[HN Gopher] M1 Inside a G4 Sunflower iMac
___________________________________________________________________
M1 Inside a G4 Sunflower iMac
Author : xqcgrek2
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-10-07 19:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| Wouldn't the resolution on that be pretty trash if they haven't
| replaced the panel?
| kccqzy wrote:
| It would be 1680x1050. If you don't care about Retina it's
| enough resolution.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| A)There's a TON of dead air space in a Mac Mini B)the main board
| would fit nicely where the DVD drive was in the iMac...this would
| end up being an 'easy' project, based on modern tech being so
| much smaller, except C) Interfacing with the monitor would take a
| little doing...pretty sure it's not HDMI
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think for a practical machine the screen would just be too
| low-res these days, I'd put a more modern LCD in there too if I
| could although if it's anything like the PowerBooks of that era
| it'll be a bit of a faff.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| It has been done!
| https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/imac-g4-mod-
| with-27-curve...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| That's really impressive!
| djrogers wrote:
| 1680x1050 isn't horrible for a 20" screen, and it's taller
| than a 16:19 display to boot.
|
| If you don't insist on retina for your 20" monitors, it
| wouldn't be remotely impractical.
| alexjplant wrote:
| In college (so about a decade ago) I bought one of these and put
| Debian on it. I used it for a year to play Marathon, run XMMS,
| browse the web, and write OCaml for school. IIRC there was no
| driver for the Nvidia display chipset so it had to use software
| rendering but it still (barely) managed to keep up. Fun times!
|
| Later on I decided to install a more spiritually-appropriate OS
| and threw OpenBSD on it. It sat on my kitchen bar and didn't see
| much use until I ended up tossing it during a move last year.
|
| Great machine. My grandparents had a Mac catalog at the turn of
| the millennium that advertised these and boasted about how the
| processors outperformed P4s with double the clock speed. I didn't
| believe them back then but now I know better ;-)
| [deleted]
| StrangeDoctor wrote:
| I did this about 6 years ago with a NUC, many hours of work went
| into it. Spent so many hours converting the display cable into a
| dvi connector so any computer could be fit in. Replacing the
| screen panel was beyond my skill at the time, the springs in the
| neck and odd data & power cables make that a real pain.
|
| This version is really slick.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I remember the whole 'megahurtz myth' being a thing at around
| that time. Apple swore blind that its 1.4 GHz G4 machines were
| comparable to an equivalent, far higher clock speed P4. I
| didn't know about pipelining, OOE, and vector extensions to be
| able to judge that at the time. Was it true? The P4 was a very
| limited, long pipelined chip, but I don't know what the G4 was
| actually like in comparison.
|
| One thing that I do remember about those machines is that they
| were massively memory bandwidth limited though, and iirc took
| PC100 ram at a time when everyone else had PC166 at least...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Yes a G4 was quite a bit faster than a P4 clock for clock,
| especially on floating point and vector operations and used
| quite little power too.
|
| You can go watch the annual videos where they show photoshop
| benchmarks running faster on the G3, G4 and G5s. But Intel
| did take the lead on occasion and kept up mostly. XP also
| felt faster in UI than early Mac OS X versions, although it
| did more and improved later on.
| freediver wrote:
| Bought one of these just few weeks ago. iMac G4 is peak Apple
| design, doesn't get much better than this.
| cehrlich wrote:
| That's wonderful. The "Lamp" iMac is my favourite design they've
| ever done. I wish I had the need for a computer that this project
| could satisfy.
| machinevision wrote:
| Mine too. I had one as a teenager and it was just wonderful to
| use.
| sedan_baklazhan wrote:
| As a retro-computer kind of person, I find this disgusting :-)
| cestith wrote:
| It would hurt to see a working unit dismantled for this, but if
| it was already broken then it'd be fine by me.
| iSnow wrote:
| That's really good looking, if only we could replace the display
| with a Retina density one...
| sgt wrote:
| My thought too. Once you get used to retina, you can't go back.
| jandrese wrote:
| Oh man, the poll below that post makes me weep. Between a Youtube
| video and a Blog post the Youtube video is winning by a country
| mile even though a text post would almost certainly be superior
| for people who want to know the details of how this was done.
|
| I happen to have a spare M1 Mac mini and a G4 at home so this
| project has my interest. The biggest question for me is how to
| interface the monitor.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Yes. It must be a generational divide or something. I see so
| many 20 minute videos that could be a 5 minute read and they
| have tons of views. I don't get it.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| How about g5 ... daughter card ... or just replace the whole
| motherboard ...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| This is absolutely wonderful, excellent concept and execution.
| I've been tempted to use a Power Mac G5 case for a modern build
| running helloSystem (a Tiger-ish skinned FreeBSD distribution)
| but this is far cooler!
|
| In my opinion the '00s produced some absolutely wonderful visual
| designs across Apple's product range. The fifth generation iPod,
| first generation iPhone, and pretty much all the iMacs and
| MacBooks from 2002-2008 are just really nice _objects_ to look at
| and touch. This is true for the software as well, Tiger remains
| to this day my favourite interface for any OS ever and I think it
| 's a real shame you can't skin modern macs to look like 2005-era
| macs!
| arcticbull wrote:
| I actually did an mATX retrofit on an old PowerMac G5 tower I
| picked up on Craigslist for $20. Took some Dremel work, an
| adapter motherboard tray, a front panel conversion kit, some
| Noctua NF-A9 fans, uh, an SFX-L power supply and a few sliced
| fingers - but I'm very happy with how it turned out!
|
| The airflow really can't be beat, it's a gorgeous case, and
| it's remarkably quiet.
|
| There's a subreddit for this, r/G5mods
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| My favorite iterations of early Aqua are those seen in 10.2
| through 10.4, too. 10.4 would be on top, but I prefer the matte
| menubar used in 10.2 and 10.3.
|
| 10.5 and 10.6's Aqua aren't bad and certainly better than the
| newer flat looks, but I was never a big fan of the darker metal
| look taken on by window chrome in those versions. Aqua in
| 10.2-10.4 was much more bright and cheery, and as strange as it
| may sound that reflected in my mood when using my Macs.
|
| Out of the later iterations of Aqua I think the best is that of
| 10.9. It pulls back on the darkening brought by 10.5/10.6 while
| refining the rough edges that came with 10.7 and 10.8, and as a
| whole reminds me a lot of 10.2-10.4 Aqua minus the brushed
| metal.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Completely agree.
|
| Tiger was the most pleasing OS I've used from a visual
| perspective. It was also peak skeuomorphic design. I miss Scott
| Forstall's influence in every Apple product since he's been
| gone.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| agree entirely : also just want to mention the NeXTstation
| pizza boxes were just awesome magnesium cases, and, having had
| one 28 years ago, i sure wish i'd kept mine rather than sell it
| online....it would be a great case for anything modern.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Only thing I disliked was their keyboard layout, I can't
| think of a more awkward place for the power button than
| sandwiched between your brightness and volume controls.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The magnesium mass would be really fun to figure out how to
| use as a passive sink a-la-Noctua NH-P1.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > In celebration of Steve Job's life and his inspiration to many,
| I wanted to show a passion project I've been working on that I
| think Steve would be proud of. Something that wasn't possible 20
| years ago but is now.
|
| Steve Jobs didn't strike me as the kind of person who'd be
| _proud_ of a fan doing something like this.
| hinkley wrote:
| There was an anniversary edition over ten years ago, but the
| last time a decade passed by they didn't seem to do anything
| special. Might have something to do with how much money they
| make off of non-Mac sales, or maybe Steve was super enthused
| and everyone else was just humoring him. I suspect the headache
| of managing a low-volume specialty product is substantial.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I think you're thinking of the Twentieth Anniversary
| Macintosh, released in spring 1997 a few months before Steve
| Jobs came back as CEO. He reportedly hated the computer[1]
| and canceled it soon after he came back[2].
|
| [1] https://www.engadget.com/2009-03-20-remembering-the-
| tam.html
|
| [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/3066213/the-one-jony-ive-
| compute...
| djxfade wrote:
| *over twenty years ago
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| There's an other Steve at Apple who loves that kind of
| tinkering however.
| st_goliath wrote:
| > There's an other Steve at Apple ...
|
| *There Woz
|
| Assuming you mean Wozniak, who left in 1985[1]. Then again,
| the company is big enough, I cannot exclude the existence of
| other Steves[2], some of whom might like this kind of
| tinkering.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak#Final_departu
| re_...
|
| [2] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneSteveLimit
| sgt wrote:
| Wozniak is actually still an Apple employee.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Woz mentioned in an interview that he
| still "reports to Steve" on the Org Chart.
|
| Edit: "Based on the last Apple organizational chart that
| he was aware of, Wozniak said that he still reported to
| Jobs."
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/18/steve-wozniak-still-on-
| apple...
| mhh__ wrote:
| Apple's entire being seems to be against allowing the customer
| any control at all. Maybe it was different years ago but every
| Apple product I've touched has been a very pretty prison (which
| isn't necessarily a bad thing)
| dijit wrote:
| I seem to recall, though I can't find it: Steve Jobs (while
| working at NeXt) talking about Apple and the different people
| vying for control of the company.
|
| He said (and I'm paraphrasing of course) that there are
| people who really want to push computing forward, and there
| are people who want to be like Sony and make an integrated
| commodity. He said that there's a marriage between the two
| that could be had "but sadly the Sony guys are winning".
|
| I'm not an apologist for Jobs, I don't really care for the
| man enough to love _or_ hate him the way most seem to, but I
| believe he was as much a product of the company values as
| anyone else was.
|
| I'm considered to be very hard nosed and pushing the
| direction of my company forward and often I clash with
| people, and granted, I'm not at the top of the company, but
| the people around me still shape my mentality a lot.
| nojito wrote:
| >Apple's entire being seems to be against allowing the
| customer any control at all.
|
| If customers were right we would have never had touchscreen
| phones.
| mhh__ wrote:
| OK but when can I run gcc on my ipad
| smoldesu wrote:
| If Steve Jobs was right we'd still be holding it wrong.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| How great would that have been. Touchscreens have been one
| of the greatest setbacks in computing history. This comment
| was typed on a touchscreen.
| rahoulb wrote:
| Then again, he made his start dismantling phone kit and making
| free long distance calls just to find out how it all worked
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Then again, he made his start dismantling phone kit and
| making free long distance calls just to find out how it all
| worked
|
| Are you talking about this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box:
|
| > Blue box designed and built by Steve Wozniak and sold by
| Steve Jobs before they founded Apple. Displayed at the
| Powerhouse Museum, from the collection of the Computer
| History Museum[1]
|
| Also: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/
| the-d...
|
| If so, you might have your Apple Computer Steves mixed up.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Blue boxes were around long before Woz made his. Also red
| boxes, pink boxes, black boxes, yellow boxes, and a few
| others. Each had its purpose.
|
| /Former phreaker and cypherpunk
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Someone could make a mint with a high-quality, Sunflower-style
| base for the VESA-mount M1 iMac. Make it a docking station with
| some additional I/O, maybe a color-matched accent of some kind,
| and you'd have a winner.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Come to think of it, it _would_ be nice to bring back the iMac G4
| form factor, or something similarly playful.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I really miss the playfulness and willingness to experiment in
| some of the old designs. Even the G4 cube was a really
| interesting idea, even if it had issues.
|
| As much as the asthetic doesn't appeal to me, I love that a lot
| of gamers mod their PCs with lights and other effects and
| really pimp them up. I like that people are having fun with the
| objects that fill their lives. Sometime all the sleek modernism
| just gets a bit soulless.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Apple should leapfrog them by creating an Apple Silicon
| gaming computer with a gradient of flickering lights that
| isn't just rainbow colors.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The cube is weird to me. I wasn't around when it came out,
| but I have seen one or two online and in person. I find it
| intensely ugly but also really beautiful at the same time.
| It's almost like an ugly baby. It's ugly, but it's alive and
| it's yours.
| filereaper wrote:
| Totally agree about the playfulness.
|
| I still remember this ad for the G4 which feels very similar to
| Luxo Jr. from Pixar. Really fun.
|
| https://youtu.be/b5P3QDm61go
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| That is remarkably polished - can't even tell from the outside
| that it's been refitted:)
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Somewhat related: Hackintosh inside a G4
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34en3ET7cqY
|
| (Make sure to turn on subtitles when watching.)
| gedy wrote:
| Really nice! I'd be tempted to instead replace the whole screen
| with the new iMac VESA (https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-
| vesa) and just use the base as a stand
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-08 23:01 UTC)