Applefritter - Hardware Hacks

USB Flash Drive RAIND Array Experiment

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:27:06 -0800

I realise it's been done, but... the question is, can it be useful? Ok... For this experiment, i used 3 [u]identical[/u] [i]PNY 2 gig USB flash drives[/i]. [img]http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/1007/threesoment2.jpg[/img] [img]http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/9060/thumbdriveinfowr8.png[/img] To start of with a baseline, i ran an XBench disk test on a single, freshly formatted drive: [img]http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/4277/baselinejq5.png[/img] Ok, that being done, lets plug in all the drives. I plugged the three drives into a USB hub, and fired up Disk Utility. [url=http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1290/hubdzh9.jpg][img]http://img370.imageshack.us/img370/6629/hubdzh9pz0.jpg[/img][/url] [size=50]Click for high rez[/size] I set the array up to use all three drives as one big drive. This should give an increased read & write time. ...In theory, at least. [img]http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/8660/seperateiconses3.png[/img] [size=50]All 3 drives mounted separately[/size] [img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6012/raidsetupyn7.png[/img] The newly formed array: [img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3562/raiddonenj8.png[/img][img]http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/1428/iconmp4.png[/img] [img]http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/9798/raidinfoif4.png[/img] Running XBench again, on the array: [img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/7828/raidresultstg0.png[/img] The XBench tests, along with my highly unscientific test of copying a large image file to a single drive, and to the array indicate a significant speed increase when the 3 drives are RAID'd together. Now, to answer the question i posed at the beginning of this post. Can it be useful? Well, that's questionable... but, this was fun!

Aluminum iMac (late 2007) soup-up

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:52:56 -0700

My warranty on my Al iMac (2.4 C2Duo, 320Gb HDD, 4Gb RAM) is up in January. I was thinking about a couple of upgrades for it to really give it the "get up and go". 1) 1.5 Tb HDD - looking at the teardowns online, this shouldn't be much of a problem. 2) Replace the Core 2 Duo with a Core 2 Quad - The C2D and C2Q use the same pin array and are compatible chips, from what I can tell. Will there be a significant heat increase going from the Duo chip to the Quad? Will the power supply have a problem with the additional cores? I'm looking for basically a straight swap deal, and don't want to particularly perform any heavy duty modifications (especially on the cooling system). Thanks in advance, CM

Korean Mockingboard

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:41:03 -0700

The guy in Korea who is making the mockingboards, now has one up for auction on eBay. The boards are new, but according to the description the chips are used. http://cgi.ebay.com/mockingboard-for-apple-ii-ii-iie-sound-card_W0QQitemZ180300483228QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item180300483228&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A10%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Best A/V input method for an mirrored panel G4

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:17:12 -0700

Looking at [url=http://www.applefritter.com/node/23502]my (ADC) G4 tower[/url] ([url=http://www.applefritter.com/node/23556]the one with the printer that is not working[/url]), and my satelite receiver, I am wanting to import video directly to the Mac and watch it on my 20" cinema display. The current video card is a GeForce4 Ti 4600 with 128 MB VRAM. ...and before you ask, the receiver is already set up to support 2 TVs, the 1st of which is in another room and the 2nd intended to be this Mac. The purpose here is to, at a minimum, watch satelite TV on the Mac screen and/or satelite radio already provided for by the current setup. I currently have no RCA, S-Video, or digital inputs on the Mac (natively or via PCI card). What is the most practical card to to bring the A/V in to the Mac for my purposes? TIA --ddtm

jailbreak ipod touch?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:31:51 -0700

I used to have my ipod jailbroken. But i slipped up and updated it to firmware 1.1.5. I cant figure out how to get it back running on 1.1.1 everytime i load it up it gets an error and i need to restore the whole ipod. Any help?

Alternate PSUs for a Rev A iMac

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:17:01 -0700

For those of you who have beheaded your early Rev iMac and gone for a case mod or something similar, what is the best solution for replacing the PSU? I want to know the most compact solution for; 1 - powering the mobo only (no monitor) 2 - powering the mobo and monitor I am looking into a mod/hack and I know many folks have gone for the ATX PSUs, but I want something smaller. I may simply recase this in the original Bondi shell but with some other mods and I am unsure if I want the monitor or not so I need to know the best mobo-only solution and the best mobo+monitor solution. TIA --ddtm

Rev A iMacs and IDE busses

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:07:42 -0700

Just a quick sanity check into the hypothetical - Let's talk about the Rev A imac and its IDE busses. I already know that i can put a double headed IDE cable on Bus1 and a Y on the hard drive power connector and run a second hard drive. With the exception of it being disembodied from the case, it works great. but has anyone ever done something similar to Bus0 (the 50 pin bus for the CD)? What I am wondering is this: I have a CD-RW that has a jumper setting for slave/master installed - could I tack the original drive (as master) and this drive (as slave) and get both running? I see know reason why i could not, but I do wonder about the particulars since this is a 50pin drive and not vanilla 40 like the main hard drive. If anyone has ever stuck two drives on a bus like this, or know something I should here, please chime in (that means you too dr.bob). TIA --ddtm

Limits of a PM G4/1.25 DP (Mirrored Drive Doors)

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:58:46 -0700

With the recent death of my iBook, I finally got my parents old PM G4/1.25 DP (Mirrored Drive Doors) aka "Wind Tunnel". It currently has a 180G and an 80G drive installed. It is running X.4.something. Because I have a number of things I still do in Classic, I initially plan to keep this as a dual-boot machine. My parents did little past bumping up the RAM and the 23" Cinema (score!), and this is my first REAL X machine (since the Bondi iMac was my "newest" mac I have actually owned since the second-coming-of-Jobs) What is the largest hard drive this machine will recognize? I see where it will happily take 4 internal drives, plus to opticals/5.25" drives, but is this all? Max RAM is 2G, right? What about Bluetooth support? Internal firewire ports? Any suggested upgrade/expansion path? I noticed a fair amount of dust in the case when I poped it open to do a quick check - any advice on how to keep this down (considering that my parents house was virtually dust free and this machine was there for three+ years)? TIA --DDTM

Best LCD screen...

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:18:35 -0700

Let's talk about cannibalizing dead laptops for a minute... I need an LCD that can be run off of VGA and has a diagonal no greater than 14.5 inches. I would like 1024x on the resolution but could settle for 800x. My iBook (clamshell 300MHz) is now dead but I do not know if this LCD can be driven by a VGA output. If so, then I have what I need (except for the resolution). Can someone throw a few ideas out here on what may be a good source for an LCD screen and if my iBook screen comes close? TIA --DDTM

Pismo optical drive swap not working

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:57:29 -0700

Hi all. I have a Teac DW-224E DVD-ROM/CDRW module from my mother's dead toshiba laptop. IIRC, it was a fried motherboard that did it in. So, I took out the optical drive, removed the bezel, and compared it to my pismo's DVD drive. I noticed the simmilar shape, and remembered the pismo optical drive swaps of yore I have read about, and decided to try it myself. I removed the 6 (actually 5, one of them is missing) screws from the carriage, and swapped the drives around. I don't know why, but I had a little trouble getting the screw mounts to line up with the holes, but I got it all screwed back together. I popped the new cobbled together device in my pismo, and I booted up. I launched into Apple System Profiler, and went to the ATA section. It does show up, and I went to disc burning and this is what I got: [QUOTE]TEAC DW-224E: Firmware Revision: F.0A Interconnect: ATAPI Burn Support: Yes (Apple Supported) Cache: 1658 KB Reads DVD: Yes CD-Write: -R, -RW Burn Underrun Protection CD: No Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO Media: No [QUOTE] I opened it up (using the button on the ribbon, the faceplate won't attach from the DVD drive), and closed the tray. It blinked, and blinked, and blinked. I could hear it spinning, but it did not show up in the finder. It just kept blinking, until a minute or so later POP, the tray ejected all by it's self. I tried both a pressed and burned CD and DVD, all with the same result. Is it a dead drive? or is it something else? I don't think it's a dead drive, since it shows up in ASP. I also don't think I need to use patch burn on it, since it recognizes it as a CD burner (as well as read DVD.) thanks. -digital ;)

Clamshell iBook docking pins

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:43:08 -0700

The only yo-yo I had for my Blueberry clamshell died and my failed attempt to repair it resulted in a fried mobo. My spare/backup mobo was known to be working but the problem is getting power to it. I was thinking of making a simple dock with two pins to go into the bottom of my iBook. I already know that the left pin (side near ports) is the +24V pin, but the right side (CD side) does not show continuity to ground - did I miss something? I remember some time back a vague side discussion that touched on the pin holes on the bottom of these machines but I cannot find the thread. Does anyone know about (or had any success) running a clamshell off these pins? TIA -- doug-doug the mighty (in mighty serious need of getting data of his now-dead iBook)

Any interest in MDD ATX PSU conversion?

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:26:20 -0700

I've just picked up a mirror-door G4 for cheap, sold as a "won't power on" unit. After a quick test, and it does power up with a re-wired ATX power supply. I picked up a better PSU, with a rating closer to that of the original, and wanted to know if there was any interest in having the process documented. There isn't too much out there on mirror-door to ATX conversions, despite their flaky power supplies, so if there's some interest, I'll snap some photos while I'm doing the wiring and installing.

Flower Power iMac slot load

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:20:33 -0700

I wouldnt exactly call this a hardware hack as i would call it a redneck fix. but i just aquired an flower slot load imac with no cd or hard disk. im just woundering if its possible to make a cable to connect ide drives to this system (the computer was missing the origianal hard disk cable) i know the connecter is a standard 50 pin and ide is 40pin, im woundering if it would be possible to take a scsi 50pin cable and attach a 40pin connector to it. (pinouts anyone) otherwise anyone have the cable and a slot load cddrive for sale? jasperj@charter.net

usb or firewire cases and drives

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:55:34 -0700

hey guys i was wondering firewire and usb bridges in most cases will they only support only one ata drive? i have a nice old scsi case a few nice drives and some bridges from some cases i had the idea to make a usb2 or firewire raid but i think the ata controller on these is striped down for one drive i can fit 2 bridges in this case but would like to know if i can put 2 on one bridge instead figure master slave cable select settings won't allow it but figure i'd ask thanks!

Streetstyle iBook

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:04:34 -0700

Hi, this is my iBook mod. Although I'm aware of the 2 or 3 other threads covering this hack, I figured I would publish my own anyway. Basically, I was given this iBook by a person that was no-where near PC or MAC savvy. He had no idea where to start in order to use this laptop. Myself (at the time) had never even seen a Mac or an iBook before, proving it also a challenge to use this machine. Long story short, this laptop ended up being the BEST device for taking notes during class. Due to it's tiny size and capability, it suited my needs perfectly for a in-class "notebook". The only problem was, everyone had nice shiny new "cool looking" laptops and i was stuck with this plain white one... I was instantly hooked by the EVE and Chameleon mods, and was inspired to create my own iBook mod... This mod must be the simplest and best mod i have ever fallen upon I consisted of extremely simple steps. I will share a few tips and pictures: -this does take up about 2-3 hours to complete so make sure you have a movie or entertainment set up while you do this. -Scrub with a TOOTHBRUSH(ES) (i have found that cloths did not work at ALL for me) -Once the cover seems transparent, rinse with water and place over a dark colored object in order to triple check that there are indeed no more particles of paint left. [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_014767.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_014211.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_006957.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_006305.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_002739.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_002687.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_008301.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_008768.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_015867.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_015464.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_009561.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_009367.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_001500.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_001331.jpg [img]http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_005550.jpg[/img] http://xs230.xs.to/xs230/08356/picturees_005303.jpg

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