a new motherboard to replace the sound glichy one.
You can see in the pictures this two boards are digital audio ones but theres some minor interesting diferences.
In one of this boards theres a extra 4 pin power connector that is unused in the mac also theres pads on the motherboard to solder extra usb ports, look like apple where about to include some extra funcionality but they decided to remove it.