Applefritter - Engineering Hack

Cinema Display: repairing the DVI connector

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 06:51:48 -0800

I posted a question in the forums about repair of a cinema display 20-inch, whose DVI connector was broken off. I finally have the solution and a working Cinema display again and as promised in the thread I would post the info regarding what color is what pin. So here it is. I used a DVI connector from the VGA to DVI adapter from Apple, I stripped it to the bare essentials so only the black connector is left. Make sure you don't destroy the pins or else all is lost. I needed to remove the Analog RGB part of the DVI connector, cause it is not fitted in the Mini DVI to DVI adapter of Apple. Anyway its not needed except if you want to use it with a VGA card. But think that not the purpose of a Cinema display :) Following are some pictures of the Color coding of the cinema display cable, connected already too the DVI connector. This is also the orientation of the chart below, so take note of that. Otherwise the display doesn't work at all. Also note that the ground cables are not yet connected to the pins, this is just the test phase, so now its working I'm going to strip the wires again and solder them to the pins in a NEAT way :) Here you can see the connector in the Mini DVI to DVI, connected too my MacBook. [img]http://www.applefritter.com/images/dsc03035-19791_640x480.jpg[/img] Other view of the connector [img]http://www.applefritter.com/images/dsc03036-19792_640x480.jpg[/img] And an another with more light. [img]http://www.applefritter.com/images/dsc03036-19792_640x480.jpg[/img] [b]From left to right the upper pins are:[/b] Black, B.White, B.GND Blue, Yellow, Orange [b]Middle pins:[/b] Brown, Br.White, Br.GND Red Brown [b]Lower pins:[/b] Pink, Pnk, White, Pnk.GND, GND, Pnk/Br.White Pinkish/Brown Some more info, the TMDS pairs are the 4 big pairs of 3 wires packed in the foil. Each pack consists of 3 wires: 1 colored 1 white 1 bare wire The 4 packs are colored with a Pink pair, a brown pair, a black pair and a strange pinkish/brownish pair. So in the chart below ( And up) the B.White for example means the white wire of the black package. Same with B.GND. The other 5 pins are separated and without foil, and consist of yellow, brown, red, blue and orange. So the only way you can go wrong is with the brown TMDS pack and the pinkish/brownish TMDS pack. Also note the both are lighter from color then the Brown that is a separate wire, so you can't go wrong there. So here is the chart I made with the color coding. Again please note the orientation of the DVI connector. The chart depicts the orientation like on the above pictures. [size=20] [b] Back view of Cinema display connector [/b] [/size] [img]http://www.applefritter.com/images/picture_2-19794_640x480.png[/img] [pre] 1 TMDS Data 2- Digital Red- (link 1) Pink 2 TMDS Data 2+ Digital Red+ (link 1) White of pink 3 TMDS Data 2/4 Shield GND of Pink 4 Not used on 20 inch 5 Not used on 20 inch 6 DDC Clock GND of pinkish/brown 7 DDC Data White of Pinkish brown 8 Analog Vertical sync Pinkish/brown 9 TMDS Data 1- Digital green- (link 1) Brown 10 TMDS Data 1+ Digital green- (link 1) White of Brown 11 TMDS Data 1/3 Shield GND of Brown 12 Not used on 20 inch 13 Not used on 20 inch 14 +5V Power for display Red 15 GND GND for pin 14/8 Brown 16 Hot-Plug Not used 17 TMDS Data 0- Digital Blue- (link 1) and digital sync Black 18 TMDS Data 0- Digital Blue+(link 1and digital sync White of black 19 TMDS Data 0/5 shield GND of Black 20 Not used 21 Not used 22 TMDS Clock-shield Blue 23 TMDS Clock+ Digital clock+ (links 1 and 2) Yellow 24 TMDS Clock- Digital clock- (links 1 and 2) Orange [/pre]

Fixing the Epson 'Prints Blank Pages' Problem

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 21:08:02 -0800

Recently, after changing out the blank ink tank on my finacee's Epson CX5400 multifunction inkjet printer, the printer began printing nothing but blank pages. Even after doing multiple head cleanings and test prints, pages would emerge from the printer completely blank. After some research, a number of fellow CX5400 owners have reported having the same problems, to the extent that the term "design flaw" became a common theme. I've owned several Epson printers and have had, generally, good luck with them. I was always somewhat suspicious of Epson's philosophy of making the print heads a permanent part of the printer and having the only replaceable part be the ink tanks, but it produced good-looking prints so it didn't bother me. Now I know, unfortunately, that this system is both a blessing and a curse. Before we delve into how to fix your blank-page-printing problem, a quick explanation on how Epson's ink delivery system works (or, rather, how it appears Epson's ink delivery system works, because Epson isn't exactly willing to divulge its trade secrets) is in order. There are a few components to the delivery system. First, you have the ink tanks. Early Epson tanks were just that; plastic boxes with a sponge inside saturated with ink. Newer tanks have a small PCB with a flash chip on it, so the printer can tell if a tank is new or used, or if it's an Epson brand cartridge or a generic replacement. In either case, the basic functionality is that it's a holder for the ink. Next in the chain are the ink tubes and primer. I've heard conflicting reports on how Epson printers get the ink out of the tanks; some believe that the tanks are positively pressurized when first installed, so that ink shoots out of the tank when the printer needs it. Other reports say that the printer puts negative pressure on the cartridge to draw ink out of it. Once the printer has the ink out of the cartridge, there are two places it can go, to either the print heads or to the purge tube. The print heads are what makes the ink spray onto the paper; the purge tube is where the ink goes when the printer primes new cartridges and cleans dirty print heads. Many cases of the "prints blank pages" problem occur right after installing new ink tanks. People have literally removed empty tanks from printers that work perfectly, and installed new tanks to find that the printer delivers blank pages (this happened to me). Since it's highly unlikely that the print heads have become clogged during the 5 minutes it takes to swap out the cartridges, the problem has to be elsewhere in the ink delivery system. So here's what happens when you install a new ink tank: 1. The new tank is installed, the printer recognizes that it's a new tank, and begins the priming sequence. 2. The printer starts to prime the tank. Ink comes out of each tank and is directed to the purge tube. 3. The ink flows through the purge tube into the internal absorbent pad. 4. After a couple seconds, the printer stops the priming sequence and probably does a quick print head cleaning. Now, a few people have done some in-depth troubleshooting and found that the "prints blank pages" problem is actually caused by a clogged purge tube. While this may not immediately make sense (you may be thinking, "so what if the tube is clogged, the ink will just spill inside the printer elsewhere"), here's what my research suggests happens when the problem occurs: 1. The new tank is installed, the printer recognizes that it's a new tank, and begins the priming sequence. 2. The printer starts to prime the tank. Ink comes out of each tank and is directed to the purge tube. 3. The tube is blocked, so the ink has nowhere to go. 4. After a couple seconds, the printer stops the priming sequence. Epson's ink delivery system appears to be a sealed system, so when the ink has nowhere to go in step 3, little ink has actually escaped the new ink tanks. This means they're not primed correctly, and won't deliver ink as they need to when the printer goes to print. So unless the purge tube gets cleaned out, you can swap tanks and perform head cleanings until the cows come home and it won't do any good. Now that there's a basic understanding of what's going on, here's how to try to fix the problem. This guide is meant to be model-agnostic; I did this procedure to a Stylus CX5400 multifunction, but it should be similar for most Epson inkjets made in the past few years. It's unknown if new Epsons still have this problem, as it usually takes a year or more to surface. The first thing you need to do is prepare your work surface. You'll need a big table, preferably one you don't care too much about. If all you have is your good kitchen table, then it's a good idea to slice open a tall kitchen garbage bag to make one large sheet, and tape it to the table to protect it. Next, you'll need the following tools and supplies: You'll need: 1. Needlenose pliers 2. Philips screwdriver 3. 10mL syringe (preferably two) -- see note on this below 4. Superglue for when you break something (you probably will break something, like I did) 5. Paper towels, lots and lots of paper towels 6. Your sanity-maintaining drink of choice 7. Two plastic cups (one filled with water, the other empty, not pictured) 8. An assistant, if you have one (not pictured) 9. Several hours to spend wrestling with the printer and getting ink all over the place (and yourself) 10. The willingness to buy a new printer if you end up breaking yours attempting the repair, or if the repair doesn't fix the problem (this is a big one) Here's the note about the 10mL syringes: If you don't live with a chemist as I do, you can probably find 10mL syringes at a pharmacy or medical supply store. You need just the syringe itself; do not buy hypodermic syringes (the kind with the needle attached). You need to be able to attach the syringe to the tubing inside the printer. (I used a Becton Dickinson 301029 10mL Luer-Lock slip-tip non-sterile syringe, and found it to fit on the tubing well. The catheter-tip version may work better, though, as it ultimately has a narrower tip, which may allow it to be fitted to some of the smaller tubes.) So here's the step-by-step: 1. On your computer, tell the printer you're going to replace the ink tanks. This is to get the printer to move the tank/print head assembly out of its home position, and also allow you to remove the tanks. Once the printer has moved the assembly and is waiting for you to replace the tanks, unplug the printer. If you try to turn the printer off with the button first, it will move the assembly back, so what you need to do is simply pull the power cord. 2. Disconnect the printer from the computer, remove the paper from the printer, and put the printer on your work surface. 3. Take out the ink tanks and set them on some paper towels out of the way. 4. Most likely you'll need to remove at least the printer's top cover in order to access the purge tube. If your printer is a multifunction, you'll have to remove the scanner assembly first. On the CX5400, it was a matter of removing two screws on the back by the hinges, then removing a panel on the left side and disconnecting the data cables. The scanner assembly then just lifted off and away. Your mileage may vary depending on the model you have, but I suspect the process is similar amongst the multifunction. 5. Most newer Epsons have two-part casings: a beige upper part, and a dark grey lower part. Usually it's just a few screws to remove the upper part. There may be a couple cables that need to be disconnected (for the power light and buttons, etc.) so check for this before you completely lift away the top cover. 6. You should, at this point, be looking at the printer's guts attached to the bottom cover. The purge tube is going to be on the right side of the printer (the right side is typically the home position; it's possible some printers may be different). On my CX5400, there's a white plastic tray that slides left and right based on which tank the printer is priming. Here's a pic of what the tray looks like when slid all the way to the right: Notice the black hose coming from the bottom, and the clear hose that the black one connects to. This is the purge tube. From now on, things will be getting messy. 7. Look at the routing of the purge tube. It should come out of the ink tray, probably loop around some stuff and eventually empty into a waste ink storage area in the middle of the printer. If you can't see the entire path of the tube, you'll probably need to disassemble the printer further. Don't try to remove or disassemble any part of the printer's guts; just remove the guts from the bottom casing (this is done easily by removing a few screws). 8. Disconnect the tube at the ink tray and discharge end, and if the tube is segmented and easily removed from the printer, remove it. In the case of the CX5400, there are three parts to the purge tube -- there's a small black tube from the ink tray that connects to a longer, thicker clear tube, which then connects to a thinner clear tube mounted in the bottom casing of the printer. The thicker clear tube connects to the bottom tube via a hose clamp, illustrated below: I had to remove the printer's guts from the bottom tray. I was able to remove the small black tube from the ink tray to the thick clear tube, but the thick clear tube was not removable. 9. Draw 10mL of water into one of the syringes. The thinner tubes are probably going to be too small to fit to the end of the syringe, but if you're careful, you can press the end of the tube up against the nozzle of the syringe and get a decent seal. Work over a sink, and shoot water through the hose. A surprising amount of ink may come out. 10. Repeat with whatever other purge tube segments you can remove from the printer. Keep moving water through the tube until the water comes out the other end clear. 11. If you can't remove a segment of tube from the printer, then you'll need to clear the tube in place. Attach a filled syringe to one end of the tube, and hold a cup under the other end. Slowly apply pressure to the pluger of the syringe. If you get resistance, apply more pressure. Be careful, though, because if you apply too much pressure, either the clog in the tube will clear in a rapid fashion and spray ink everywhere, or the syringe will fly off the tube and spray ink everywhere (both of which happened to me). If this happens, do your best to clean up what you can. If you regularly wear socks around the house, take them off -- I inadvertently stepped in some spilled ink and ended up tracking ink all over my kitchen floor without realizing it. Thankfully, Pergo laminate flooring doesn't stain easily, and I was able to wipe up the spilled ink without a problem. 12. If you can get water to move through the tube, continue to move water through it until it runs through clear. If you can get some water to move through it but it takes a good amount of pressure to do it, try reversing which end of the tube you attach the syringe to. You could also try attaching two syringes, one at each end, and move water back and forth in a push-pull fashion until the clog clears. 13. Once you have the tube cleared out, reassemble the tube pieces, and put the printer back together. 14. I made a mistake when putting my CX5400 back together and broke off a couple internal clips. The clips hold a plastic lever in place that tells the printer if the cover is open or closed. This is where you'll need the superglue. Here are the clips I broke off: 15. Put the casing back together in reverse order of how you disassembled it. Then reinstall the ink tanks and plug the printer back in. If all goes well, the printer will pick up where it left off -- it'll think you've installed new tanks and will run through the priming sequence. If not, either use the printer's control panel or the software on your computer to start the tank swap process again. 16. If you get error messages when you turn the printer on, check to make sure that all internal cables got put back where they belong. If that doesn't help, it's probably time for a new printer. 17. If the printer finished the priming sequence without a problem, try printing a test page. If it comes out blank, try cleaning the heads once. If that doesn't help, it's probably time for a new printer. 18. If you get output after printing a test page, then your problem was at least in part due to a clogged purge tube. If the output is poor, try removing and reinstalling the tanks again, or clean the heads a couple times. The output quality may return to normal. If that doesn't help, it's probably time for a new printer. In my case, I got output after reassembling the printer, but it was poor. I cleaned the heads a few times and got the black, cyan and yellow working fine. But no matter what I did, the magenta barely printed any, even with a new tank. After wrestling with the printer and making an inky mess of my kitchen, I hurled it into the trash with disgust. The next day I bought a Canon Pixma MP450, which uses traditional cartridges (with the print heads built into the tank). Ultimately, this technique can work for some, but not all. I read reports of it working successfully for some users, but not helping at all for others. Considering that the only other options are to replace the printer or take it to a repair facility (which would probably cost more than a new printer anyway), you don't have much to lose by trying this. Good luck!

3.5" hard drive on laptop/Mac Mini internal IDE

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 10:45:06 -0800

[thumb:10851 left hspace=5 vspace=5]Want a cheap way to add storage and speed to a stationary laptop that might not have Firewire or USB 2.0? Disappointed that your Mac mini uses a puny little laptop hard drive? If you've got a desktop hard drive that you'd like to connect to either of these, it's possible with a little work. I did this with a stripped-down graphite iBook that I've been using as a server, and had all kinds of trouble finding information until I realized that the process would be very similar for a Mac mini and started searching for that. There are two different obstacles to connecting a 3.5" desktop hard drive to a computer designed for a 2.5" laptop hard drive. Getting data across is the relatively easy, but meeting the higher power requirements of the larger drive can be a bit more difficult. [thumb:10853 right hspace=5 vspace=5]Data is simple because the first 40 pins of the 44-pin, 2mm pitch connectors used for 2.5" drives have the same pinout as the 40-pin, 2.54mm pitch connectors used for 3.5" drives. All you need is an adapter that changes the pitch of these pins. Such adapters are quite common, as they are used to attach 2.5" drives to the 40-pin connectors in desktop PCs. These adapters are available with both male and female 40-pin connectors. If you get an adapter with a male 40-pin connector, you will need a standard IDE ribbon cable, which has the potential to connect multiple drives (assuming the IDE controller can handle this, I haven't tried it). If you get one with a female 40-pin connector, it will connect directly to the 3.5" drive. [thumb:10854 left hspace=5 vspace=5]They will generally have a female 44-pin connector to connect directly to the 2.5" drive, but the Mac mini needs a male one. The only one that I've seen with a male 44-pin connector is Adam Eberbach's adapter specifically designed for the Mac mini. See [url=http://www.macmod.com/content/view/273/2/]his article[/url] for more information. This adapter is a custom PCB that converts a male 40-pin connector to a male 44-pin connector, which is necessary to connect to the Mac mini's female 44-pin connector. Printing custom PCBs isn't cheap, but since the adapter was so small he was able to make a bunch of them and sell the extras for $23. Personally, I would have just used a 44-pin gender changer and a standard adapter.[thumb:10855 right hspace=5 vspace=5] The problem with this is that a standard 44-pin gender changer will reverse the even- and odd-numbered pins (pin 1 becomes pin 2 and vice versa, etc.). Adam gave up on them at that point, but a proper gender changer can be constructed with two of these and a short length of 44-pin IDE ribbon cable for about $13 according to Froogle, less if you're a keen eBay buyer. Of course, if you're working with a laptop that has a male 44-pin connector on the board, you can use the female connector on the adapter and not worry about any of this. Powering the drive is a bit trickier. These adapters commonly have a molex connector wired to the last 4 pins of the 44-pin side to power a 2.5" drive from the power supply in a PC, but you're converting in the other direction. A 2.5" drive has two +5 VDC pins (one for logic, one for the motor) and two ground pins, but 3.5" drives use 12-volt motors. [thumb:10857 left hspace=5 vspace=5]Theoretically, you could use the 5 volts intended for the laptop drive for logic and steal 12 volts from elsewhere in your laptop/Mac mini to power the motor, but I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, you can use a separate power supply with a molex connector. This can be a standard PC power supply (which will usually need a jumper on the motherboard connector to work, search for information about using your specific power supply as a secondary one for instructions) or you can use a single-device power supply from an external drive as I did. I pulled one out of an old SCSI CD-ROM drive, but you can also use one from a hard drive enclosure. In fact, keeping the drive inside an enclosure might be a good idea. [thumb:10858 right hspace=5 vspace=5]However you power your drive, you should make sure that it shares a ground connection with the logic board. I'm not sure I entirely understand the purpose of this, but all of the guides for using parallel power supplies say that Very Bad Things (tm) can happen if you don't, so I didn't want to tempt fate. I connected my drive's power through a short extension that had extra wires for powering a CPU fan, and connected the ground wire to the adapter's ground pins. Now your drive is powered and able to talk to the logic board. All that's left to do is figure out where you want to put your new 3.5" drive, as it probably won't fit where the 2.5" one was. This is an exercise for the reader, because your specific hardware will determine your options. In my case, I cut off a small piece of my clamshell iBook's case to allow it to sit in the space where the optical drive is supposed to go and put the power supply in the battery compartment, since both of these components were non-working and had already been removed. [image:10852 width=600]

Hard drive sandwich

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:18:19 -0700

[b][color=purple]The 'I didn't do it' kid[/color][/b] I take no credit for inventing this mod. The first time I saw it was at [url=http://www.overclockers.com/tips454/]overclockers.com[/url] by one Mike Chin. I’ve merely documented the same technique for my G3 and am sharing it here for those who may not have seen the original. [b][color=purple]Why?[/color][/b] The drive in my G3, a 20GB WD, is a noisy fellow. It has an annoying high-pitched whine that overpowers all the other computer noises in the room, and it gets on my nerves. Some would suggest getting a quieter drive, but I wanted to try something on the cheap first. [b][color=purple]Pass me the hack-saw[/color][/b] Two quarter-inch thick aluminum plates were cut about 1 1/2″ larger than the hard drives dimensions. The plates had their edges ground and sanded to remove all burrs that might fall off into expensive areas and to prevent nice people from getting their hands cut. It also looks nicer. [thumb:4626] I held the plates together and drilled through all four corners with a 7/32″ bit, with a drop of 3-in-1 oil on the bit. Before I drilled, I used a Sharpie to mark one corner on each of the plates. That way when I put everything together, I can line up the holes and didn’t have to accurately measure each hole before I drilled. It’s a bit of a cheat. The plates were cleaned again, and waxed with floor wax, and the drive placed in-between. Home Depot supplied the plastic bolts and wing-nuts, for about $0.15 each (and the aluminum was about $20 CDN for enough for two drive sandwiches, at a place called Metal Supermarkets). I was concerned about the ‘do not cover this hole’ vent on the drive, but it seems to be working fine after over a month of light use. Once the sandwich was made, I cut some foam to fit around the hard drive. I tested both foam from chair-cushions and a dense adhesive foam with a metallic surface on one side that’s designed for insulating furnace pipes. Both were similar in the small amount of noise they reduced, so I went with the cushion foam as it’s a bit easier to work with, and just slightly thicker than the height of the drive. I sliced a small gap in the foam to allow the hard drive power and ribbon cables to exit without compressing or distorting the foam. [b][color=purple]We squeezes them, my precious[/color][/b] I tightened the wing-nuts until they were snug, and adjusted each one as tightening one loosened the other. Don’t over-tighten! I wasn’t too concerned, as I figured the plastic bolts would snap long before any damage would be done to the drive. The plates act as a head-sink for the drive, so having it all packaged up like this creates no thermal issues yet, though there have been questions raised about cooling the chips on the drive. [thumb:4627] [b][color=purple]Lock & Load[/color][/b] Due to the size of the sandwich over the bare drive, I installed the drive at 90 degrees to how it sits by default on the hard drive sled, and had to use a different ribbon cable from the 4-ish inch one that comes with the G3 (at least mine did). [b][color=purple]Conclusions[/color][/b] The drive is noticeably quieter. Not silent, and not as quiet as I’d hoped, but quieter. The most annoying noise was in the higher frequencies, and that’s been reduced enough that it’s competing with the power supply fan for attention, whereas before it was the dominant noise. Denser foam would help, but for now, it’s good enough. The drive currently sits loose on the floor of the G3. It's heavy enough that it doesn't move around, and the G3 itself is never moved. Future work, should I be so motivated, would be to drill and tap mounting holes in the bottom plate to attach one of the G3's drive brackets(at 90 degrees based on where the sandwich currently sits).

The SILENT 3rd generation eMac

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:51:29 -0800

[I]A modification by Juerg Messer[/I] My trusty old iMac DV (G3/400) had become just too slow for iMovie and MPEG-2 conversion, so it was time to buy a faster Mac. My budget was limited however. I purchased a 1.25 GHz eMac Combo. The LG-Hitachi Combo-drive and the original HD with meagre 40 GB were replaced by a Pioneer DVR-105 (100% Apple supported) and a 120 GB Maxtor HD. Both drives were previously mounted in an external FW housing and connected to the iMac, i.e., no additional costs. The eMac is not so easy to take apart, I found this [url=http://www.wilko.com/emac/]web page by Paul Wilkinson[/url] very helpful. Note that Paul was disassembling a first or second generation eMac, the design of the 3rd generation is a bit different (e.g. the Harman Kardon sound system is gone!). Now I had a great Mac for the buck, but I found it to be far to noisy! The old iMac was almost completely silent, because it had no fans at all. The difference to the new eMac was very unpleasant. Something had to be done about it. I found an interesting remark on [url=http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/eMac/eMac-upgrade.html]Leo Bodnar's web page[/url] about eMac overclocking: Leo had installed a variable fan speed regulator in order to reduce the fan noise to a minimum. The idea was striking but I wanted to have some temperature control, too. After some search in the internet I discovered an Enermax UC-A5FATR2 fan controller in the web shop of a PC dealer and ordered it for CHF 39.- (approx. 25 Euro) + shipping. It is a speed regulator for six fans (2 with speed feed back) and has a display for 2 temperatures (sensor 1 + 2) and fan speeds (fan 1 & 2). It has the size of a 5.25" PC drive bay and is a 3.5" HD mounting rack at the same time. The Enermax has a beautiful silver finish. There exists even a white version that would match the eMac, but it was not available from that dealer. [thumb:3880] The HD mounting rack could be easily removed. It was fixed with several screws. The PC board with the 6 knobs for fan speed control was removed, and the cables 1b, 1c, 2a, 2b and 2c were soldered out. Some of the cables were used for the customised wiring. The PC board was put back in place. All cables must be detachable connections, because the Enermax would be fixed on the eMac cover. If it becomes necessary to open the eMac again, I can simply unplug the Enermax connections with the sensor, power supply and fan cable in order to be able to take off the cover. [thumb:3894] The fan in the eMac is one of the types with speed feed back (yellow cable). I made sure, that this connection to the eMac would remain intact, whereas the fan will be powered by the Enermax controller. The additional connectors were purchased at a local store for electronic parts. I couldn't find connectors of the type used for the eMac fan, but standard 3-pin Molex connectors could be modified to fit them. [thumb:3895] The Enermax comes with a Molex 4-pin y-cable. I used the power supply of the optical drive and fixed the y-cable neatly on the DVD-RW drive with a piece of double sided adhesive tape. [thumb:3896] The temperature sensor 1 was fixed on the copper heat pipe coming from the CPU, using 2 cable binders. It was necessary to partly remove the fan to get access. The cable was fixed with another binder and some isolation tape. [thumb:3897] The cables were lead to the area at the bottom of the eMac with the many small ventilation holes. Again, note that none of the cables is soldered directly with the Enermax. [thumb:3898] The cover of the eMac was put back in place and the memory access hatch was closed. The eMac stand was attached, all cables are hanging out of the right ventilation opening of the stand. Two layers of thick double sided adhesive tape are fixed in stripes between the ventilation holes in the eMac cover. When the Enermax is fixed, air can still stream in through the gap between the Enermax and the housing. The Enermax was then fixed, but better do that when the eMac is back on your desk, to be able to fix it accurately aligned with the housing. [thumb:3899] Now I can adjust the Fan Speed 1A knob to regulate the fan to a pleasant noise level, while I see the impact on CPU temperature on the display (Temp. F1). The fan speed is not displayed although it is supposed to be. I don't know the reason, but I don't care. It doesn't matter. I have no Apple Hardware Test CD for the eMac, so I don't know if the internal fan speed feed back is still working or not. Note that the speaker grills have been removed to further improve the sound quality. The grills were pulled out using a modified paper clip. Make sure nobody sticks its fingers into the speaker membranes, e.g. little children :-) [thumb:3900] Another note about the sound quality: The eMac is now silent enough to actually be able to enjoy music. The quality of the internal speakers in the 3rd generation eMac [b]is[/b] inferior to the iMac DV's Harman Kardon speakers. The new eMac speakers sound dull. If I can spend the money, I will buy JBL sound creatures, but without the fan modification it would be waste of money. [thumb:3901] Have [b][i]more[/i][/b] fun with your eMac! [i]Addendum:[/i] After 2 years and 3 months of operation, the 120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus harddisk has died. Fortunately it didn't do that immediatley but within a week, so I was warned and made a backup in time. I have now replaced the harddisk with a 160GB Samsung. Since I am wondering if the reduced ventilation in my eMac has shortened the life span of the Maxtor HD, I have made the following modification when I replaced the HD. The second temperature sensor was fixed on the new HD with adhesive tape. I do not reduce the fan voltage below 50% now (instead of 33% to 40% before). Now I will observe, how the HD temperature behaves under different operating conditions.

WaterCooledG4

Sun, 20 Jun 2004 14:45:06 -0700

[center][h1]Macintosh -[i]It just works.[/i][/h1][/center] [center][i](Just add water.)[/i][/center] “It just works.�? That’s the slogan. Here’s my saga of where it just [i]didn’t[/i] work. Of course, once you get into the upgrading game rather than just happily paying the cost of a new system, all bets are off and you must be comfortable resolving problems, whatever problems, on your own. Or give up and accept the performance level of your stock system. But what fun is that? [b]And so it begins.[/b] (As documented by excerpts from some emails and project notes.) Today I received a processor upgrade that I had been waiting a few months to become available. (It had actually dropped a third in price between product announcement and product availability.) The original system is a PowerMac Digital Audio 533mhz dual processor. And the upgrade was supposed to be a 1.2ghzDP. Well imagine my glee when I powered it up and it is 1.33ghz clock rate. Ran a few benchmarks and all looked great. Then it crashed. Bummer. It is overheating. So, do I do the sensible thing and call for an RMA for this defective product? No, not me. I decide that I really like having an upgrade that makes this machine almost as fast as the fastest of the new ones, if I can make it work reliably. [Note: At this point in the saga I didn’t know that all these CPU upgrade modules were shipping at the 1.33ghz speed. I assumed a ‘fluke’ had landed on my doorstep and I had better keep it.] So, since it can't stay cool enough with the case closed up, I take the approach of moving the bastard off the floor onto the desktop where I can leave it open all the time, with an assortment of extra fans. It's that big heat sink which isn't getting cooled adequately for this 'factory overclocked' job. The other fans are just there since the PCI cards no longer benefit from case flow cooling. [picture 1] [image:3260] picture 1 The configuration evolved from that in the picture using the single fan supplied in the upgrade kit to having two three inch fans 'pancaked' on top of the heat sink and that is keeping it going. With a full max heat producing number crunching load the thermocouple on the sink measures 17F above ambient. System crashes at 102F. Just the one fan, the one in the picture - the one it shipped with, can only keep it to about 24F above ambient. And the case tolerances are such that that depth fan is the largest which can be installed and close up the case. (I tried .) The extra quarter inch of a full versus half depth fan is just exactly too much for the case to hinge shut. I doubt if the case interior is keeping below an ambient of 80F anyway. Anyhow, keeping it below 100F it has run for hours under full load and is 2.5 times faster than before. (Actually somewhat more for most usage because of the newer generation PowerPC chip and more cache.) A nice upgrade. At less than half the cost of a comparable performance new machine. (Of course, you can run the new ones with the case closed .) So at that point I had it running. What was running? OK, here are a few pictures of the PowerLogix Series 133 1.2ghz dual processor upgrade module which you see installed in the Digital Audio PowerMac in picture 1. [image:3262] picture 2 [image:3263] picture 3 [image:3264] picture 4 [image:3265] picture 5 [image:3266] picture 6 However, I didn’t stay a happy camper for long with that solution. While the ganged up three inch fans running at full speed did keep it operational, barely, there were several significant problems with this approach. [list] [*]Marginal thermal conditions — The room the PowerMac is in ranges about eight to fifteen degrees F warmer during the Summer. Air conditioning is more expensive than gas heat. And I like the low to mid eighties. [*]Noise — Move enough air and you get more cooling. And more noise. Much more noise. [*]Open case on desktop — This just ain’t right.[/list] [b]So now on to stage two. ‘The Great Air-Cooling Effort’.[/b] [image:3267] picture 7 (Right side view) [image:3268] picture 8 (Front view - looking down over monitor) Picture 7 shows three things (of interest) visible here. [list=1][*]The original 3in fan removed. 'Custom' duct fabricated from cardboard and shipping tape to mate a 5in fan to a 3in receptacle on top of the heat sink. The foam square squeezes around the fan which is press fitted into the top of the duct and creates an air tight seal. Bottom of the duct is taped around the heat sink to create an air tight seal. All air is forced into heat sink fins. Fan is powered full speed at 12vdc. [*]3in fan powered at 7vdc blowing over PCI cards for their cooling. [*]Sheet of cardboard (back in chassis) is redirecting air from internal chassis 5in fan (12vdc, but thermal controlled - runs slow/quiet with case open) over the four internal disk drives.[/list] In picture 8 the main thing visible is the 5in fan (at 7vdc) sitting on top of the PCI cards blowing away from the big heat sink. Without this fan there was a substantial re-induction of hot air back into the main heat sink fan. [image:3269] picture 9 (Right side view) [image:3270] picture 10 (Front view) And here in pictures 9 and 10 you see the new 'case annex' fabricated from stacked up old shelving boards. This substantially contains the remaining sound. And the shades closed (as they normally are) also contribute to sound reduction. Zoom in and you can see a sub 90 degree F reading from the thermocouple on the heat sink. (BTW, those digital indoor/outdoor thermometers are great for playing this kind of game and cost about $10.) After everything settled down I get 91.4F on the heat sink with ambient of 73.0F. Since this room is typically 80-82F in the Summer (which is my favorite temperature range) this would result in about a 102F heat sink reading, assuming linear scaling. Empirical tests have the computer starting to get flakey at 105F as measured at the current thermocouple position on the heat sink. “Walkin’ on a thin line.�? Noise level is about the same as it was for this system before all these shenanigans started. That is, about the same as the stock G4 Digital Audio. So, again, I had improved my situation (if you can call it that), but I didn’t stay content for long. I knew there was a better way. [b]A detour through PC land.[/b] I’m quite familiar with the possibilities of, and tradeoffs of, air cooling a computer system. And with my Athlon system I had recently gotten fed up with the noise and hassles involved and made the decision to try a water cooling solution. Enter the “Koolance EXOS - Liquid Cooling System�?. Hit Google with the appropriate key words and you can find several extensive reviews of this kit on the sites that cater to the Intel/AMD overclocking crowd. Here in the States it can be had for about $300 delivered. A nice-to-have feature on the PC side of this kit makes it pretty much the only viable kit for the PowerMac. That is, it is a self contained kit residing external to the computer case with a PCI card bracket to bring power and water in/out of the case. On the PC side this is merely a convenience since there is usually plenty of room in tower cases to install almost anything. However, there is no spare space in a PowerMac to accommodate a water reservoir, pump and radiator. [image:3271] picture 11 [image:3273] picture 12 Pictures 11 and 12 show this kit installed on an Athlon 2000+ system. (Which is, yes, overclocked .) As of today, these are good links for information about the unit. I’m not going to review it again, just show how I’ve used it. [url]http://koolance.com/products/product.html?code=EXT-A01[/url] [url]http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzc2[/url] [url]http://www.overclockers.com/articles636/index.asp[/url] Now those of you familiar with AMD (or pre-Pentium 4 Intel) systems know that there are a row of three tabs on each side of the CPU socket (socket-462). The most common method of mounting a heat sink on those systems is by a device which hooks over one of more of those tabs. Obviously, there are no such tabs in a Macintosh. Eureka! An adapter is needed. [image:3275] drawing 1 Now no heat sink made for a single processor AMD/Intel system is going to fit properly on two PPC processors. But my theory was that a copper plate which spanned both PPC chips could be cooled by a water block style heat sink designed for AMD/Intel systems. Since the PowerPC microprocessors heat disspation pretty much tops out at about 25 watts per CPU, for an aggregate max of 50 watts to handle, and the AMD Palomino microprocessor dissipates 70 watts running at stock voltage and speed, I felt on pretty safe ground even if there was some cooling inefficiency due to the intermediary copper plate and an additional contact surface. Here is what went into creating drawing 1. I found an engineering drawing of the standard socket-462 socket with detailed dimensions. This was used for the portion of the adapter for the Koolance water block mounting. I measured the relevant portion of the PowerLogix heat sink for its overall dimensions and holes for both mounting the CPU module to the heat sink (in this case ‘water block adapter plate’) and for fastening the CPU module + heat sink assembly to the Apple logic board. ‘Extra’ (irrelevant to construction) information on the drawing shows the footprints of the Koolance 200G water block (orange) and the two PPC chips (red). Once I had this drawing (plan, it helps to have a plan ) in hand I set out to find a 3.5 inch square by 1/8 inch thick piece of flat copper plate. Which I found locally for $7.03 + tax each. [picture 13] And after only about a half dozen hours of labor with the universal tool (Dremel), and some easy hole drilling, I had an adapter plate fabricated to my custom specifications. [picture 14] (NOTE: Use 1/8 inch drill bit on four ‘outside’ holes and the screws supplied with the PowerLogix kit (or any of same spec) will be able to self tap the soft copper.) [image:3267] picture 13 [image:3277] picture 14 [b]An alternative.[/b] Some Athlon motherboards provide an alternative mounting mechanism of four holes in the motherboard offset around the CPU socket. And some air cooled heat sinks, and more relevantly, some water blocks, are designed to use this form of mounting. Using this mounting technique, requiring only that four holes of proper diameter in the right locations be drilled, would be vastly easier than carving the copper plate to look like an outline of a socket-462. I highly recommend you look into this if you tackle such a project. I only went with this approach because I already had the Koolance kit in house and wanted to reuse it to test the validity of the approach. For example, in just doing a quick search, this caught my eye: [url]http://dtekcustoms.safeshopper.com[/url] [thumb:3278] picture 15: TC-4 Rev 2 Aluminum Topped Waterblock This water block from D-TEK costs about the same as the Koolance 200G and, if it would work (I see no reason why it wouldn’t, I would like to see a picture of the bottom) the different mounting method would make it trivial instead of grueling to make that adapter plate. BTW, the price I mentioned above of $300 for the Koolance EXOS delivered includes the cost of the water block, but the block is in addition to the price of the EXOS itself. In other words, there is no reason not to buy the EXOS unit alone and mix/match another vendor’s water block. Caveat, if you do this you do have the responsibility to ensure that the connector tubing inner/outer diameter is compatible with all the pieces. But that’s not what I did. That’s what I shoulda done. Now I’ll get back to what I did do. [b]Water cooling a G4 dual processor.[/b] [image:3279] picture 16 [image:3280] picture 17 Picture 16 shows the adapter plate fitted to the CPU module with four screws which self tapped the soft copper. Three screws are used to secure this assembly to the logic board. Two screws fit through the holes in the copper on the bottom/near side of the picture and the third mount point is visible at the top/rear where the copper has been removed to make a ‘socket-462’ shape. NOTE: WARNING: CAUTION: (got your attention ) There are four plastic shims which come with the PowerLogix upgrade. When you remove the original heat sink from the CPU module be sure to save these. They provide exactly the right spacing between the circuit board the PPC chips are mounted on the bottom surface of the heat sink. IF YOU ATTEMPT ASSEMBLY OF AN ADAPTER PLATE WITHOUT THESE SPACERS YOU WILL LIKELY DESTROY THE CPU MODULE. In picture 17 the Koolance 200G water block is positioned above the CPU module with adapter plate mounted. Note that barely visible on the lower half of the water block is an 'imprint' of an Athlon Palomino CPU die. This Koolance Exos kit was shifted from an Athlon Palomino 2000+ (1660mhz) overclocked to 1760mhz. Also visible is the thermocouple supplied with the EXOS kit. (Under the silver tape on the top right of the water block.) [image:3284] picture 18 [image:3285] picture 19 Picture 18 shows the Koolance 200G water block fitted on the adapter plate with the Koolance clip. Note that this is just a fit test. The CPU module and adapter plate assembly must be screwed to the logic board before this can be done for real since the water block obscures two of the CPU module to logic board mounting points. The third mount point, which is not blocked, is visible at the bottom/front of the picture. Up to now the pictures were taken as test fittings were performed to ensure physical tolerances were being met. I.e., just to see if the pieces physically fit . But in picture 19 you can see that things are getting serious. Thermal paste has been applied to both PPC CPU chips before the adapter plate was screwed to the CPU module and with the CPU module and adapter plate assembly secured to the logic board thermal paste has been applied to the top surface preparatory to clamping the water block down on top of the paste. [image:3294] picture 20 Picture 20 has it all mounted on the logic board. Hoses attached. Filled with water and pre-charged all according to the Koolance instructions. Well, almost according to Koolance instructions. They provide a jumper and describe a way to jumper an ATX power supply to run the pumps with the logic board (mother board for PC people) disconnected from the power supply. Rather than do this I just used an old spare AT style power supply laying around to power up the EXOS system and get it properly charged with water. However you do it, it is crucial that for initial operation the EXOS is operated before power is applied to the chips it is to cool so that air can be purged from the system and the reservoir is topped off. BTW, this is only for the initial start-up. Subsequently it powers up and down along with the computer. Checking for leaks isn’t such a bad idea either . In fact, I completely assembled this cooling system and let it run on the kitchen counter for about eight hours before I installed it in the case. Tip: You can’t remove the hoses from the water block once installed. (Well, you can, but it is a royal pain and you need to cut off about the last half inch of hose each time. And the clamps only have a limited number of removal/reapplications.) However, it is easy to remove the other end of the hose that use compression fittings for attaching to the EXOS main unit. These come off easy and are easy to reapply. So just do that and snake the hoses through the PCI cover plate the ‘long way around’ when you are ready for final assembly. Ready for test run. Dang! Those three "R67" chips get far too hot to touch. (See pictures 2, 16, 17, 18, 20.) Power down and analyze the situation. The original heat sink did not sit on these hot critters. (See pictures 1 and 6.) However, there is a cutout in that heat sink which allows some air to flow through the bottom and out of it over this area. OK. Something needs to be done to keep these power chips cooled, a little. [image:3286] picture 21 [image:3290] picture 22 Wahlah! Custom cooling for the voltage regulator chips shown in pictures 21 and 22. Fifteen minutes with a hacksaw and an old K6 heat sink becomes half the width and a perfect fit. Fan provides air flow for the heat sink and also blows over some 'lessor' voltage regulators which also run hot. But not nearly as hot as the big guys. Anyway, the original heat sink/fan blew air over them, so I blow air over them. [image:3291] picture 23 [image:3293] picture 24 Case closed. After several hours of runtime under full load the Koolance temperature reading (measured by a thermocouple on the water block) has stabilized at 32C/91F. The thermocouple mounted on the adapter plate reads 37C/98F. The 7F delta was pretty constant as the temps slowly ramp up from a cold start. Noise level. Not silent, but pleasantly low. There is still the power supply fan (which I had already replaced with a thermal controlled and quieter fan), the 12in case fan (which is thermo controlled and I'm now running at 7v instead of 12v), and the four disk drives. The Koolance EXOS itself is almost inaudible. I can now monitor boot up activity by listening to the head seeks on the drives . [image:3298] picture 25 After a couple of days running the system on the desk during a ‘shake down period’ I moved the system back to its original location on the floor beside the desk. Shown here in picture 25. The system has been running twenty four hours a day for a week now running compute/numerically intensive tasks. (Distributed computing number crunchers in addition to normal duty. An ecc2-109 client for a few days and rc5-72 for the last couple of days.) It is important to run full system stress inducing code on a system after doing any cooling modifications because such software causes the CPU chips to generate substantially more heat than when they sit idle. OK. I know, I know. You want to know what that box with the two fans is doing sitting on top of the EXOS. It isn’t necessary. Really. I’ve just got a lust to tinker. To test whether there was any reinduction of exhaust air I folded a piece of cardboard to duct the exhaust well beyond where it might be possible for any to flow back into the intake. This actually did make a difference of about 2 degrees C measured by the water block thermocouple - the reading on the front of the EXOS. With this duct sitting there I happened to notice that it was just the right size to fit a five inch fan into. (There were fans laying all over my desk from the prior air-cooling efforts.) And a large diameter fan running at low speed makes very little noise. So, just to see what the effect might be I put two 5in (120mm) fans in the top of the duct (with foam applied as needed for physical fit and moderate ‘air-tightness’) and powered them with a 9vdc transformer. This added an insignificant amount of noise (barely audible difference as an A/B test with them on/off), and an additional 5 degrees C reduction in water block temperature. Not needed. But, hey, cooler is always better, right ? And it will provide that much more margin for the Summer when I like the room to be about 10 degrees F warmer than it is now. [b]Epilog[/b] Well, that was fun. And it is just as fun to be actually using a computer which is over twice as fast as what I started with and provides an office environment where I have no distracting howling beasts which I just have to live with unless I want to start doing all my work on notebook class hardware. My workspace has the 1.33ghzDP Mac on the left side of the desk and a 2100+ Athlon on the right. Both water cooled. And it is the quietest work environment I’ve had in many years. [b]Final Statement[/b] OK. Now that you’ve seen this saga it should be abundantly clear to everyone that no sane person would do such a thing. I am [i]not[/i] recommending that you take any such action. [i]I am not responsible[/i] if you try any stupid stunts, even if they bear some resemblence to stupid stunts I may have performed, and damage of any sort happens to your hardware, your software, your data, your rug, your real estate, your person, or your state of mind. If you open your box, [i]anything[/i] which might happen [i]is your responsibility[/i]. Ron Gazaway Austin, TX March 5, 2003

ExtendaPort

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:59:55 -0700

The following instructions will increase the range of an Apple airport base station 30 to 100% depending on the materials in your home and placement, etc. I added a Lucent full wave 2.4GHz antenna (lucent #848072633). This also improves speed on clients that have to downshift in order to get a better connection. Begin by removing the three screws in the bottom cover. Open it up and see the image below (Note my wire routing for reassembly.) [center][image:3216][/center] Remove the three yellow screws in the EMI shield (above) and carefully lift the electronics package out (below). Do not open the EMI cage. [center][image:3218][/center] On the end of the airport card (which looks remarkably like a Lucent WaveLAN Silver card, exactly like, one might say) there is a small round black plastic plug covering the SMB connector which mates with the antenna (below). Connect the Lucent antenna here after routing the coax cable through the frame. The black box on the end of the card contains a 1/4th wavelength 2.4 GHz antenna. [center][image:3219][/center] As shown below, you will need to cut a small notch in the plastic case to allow the wire out. I used a small rat tail file. Be careful not to scratch the paint on the inside of the plastic or it'll show in the outside. Try not to snort any of the plastic shavings. [center][image:3220][/center] Carefully reassemble the unit and route the coaxial antenna wire. Make sure to reconnect any cables you disconnected. Place the antenna as high as you can. Mine is next to the ceiling. You are finished! [center][image:3221][/center]

PowerBook 3400 Pictureframe

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 13:50:37 -0800

[center][thumb:2359][/center] After seeing projects like the [url=http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalframe/]Duo Digital Frame[/url] and others online, I thought I'd try my hand at it. Instead of hunting down a Duo or Powerbook 100 for a 4x6'' frame, I decided to go for an 8x10'' size (or 800x600 resolution) to display my travel photos. I have, or had, a PowerBook 3400c that had been surplussed from work due to a dead CD ROM drive, the replacement cost of which is about the same as buying another used 3400. The trackpad button also had some issues, but otherwise, the 3400 was in pretty good repair - no spots on the screen, for one thing. And so it began, as most of these project do, with disassembly. As with every Mac model, Apple provides assembly and repair instructions for the 3400 [url=ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Misc/Service/servicemanuals/powerbook_3400c.g3.pdf]here[/url]. Don't lose that Torx #6. Once the 'book was apart - completely apart - I set aside all the parts I didn't need, everything but the motherboard, power supply, RAM, hard drive and LCD. If anybody needs a 3400 keyboard, trackpad, bezel, case, speakers... call me :) [center][thumb:2360][/center] [i]update: In a recent overhaul of the 3400 frame, I put the speakers back in, so I can now, potentially, have the tiny little speakers sound off alarms or something. I don't have any real use for putting them in, but I thought I'd find something eventually.[/i] With all that taken out, I needed to be sure the PowerBook still worked for what I wanted to do with it. So i hooked everything that was left back together (on the coffee table in my living room) and fired it up. With thoughts to making the frame wireless, I popped in a WaveLAN Silver PC card and configured it so I could control the 3400 from my iBook via AirPort with Timbuktu, load new photos onto it, etc. It's a lot easier this way than trying to hook up a keyboard and mouse to the ADB port which, at this point in the build, I couldn't be sure was going to be accessible. [i]update: if you look at the [url=http://www.applefritter.com/node/2356]detail[/url] you can see where the ADB port is, next to the AC power in the upper right. it's accessible when the lid is opened, and comes in handy for soft reboots and making occasional tweaks.[/i] [center][thumb:2357][/center] At this point, I also wrote an AppleScript to manage the tasks of 1) randomizing the photos to be displayed, 2) copying the photos to a RAM disk, as I could never get the contents of the RAM disk to be saved between boots, and 3) kicking off the slideshow. At first, I had intended to use JPEGView set to display the photos at random, fade between, etc. But I noticed one problem with JPEGView: the cursor! So I poked around amongst my old utilities and dug up KPT QuickShow, which does slideshows with configurable fades and delays, but doesn't do random, hence that step in the AppleScript. The JPEGs and slideshow software are on a RAM disk, so the hard drive can spin down and the frame can run almost silent. [center][thumb:2356][/center] [i]update: Instead of a RAM disk, I've updated the script to copy images to a 16 meg PCMCIA flash memory card that acts as a little hard drive, just big enough to hold about 25 photos. The advantage of this, in addition to being flash and thus maintaining its contents between reboots, and the continued silent operation of the pictureframe, is that the limited RAM of the powerbook can be used for the system and slideshow program. cutting into the RAM for the RAM disk posed too many problems (a memory leak somewhere, the setting reverting every time power was cut out). It also comes in handy to shuttle files to and from the machine, now that the waveLAN card is being put to use elsewhere, in one of my Newton MessagePad 2100s.[/i] [i]update again: I've posted my applescript in [url=http://www.applefritter.com/blog/3795]my blog[/url]. share and enjoy.[/i] Then came the woodwork. Quarter-inch poplar (probably my favorite material to work with) was cut, sanded, stained, burnished, and attached with hot glue and some scrap quarter-round for strructure. (Remember, measure twice; cut once.) I lay the screen into the frame and attached it with double-sided tape, then built the rest on top of that with a combination of double-sided tape and white masking tape. [center][thumb:2363][/center] I left the top panel of the frame free so the necessary ports on the motherboard could still be accessed. You can see the AC power plug, the ADB port, and PCMCIA slots. The wireless card is removed during normal operation so I can use it elsewhere, but its a simple matter to pop it in and update the scripts or upload photos. On the far right in this shot, you can see where the hard drive is mounted. [center][thumb:2361] [thumb:2362] [thumb:2358][/center] I took some pains to get the little details on the outside of the frame to look right, despite the mess that's on the inside. For one, I needed a way to power up the 3400 without a keyboard and without taking half the frame off. So I drilled a small hole in the frame opposite the reset button on the motherboard and inserted a... um.. well, it's a chopstick from some carryout Chinese food. I didn't have any dowel on hand, and the chopstick tapers perfectly to hit the button on the motherboard. I also cut a notch in the frame to thread the power cable through, so the frame can sit flush to the wall it's hanging on. The final result is a nice addition to my living room, and leaves a lot of room for improvement. For one, I'd like to keep the wireless card in place, and put together an applescript to grab images off my network, rather than having to pre-load them onto the hard drive myself. There's also the possibility of using it to display things like the weather map or scrolling headlines, but showing off my vacation photos is enough for now. Maybe I'll use the PowerBook 190 I've got in the closet for the other stuff, once I find a power supply for it.

Compubrick Accessories

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 20:50:20 -0700

[center][image:1884][/center] The Compubrick 160� and its two accessories: a keyboard and a Quickcam. [center][image:1885][/center] The keyboard is simply encased in blocks; the actual keys are ordinary keyboard keys. This was actually a lot harder to make than it looks. A good many tabs had to be sanded off and it was difficult to get all the studs to line up. In fact, you'll see two slots up around the F6 and F7 key where I couldn't get them to line up. The keyboard's most noteworthy feature is the caps lock light. I placed a transparent block over the LED and the effect is very nice. The other two lights I covered up as I don't use them anyway. [center][image:1886][/center] Getting the round Grayscale Quickcam apart was a real challenge and I cut my self twice. But in the end it was worth it, as I now have a building-block encased camera and the wounds have healed. I may end up redoing this one in more interesting colors. It's kind of dull. [center][image:1887][/center] Clearly, I can't do an entire system in building blocks and then leave the mouse a dull platinum.

UFO Mouse

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 12:25:46 -0700

by Anonymous [center][thumb:1880][/center] To open the mouse first remove the ball and cover. Then using a small screwdriver pry up the blue plastic trim. Remove both trim pieces and this will reveal two small philips head screws (remove). Now the top and bottom halves can be separated by pulling them apart. This takes a bit of work the first time. Now that you are inside the mouse, solder on a LED to the main board as shown. The voltage here is 5 volts. Radio Shack sells a Blue LED that is designed to run at 5 volts (part # 276-311) This is ideal because no dropping resistor is needed. When connecting the LED, connect the negative side to the pin #4 (right side) and the Positive side to pin #1 (left side). [center][thumb:1881][thumb:1882][/center] [center][thumb:1883][/center] Reassemble mouse and plug into computer, you now have a lighted mouse! A fellow named Kevin wrote the submitter of this page with a slightly different method of adding a light to an iMac mouse. The above picture was taken using this method "I felt the intensity of the LED pointing upward was too concentrated, so I popped the mouse open again and drilled a small hole into the plastic housing where the ball resides... that way I could point the LED straight into the ball chamber. I get more of a diffused lighting effect and you can even see the ball rolling around."

Blue Ice G4

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 12:37:38 -0700

By Kent Salas [center][image:1403][/center] [b]Welcome to "Project: BlueIce G4" - the begining[/b] Project BlueIce G4 first started as a concept I had shortly after I saw the first iMac released by Apple a few years ago. I thought color customizing was cool but what if I wanted another color to match my current mood and I didn't want to buy half-a-dozen Macs to do it? Then I thought, what if you could make the make the case light up with a certain color, you could just change the color via bulbs or even a switch. Hmmm, eww moodMac. A year passed and I started to see a few Mac Modifications that were pretty kewl. Like drive light, case mods. Then I started to see PCs modded with window cases, blow holes, custom LEDs, Neon lights, etc. After I saw a web site, editthispage.com, where a guy made the case skins clear on a G4. I started to put some ideas together. The following is a "Sum Up" version of what I did to my friends G4. Yes, a friends Mac G4! With the understanding of course, I screw it up, I bought it ;-) I was going to buy just a G4 case for obvious reasons but found most cases costing upwards of $400 to $500 dollars! I could almost buy a refurb G4 for a couple of hundred dollars more. And yes I did check ebay but did not find the digital audio G4 case listed. I would also like to say I have never "Mod'ed" a computer before and know very little about electrical formulas and components. Most of what I did was borrow ideas from other peoples mod's and apply them to my own. And before I get started please do not use the following as an "official" guide to mod'ing your own equipment, I am not responsible for any unique and undesired results from your own mods, that's why I used my friends ;-) [center][thumb:1401,middle] The Subject: A 533Mhz G4, time to plan and prepare.[/center] Now, lets start the project . . . [hr] [b]"Project: BlueIce G4" Page 1 - preparation[/b] I decided to turn my friend's G4 into a see-thru "BlueIce G4" with blue neon, cathode ray and LED lights. Before I began I figured out what I would need to complete this mod. Some things I picked up or made sure I had were: [b]1. Basic tools[/b] (i.e. screw drivers, standard, phillips, hex wrench, wire cutters, sharp knife - careful! I sliced my finger real good, band-aids for sliced finger, exacto knife, dremel, drill, hand saw-which sucked). [b]2. Electrical tools[/b] (voltage meter reader, metal tape, 12 volt battery, alligator clips, soldering iron, soder [b]3. Mod items[/b] (neon light-blue, cold cathode light-blue, LEDs - varity all blue, usb 5 port 3.5 internal bay bus, toshiba R1102 cd-rw/dvd drive, 4 molex y-connectors, heat shrink tubing, switches). [b]4. Other hardware/items[/b] (91% alcohol - 4 regular bottles, 1 ripped up wash cloth, q-tips, 12 inch ruler, latex gloves - I know what yer thinkin). [b]5. Below[/b] I included some links/info of where I purchased some of the items for this mod. [center][thumb:1395,middle] Inside the 533Mhz G4, grab a screw driver and start pulling components.[/center] [hr] [b]"Project: BlueIce G4" Page 2 - dismantle[/b] When I took each part out of the G4 I put notes on a sticky referring to it. I did because everytime I have worked on something whether it be the vacuum cleaner or my car I always end up with extra screws/parts left over :-\ After I pulled all the pieces/components out of the G4 to get the the bare chassis. I started planning my mod attack. Hmm would a window go good here or here, can I put one here or here. Let me say the G4 is engineered very "tight" and I had to triple check my locations for window holes and placements for lights and wires and such. It's not at all like the PC cases where you can practically slap a window mod anywhere. Time to put my measurements into action. Onward . . . [center][thumb:1395,middle] Inside the 533Mhz G4, grab a screw driver and start pulling components.[/center] [center][thumb:1394,middle] Every component I pulled I marked with notes on a sticky. Yes, that is a Power Computing Mac clone in the background.[/center] [center][thumb:1404,middle] The bare chassis/skelton of the G4. Time to measure and mark what I will cut and drill. BTW, no, I do not have a work bench, hench "the bed" :-\[/center] [hr] [b]"Project: BlueIce G4" Page 3 - surgery[/b] First, I started on the case covers. I put the case covers on a black towel in my bath tub and poured the alcohol into the inside letting it pool in the middle and soaking the cloths on the edges. While the case covers were soaking I started to cut the G4 chassis with my pre-determined measurements. I first tried a hand/hack saw but went through 3 busted blades. I then switched over to a dremel which was slow going but more accurate and met my desired results. If you go the dremel route make sure you wear eye protection as tiney metal pieces fly everywhere. After going though 4 cutting wheels on the dremel I was done mod'ing the case with its new portal windows. I then checked on the case covers and the paint was disolving nicely. The middle of the case goes first and then the edges take a while longer with some needed help with q-tips. back to the chassis i began filing the edges of the newly dremeled G4 to prevent cuts while handling it and for esthetics. Back to check on the alcohol bathing cases. With more help with q-tips cases are now transparent, kewl! Lets see if my sticky notes will work putting it all back together . . . [center][thumb:1410,middle] The G4 case covers soking in alchohol, a long slow process.[/center] [center][thumb:1399,middle] With dremel in steady hand I let the sparks fly. I tried a hand saw but busted 3 blades before I switched to the slower, but better dremel.[/center] [center][thumb:1405,middle] After a couple of hours the paint on the inside finally starts to disolve reveling the clear cover.[/center] [center][thumb:1406,middle] The G4 chassis with the pieces I dremeled off. Time for edge sanding/filing, a vacuum and cleaning.[/center] [center][thumb:1414,middle] Back to the Bed, the G4 chassis case feels considerably lighter now.[/center] [hr] [b]"Project: BlueIce G4" Page 4 - reassemble[/b] Time to test and see if all my sticky notes worked. And luckily they did! I fixed up my lights, wired connections, etc., and final checks/installations on switches, velcro etc. I also used some chrome wire covering to clean-up/organize all the electrical mess I made inside the G4 with the newly added lights/switches and such. I installed a 3.5 inch internal 5 port usb bay bus and replaced the internal cd-rom drive with a toshiba R1102 cd-rw/dvd drive. I removed the internal speaker, who uses that thing anyways, and made it the light switch. Ready, Game On! [center][thumb:1413,middle] A few drilled holes in the front for LEDs and a power switch for the neon/cathode lights.[/center] [center][thumb:1417,middle] After I reassembled all the parts back together I viewed the sleeping BlueIce G4, kinda kewl looking at all the internal components. Now to hit the power button and finally test the mod, ready . . .[/center] [hr] [b]"Project: BlueIce G4" Page 5 - final results & links[/b] I hit the power switch and boom, half my room glows electric/icy blue. I would love to take this to work and put in my cubicle as fellow workers follow the blue beacon of light. I still have more mods and ends to complete, such as mounting the CPU fan via velcro, reducing some of the cables for the lights, changing the front usb bay hub red LEDs to blue LEDs, Getting a 3.5 inch bezel cover etc. Right now though my next mods are to illuminate the Apple Pro Keyboard blue and put a blue LED in the Logitech Mouse. Now I can even make some inserts to put inside of the case cover with specific patterns like ovals, stars, lightning bolts, etc., that light up. I also may buy some red and or ultra violet lights to see how they look in the case. Get ready for RedHot G4 and FarOut G4 baby! I have run the BlueIce G4 for two days straight with lights on and all and have not noticed any abnormal heat increases. CPU stays around 69 to 87 degrees, (No not Celsius, the other one ;-), mostly due to the surrounding room temperature. I am also planning to mod the mouse and keyboard with blue lights/LEDs. More on that later ;-) My friend is happy with the results of my mod, his G4 still works and he said he should perform a lot better when he goes to UT LAN parties now, i.e. blinds his opponents ;-) BlueIce G4 config notes: 533MHz Graphite G4 (digital audio) 1GB RAM 110GB Hard Drive space System Mac OS 9.2.2 & 10.1.1 5 port usb 3.5 bay hub cr-rw/dvd Toshiba R1102 drive Lots of blue lights Thanks for your eyes n' ears. Hopefully I can inspire some others to do some kewl mac mods! [center][thumb:1418,middle] Hit the power button and woah, this thing lights up! And most important, it boots up too ;-)[/center] [center][thumb:1409,middle] A front shot.[/center] [center][thumb:1421,middle] Open sesame, the wire covers look nice![/center] [center][thumb:1421,middle] Nother shot inside.[/center] [center][thumb:1424,middle] One more shot, k scotty beam me down now. Note: these pictures are kinda harsh, G4 glows a nice bright blue, must be the cathode tube messing with the camera's optics. Anyway you get the idea.[/center]

SE/30CD

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 12:34:22 -0700

by Ian at www.Fantasticthings.co.uk [center][image:1328][/center] [b]The SE/30 - An Overview[/b] For those of you not familiar with the SE/30, here's a brief rundown of the facts. The SE/30 is the finest compact Mac Apple ever produced, second only to the highly sought after Colour Classic I & II. It has the same all in one design as the earlier SE, but is much faster. Originally designed to take a maximum of 32mb of RAM, by using 16mb simms you can bump it up to a whopping 128mb! Although slow by modern standards, we love our SE/30 and use it for email, newsgroups, Irc, and writing scripts to send to the BBC. Oddly, they don't seem interested in a 'Mice on the Mouse Organ' spin off series, or 'Charlie Mouse - P.I.' [b]Our Mac![/b] [thumb:1322,middle] We're going to put this 'ere CD-ROM drive into this 'ere Macintosh! Anyway, onto our Mac. Our SE/30 has 20mb of RAM, an 850mb Hard Drive and is running System 7.5.5. [b]Why do this?[/b] You can of course attach an external CD-Rom drive via the SCSI port on the back of the machine, but this means an extra power socket is needed, and you end up with leads everywhere. This way everything is neatly stored in the one box. It also makes a dandy CD player! Just connect it up to an amp and you're away! Or plug some headphones into the front and chill while you work! [b]How we did it and what we used.[/b] [thumb:1354,middle] You can see our homemade long T-15 wrench on the right. The hacksaw on the left proved to be an essential. [b]Tools we used:[/b] [list][*]Long T-15 wrench [PICTURE] [*]Assorted screw drivers [*]Glue [*]Hacksaw [*]Needle files [*]Spanners [*]Drill [*]Pliers[/list] [b]Hardware we used:[/b] [list][*]50 pin SCSI CD-Rom drive [*]Half height floppy drive taken from an LC475 [*]SCSI cable with 2 drive connections [*]Standard PC power splitter [*]3.5" to 5.25" mounting brackets.[/list] [b]The Initial Idea:[/b] The plan goes thus: The SE/30 floppy drive is full height. Take this out and fit the CD-ROM in it's place, cutting a section out of the front of the case for the tray to pop out. Above that fit the slimmer floppy drive from the LC475 and the hard drive into the existing hard drive cradle. Then cut a new slot for the floppy drive. [b]Potential Problems:[/b] The floppy drive screws to the inner cage. The hard drive cradle then screws to the floppy drive. With the CD-Rom drive replacing the floppy, it may be tricky to fix the hard drive cradle. Can the PSU cope with the extra demand? Yes, we think so. The CD-ROM drive covers the only expansion slot. We may never be able to add a network card. The internal speaker is in the way and will need to be relocated. [h3]Step By Step[/h3] [b]Opening up:[/b] [b]Note:[/b] These sections are also relevant if you're opening up a Mac SE or a Plus [thumb:1317,middle] If you're opening up a Mac Plus, there is an extra screw behind the battery cover. Using the T-15 wrench, undo the 4 screws. The two black ones at the bottom, and the two deep in the handle. We made our own long wrench by cutting an L shaped tool and using it in a cheap multi-bit screwdriver. You can use a long flat head screwdriver if you've one the right width, and if the screws are not too tight, but this isn't recommended as you can damage the screw heads. If your Mac has the reset button on the side, take it off. It's just clipped on. Place the Mac face down and gently pull the back of the case away. [b]Removing the logic board:[/b] Remove the shielding from the bottom of the Mac. [thumb:1350,middle] Looking down onto the board from the back. Carefully pull the floppy cable from the board, followed by the hard drive cable. Slide the board towards you a fraction so you can get your big clumsy hand to the power cable. On the back in the middle of the connector is a catch. Squeeze the catch at the top and gently disconnect the cable. [thumb:1356,middle] You can see the tabs on the right side of the board that must be lined up with the notches in the cage. [thumb:1324,middle] The board removed. Now slide the logic board up until the notches on the right side match up with the notches on the cage. Gently lift the board out then pull away from the left side, but not too far as the speaker cable is still attached. Make a mental note of where the speaker cable is plugged in and remove. Place the board somewhere safe. You don't want to sit on it! [b]Removing the drives:[/b] [thumb:1337,middle] An empty Mac. Unscrew the hard drive cradle from the floppy drive and remove. Then remove the four screws fixing the floppy drive, and remove the drive. That's the easy bit. [b]The Speaker:[/b] [thumb:1352,middle] Once the speaker is removed you need to get rid of the lip as you can, but gently. The speaker has four fixings, but only two of them are actually holding in the speaker. We cut one of the fixings and then gently twisted the speaker out. The lip was then cut away to allow the CD-ROM drive to go right up to the front of the case. Some of the lip can be twisted out with a pair of pliers as the plastic is quite soft, but care must be taken as some of those grooves at the front are vents that are only fixed in a couple of places, so they are quite flimsy once you start prodding around. Once the speaker was free the cable was stuck between the front case and the cage. We removed the two screws under the cage, prised the cage and front cover apart slightly, and then slid the wire left (away from the PSU) until it came free, then we just pulled it out. [b]The CD-ROM Drive:[/b] [thumb:1333,middle] After removing fascia we replaced the front of the tray. We used a Toshiba drive. The standard Apple driver doesn't support it, but separate drivers are available. Or you can modify the Apple driver with ResEdit which may then do the job. Using a paperclip we opened the drive and removed the front of the tray, and then the front cover of the drive itself. We then replaced the front of the tray. Why? If you don't do this the drive will be too far back in the case when fitted. [thumb:1331,middle] By marking the edges of the floppy slot on the CD tray, and then removing the front of the tray and holding it over the slot, we marked out the hole for the CD tray. We placed the drive in position. We then marked on the front of the tray the position of the floppy drive slot. Then we removed the drive and the front of the tray, placed the front of the tray over the slot and lined up the marks. We then marked out where the hole for the tray needed to be cut. When the CD-Rom drive is eventually in place, the bottom of the drive is at the same level as the bottom of the floppy drive slot. So we just needed to extend the floppy drive slot for the bottom cut. The top's not as easy. The groove above the tray is a vent, and a bit flimsy. We could of course remove the groove completely but then the hole for the tray would be too high, and not look correct. [thumb:1339,middle] The first rough cut. We cut well within th elines and then filed it out as needed. The case is very soft plastic and easily cut. We took our time and cut well inside the lines, widening them with the needle files or knife afterwards to the correct size. Once the tray hole was cut we placed the drive in the Mac to make sure it was about the right size, and in the right place! Small adjustments can be made later. We then took the original CD-Rom cover, and broke any protruding bits of plastic off the back. Then, using the cover as a template we marked out where the holes needed to be cut for the headphone socket, volume control, LED and eject button. The smaller holes were cut by drilling first and then filing them out. [thumb:1341,middle] The smaller holes were drilled and then filed out. We used a hot needle to make a hole for the manual eject. You can just see it to the right of the eject button. You can also see the small hard drive LED lens above the CD drive. This marks the top of the new floppy drive slot, too. The CD-ROM drive then sits nicely up to the case, with everything sticking through as it should. You don't have to cut holes for the headphone socket and volume control of course, but if your drive has them you would have to remove them, otherwise the drive won't sit up to the case. Also remember that the volume control only effects the headphone socket. The audio out on the back of the drive is uneffected by it, and the Mac itself cannot control the CD volume. [b]Fixing the drive in place:[/b] The drive was screwed to the cage from underneath. Amazingly, we found that 3 of the 4 fixing holes on the bottom of the drive lined up with existing holes already in the bottom of the inner cage. [thumb:1326,middle] The CD drive is place. In the end it was only screwed to the cage at the front, and the rear was lifted using a couple of fnuts, which were then glued in place. The back of the drive needed to be raised until the front of the tray was in the right position. We fixed the CD-Rom to the cage using the front two fixings, and then raised the back using nuts, wedged and then glued in place. [thumb:1346,middle] With the Mac open, we connected the drive power to the CD-ROM and tested to see if the tray would open and close correctly. Small adjustments were then made. We were careful as the tube is powered up at this point. We then connected the power to the CD drive and switched it on, just to make sure the tray opened and closed properly. [b]The Floppy Drive:[/b] [thumb:1335,middle] The original floppy drive on the left, and the drive from the LC475 on the right. Quite a difference in height. The LC475 drive has the front fascia with dust flap removed here, but it was put back on for the final fixing. Tricky this one. The drive had to lay straight on top of the CD drive for the slot to be in the right place, so it needed to be fixed from the side. We could of course glue it to the CD drive, but then we'd struggle if we ever needed to replace either the floppy or the CD-ROM in the future. Using two brackets designed to fix a 3.5" hard drive into a 5.25" drive bay we sorted it. With the drive held in place we cut out a section of the case for the floppy disk. The hole was made a little wider at one side so we can push the disk right in. [thumb:1343,middle] The freshly cut floppy disk slot. [thumb:1318,middle] Above you can see the floppy drive with the hard drive mounted on top, with the two brackets on the left. [thumb:1325,middle] Here we've outlined the back fixing for the lower bracket. The front of the bracket is bolted to the expansion card fixing. Because the bracket is only fixed to the front expansion card fixing, there is a lot of movement there. So the rear bolt, which is fixed straight to the cage, is spaced to keep the floppy drive from swinging away from the front of the case. [thumb:1320,middle] You can see above the two bolts. The second bracket was then turned the other way up and fixed to the rear expansion card fixing. Using large washers the front of the second bracket was trapped using the spaced bolt, and the whole thing became rigid. Then we fixed one bracket to the drive. Then the bracket was fixed to the front expansion card fixing. The cage is a little flexible here so to keep the floppy drive lined up the back of the bracket was spaced with a bolt and several nuts. [b]The Hard Drive:[/b] [thumb:1344,middle] The hard drive is fixed to the top bracket as mentioned before. It is only fixed on this side, although that seems adequate. The picture here shows the drive too close to the tube. This way caused severe bowing of the screen image at the bottom. We turned the drive the other way around, and moved it as far back as possible, which sorted the problem. Before attempting the fix the drive we extended the wires for the LED and connected them to the drive. We fixed the second bracket to the other expansion card fixing hole, and then trapped the front behind one of the washers used on the spacing bolt. This also holds the floppy drive in place. The hard drive was then fixed to the bracket. We found that the drive had to be fixed with the power and SCSI connector towards the tube, otherwise the bottom of the screen image was bowed up in the centre, which caused distortion to any horizontal images. The drive also needs to be as far back as possible, to prevent distortion. [b]The Speaker:[/b] We mounted this to the back of the cage using an existing screw. [b]Hard Drive LED:[/b] The LED lens was removed to make way for the floppy drive. We then cut a small slot below one of the vents to one side of the new floppy drive slot and glued this in place. The LED was held in place behind the lens using soft putty. You could also glue it in place. [b]Plugging Things Back In:[/b] [thumb:1358,middle] You can see the speaker in it's new home. When the hard drive was turned around and moved further back, the speaker was moved to a higher postion, using an existing fixing screw. There's not a lot of room for all the cables either. Once the drives were fixed, it was time to fit the logic board back in place. The speaker cable was reattached first, then the board was slid into place. Then we reconnected all the leads to the drives and the logic board. The power splitter is used to connect to the CD and hard drives. The floppy drive has power and data fed through the one lead. Our 2 way SCSI cable was plenty long enough. The floppy cable was only just long enough to reach. [thumb:1348,middle] All systems go! You can see the floppy slot here too. The slot was made wider on the right side so you can push the disk right in. The hard drive LED is mounted right of the floppy slot, in the groove level with the bottom of the slot. With everything reconnected we plugged it in to see what would happen. A pleasant 'Ding' sound was made, and it booted up like the trooper it is! We installed the CD-Rom extension before the modification to save hassle. Then we tested the CD and floppy drives before putting the case back together. [thumb:1328,middle] The audio CD has been recognised, as has the PeeCee formatted floppy disk! Success! [b]Things still to do:[/b] If the SE/30 is going to be permanently connected to an amp, it would be tidier to mount an audio jack on the back of the Mac (like the standard audio out already there), and connect it to the audio out on the back of the CD-Rom drive. Some of the cutting is still a little rough and needs tidying, perhaps some rubbing down with very fine paper will sort it. [b]Problems after the modification:[/b] Before we turned the hard drive round, the bottom half of the screen suffered from bad distortion. It was a severe bowing upwards. That has now gone, although about a inch from the bottom of the screen there is a small strip that bows very slightly, without affecting the display above or below it. But this is very minimal, and isn't really noticeable. [b]There must be a better way?:[/b] If you put the slimmer floppy drive in the same place as the original then the slot doesn't line up. Leaving the original floppy fitted and then mounting the CD-ROM above it is a possibility, although that would be really cramped, and it's unlikely that you would fit everything in. Fitting a slot loading CD-ROM drive would look much neater, especially if you just cut a slot for the CD, and forgot about the buttons and lights etc. It may also be possible to mount a slot loading CD-ROM pointing upwards. A slot could then be cut in the top of the case front to back, and the CD would be dropped in like a toaster, just like the DVD drive on the G4 Cube! [b]How about other compact Macs?:[/b[ There's no reason why this couldn't be done with a Mac SE, as they use the same case. There's no way this could be done on a Mac Plus. There's no internal SCSI port for one, and secondly there's barely room for a hard drive, let alone a CD-Rom drive. We've never seen the inside of a Classic or Classic II so we couldn't say. Although the Classic has a curved front so a slot loading drive would be in order. It has been done to a Colour Classic though. Check out Cybermouse's page for links to other sites featuring customised Macs of all kinds!

MacAlly Micro Optical Mod

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 20:51:25 -0700

by rEdmAc [center][image:1157][/center] [hr] [center][image:1158][/center] I bought this MacAlly Micro Optical Mouse when I was at the 2002 San Fransisco Macworld Expo with my friend Paul. He commented that if someone could change the original red light to a blue one it would be great. That was the beginning of this mod. [center][image:1160] [image:1163][/center] After taking apart the mouse a few times, I got it all figured out. I bought a blue 3.6v, 20mA, 2600mcd LED from the local RadioShack and dropped it in. From the mod, I learned a few important things: 1. Be sure you get the polarity correct, that is, make sure you have the positive (+) and negative (-) legs of the LED inserted in the proper holes. I used a fine tip marker to mark the negative leg of the original LED and then compared it to the new one. That way, you know which leg goes in the proper socket. [center][image:1161][/center] 2. The LED housing has a small latch that holds the LED in pretty firmly. You need to either push down on the LED a bit or use a jeweler's screwdriver to lift the latch in order to get the LED out. [center][image:1159][/center] 3. Once you get the new LED situated inside the housing, you need to bend the legs ninety degrees in order to solder it on the board. Measure by eye the edge of the housing and use that as a guide for your bend. [center][image:1157][/center] When you're done, snap the case back together and there you have it--a mouse of a different color!

Rice Rocket Mouse

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 18:23:19 -0800

by Robert McCann and Brett Sawyer [center][image:1153][/center] So, Brett got this mouse as a mouse to use with his iBook, but it just wasn't kewl enough to actually haul it out of his bag to use. We get the brilliant (notice sarcastic overtones) idea to modify the mouse with some LED's. I say that sarcastically because getting this apart is worse then working on old pc's and ford station tarus wagons combined. Now we must all bow and worship at Brett's mad skillz with getting this thing apart. I don't have any pictures of getting it apart as this was done a couple of weeks before doing any soldering on it. Not to mention it would be too graphic (ie: WARNING: Parents strongly cautioned, extreeme blood and violence) [center][image:1154] [image:1155][/center] We went to our friendly Radio Shack (they love me there) and got a few various LED's. Being on a very tight budget (poor coledge students) we got 1 blue and two green. Our initial experementation led to this... It was kind of nifty, very multi colored, but just wasn't bright enough. The blue and red pretty much drown out the green, and well, we wanted more blue! As such, we never re-assembled this one, so I don't have any better pics of it. So we got on ebay and ordered up some (100) ultra bright blue LED's. [center][image:1153][/center] 5 straight hours of soldering and a hour re-assembeling in the morning and we get the Rice Rocket Mouse. Now mind you, I'm not a big fan of Rice Rockets (if you don't know what I'm talking about visit www.ricecop.com and www.anti-rice.com) but they are flashy and so is this. Here are a couple of more picture for you viewing pleasure. sorry I don't have any picture's of the actual guts of this one, but same basic consept. If your counting LED's there are 7. One is slightly hidden as it is replaces the red main one. And just for note, this is a fully functional mouse. the click works, amazingly enough, and so does the tracking. I really haven't used this one, but the blue one I have in my microsoft mouse works fine. [center][image:1152] [image:1151][/center]

Extra Mouse Button

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 20:56:49 -0700

by Phil Stewart [center][image:1148][/center] A while back, while searching for a cheap USB hub, I happened across a sale on an "upgrade package" which included hub, mouse, and mousepad. I had no particular use for another mouse or mousepad, but the package was about as much as the cheapest hub alone, so I went for it. The USB hub is now serving its intended purpose, the mousepad wound up in use after a few got lost in a move, but the mouse has remained an orphan. It's not a terrible mouse, but not an improvement over anything we already had. One night, while watching TV, I found both mouse and screwdriver within arm's reach, and made an interesting discovery. [center][image:1147][/center] The mouse is a USB mouse, made by microConnectors, model number OK-520. Immediately above is the mouse before modification. Its biggest flaw was always the fact that it had only a single button. One button may be enough for Steve Jobs, but I've been spoiled by two buttons for too long to go back. Well, when I opened it up, and discovered markings on the circuitboard for three buttons, labeled SWL, SWM, and SWR. Only SWM has anything connected to it, that being the one button. However, it seemed obvious that the mouse was at least intended to have multiple buttons at some point. I'm guessing they stand for Switch Left, Switch Middle, and Switch Right. I looked at the tracings on the back. The top terminal on SWM ran to the black ground wires on the USB cable, as did the top terminals on SWL and SWR. The button terminal on SWM ran to a pin on the little integrated circuit, while SWL and SWR's lower terminals didn't connect to anything. I noticed two unused pins on the chip next to the one for the button, and I got the idea that these might actually be intended for other buttons. Of course, I had no driver to support these things, but luckily OS X supports two buttons on it's own, so, feeling daring, I plugged the disassembled mouse into my iBook, and bridge the second pin over to the ground. To my delight, a little contextual menu popped up. I'd found the connection for the second button! [center][image:1144][/center] I soldered a wire to SWR (and, I must admit, to SWL ,before I realized what I was doing and that I'd probably want the button on the other side) Soldering on the chip was a little too scary for me, given my limited skills with such fine work, so I simply made a little loop with the end of the wire, and wrapped it around the appropriate pin with the help of some very small needlenose pliers. I attached a little switch I bought at Radio Shack to the leads. I'd wanted a much nicer, larger, flatter switch, but when it came right down to it, I had to use what would fit, and this was all I could find that would worked. Below is a close-up diagram of what I did: [center][image:1145][/center] I cut the large single button in half, being sure to leave the entire hinge portion attached to the left hand part, leaving the left side attached as it was before and able to be used normally. Into the right part, I drilled a hole, and put the switch through. It didn't quite line up with the opening in the plastic below it, so I brutally tore at the edge of the white plastic with vise-grips until the button could go through. Then I superglued the piece into place, leveling it slightly with a scrap of plastic to keep it in line with the rest of the button. The button, while not what I'd intended, works great. My only complaint, really the only thing I'd do differently, is that there's no 'click' to the button, so if you're using it in some way in which there's no visual cue, it's hard to tell if you've pushed it in far enough. I assume it's possible that with the correct driver (probably a generic driver, like USB Overdrive, would work just fine) one could also use the third button by grounding the third pin from the left on the pin, but, alas, I was unable to test that idea, but I'd be interested if some one tries it. It's also possible it might work as a scroll wheel, but I think if the mouse had been intended to have one, then that would have been the middle switch, rather than the single button, which amounts to a left click.