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Build a Macintosh From Scratch
Posted by
pudge
on Sun Sep 15, 2002 03:36 PM
from the more-diy dept.
from the more-diy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "MacOpz has posted a great step-by-step tutorial on building your own G4-based Macintosh from scratch. This article includes where to get parts, what modifications must be performed, and tons of photographs. A must-read for anyone that wants a Mac but doesn't want to pay Apple prices."
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Price... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and of course you also have to purchase MacOS.
Re:Price... (Score:2)
Re:Price... (Score:4, Informative)
Man oh man.
In the old days
OK, children, gather round for today's bowl of clue.
First of all, if you're gonna talk Apple mods, then start at applefritter [applefritter.com]. They've built Macs into everything from 1930's radios to LEGO people to ziplock bags.
Next, (I can't believe that I'm doing this twice in one day!), let's get the vendors and refs out of the way:
Mac of All Trades [macofalltrades.com] Getcher used macs here! Pretty visuals, delicious prices, detailed info. Selection could be better and there's no old stuff at all but I can deal with that. Have I bought from them yet? Nope. Am I likely to in the future? Yep.
MacResq [macreq.com] The best place I've found overall to pick up gear. Even the guys in that article figured that out.
Powermax [www.powermax.com] Cheesy setup, improving selection, good prices.
Shreve [shrevesystems.com] Expensive, distracting, but the best place to get weird low-end stuff like Mac Plus manuals and Daystar cards.
Small Dog [smalldog.com] Shrinking selection, great quality, excellent service, annoying interface. Bottom line, these are the guys to turn to for premium service, support, and savvy. Been around quite a while and, hey, they enclose coupons for Ben and Jerry's.
Guide to Mac CPUs [apple.com]This is Apple's own site for detailed specs on all their machines ever. I'm starting you off on the page for older machines to remind you that a well-configured 1996 Mac w/ a USB/Firewire card can run OSX just fine, thank you very much.
Focus of Mac Hardware [miningco.com] good workaday resource for doing mods. No cool toys. Considerable good data.
Missoula Mac User Group [missoulamac.com], Yeah, I know that you haven't heard of them; neither has anybody else outside of Montana AFAIK. Best place for overall newbie resources.
ResExcellence [resexcellence.com] In the old days I would have suggested MacFixit, but these guys have taken their place. If you've been in the Mac world for a while you'll recognize them as the old-time source extraordinaire of ResEdit hacks.
Think Secret [thinksecret.com] The only rumor site I like that I forgot to mention yesterday.
/.,
Okay, moving right along. CPUs. Those yahoos think that the only option is to start from scratch. Get a clue. The last pre-Jobs big boxes kicked almighty ass. Amelio may not have been a gifted businessman but he was a much better heavy gear guy. As far as I'm concerned your best bet for DIY is to buy an 8600. It'll be $230, tops. You get a great case, big power supply, floppy drive, cables, and so on. Probably also a Zip, for which I will pity you as that model of Zip just LOVED to come down with the Click o' Death. Even if you flat throw out all the electronics you're still way ahead of starting from a place like Tom's.
Next, processor speed. When will those yahoos figure it out? Before you get obsessed with latest and greatest ask yourself, "what exactly will I be DOING with this machine?" If you're running stuff like BBEdit (ah, my one true love!) or Photoshop for still work then any 400MHz box with fast drives and plenty of RAM will be, for all intents and purposes, instantanteous. Buying anything faster just means that you're acting like the small-donged dimwits who buy $20K stereos to get fidelity five times better then they can hear.
Drives. I'm always amazed at how terrified Windoze-damaged (let alone *nix) folks are at the thought of external drives. Get over it, already. On a Mac all that driver clash claptrap is a distant and not very credible folktale. Get a basic little 6 Gig internal and invest your money in external Firewire devices. You think this LAN party stuff is cool? On a Mac pretty much any well configured boot drive will boot any similar recent Mac. Stop carrying your entire box with you; stick to drives. Even better, get two or three smaller ones instead of one big one and, short of FBI seizures and vast fires, you become crash proof. Mac dies? Plug your drive (you did remember to back up your core data, right?) into another Mac and you're up and running again in minutes.
The future. If you're such an almighty techie that you just *need* to build a new cooler world every year or so, then remember, Mach kernel plus gigabit ethernet equals mongo shared resources. Even if you're too lazy to set up a formal Beowolf system, it's pretty damned easy to just keep adding machines and splitting the jobs between them. Instead of buying a whole new box, maybe you should just buy a second one and start spreading load to it.
OSes. Yup. No question, Jaguar is pretty spiffy. But almost every vendor site above (as well as eBay and co.) will sell you older legit disks and serial num.s for about fifty bucks. If you buy from a place like Small Dog you'll even be clearing out some of that famed Apple back inventory.
That's it. You want more? Then go to my site [reedandwright.com] already (though best to wait a few weeks for my next redesign). Want more then that? Then pay me and I'll think about it.
Promising to not ever again use up time posting tutorials on
Rustin
Parent
Re:Price... (Score:3, Informative)
It is a BIG problem that the older Macs run a 50, 45 or even a 40 mhz bus. That just doesn't carry the day for me anymore. I speak from experience because I'm running an ancient PowerCurve at 350mhz G3 with a 50 mhz (overclocked) bus. When I went from a 266mhz to a 350, I hardly noticed the difference. These machines are starved for data. My girlfriend bought a 466mhz G4 running a 133mhz bus and that makes all the difference in the world. Her machine spanks another friend's 450 G4 running a 100mhz bus.
I agree with you about not bothering doing it from scratch. Just get a G4 running with a 133mhz bus and a G4 7410 CPU and you're set for a couple of years.
Overall, the high price of used Apple parts and complete equipment tells us there is a much larger market demand that Apple's stupid, thumbhead, prima-dona, ignorant, ego-puffed leaders aren't able to supply. I believe they could easily take their market share up to 15% if they could get their manufacturing act together.
Re:Price... (Score:3, Insightful)
Calling an argument "semantics" is just a pejorative way of admitting that words have meanings. Governments needed to pass new laws against copyright infringement precisely because it isn't theft--if it were depriving anyone of their property, it would have been forbidden ever since our civilization adopted the rule of law.
Our society holds that private property is an inalienable right, but copyright is merely a new pragmatic bargain with creators. If you're going to rave about moral obligations, ask yourself whether society is still being well served by the variety of restrictions we are allowing creators to impose on us all, because whatever we're expecting in exchange is the only thing that makes copyright infringement immoral.
Because we all know (Score:2)
Really.. I swear..
This is from a thread on Arstechnica... (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=t
How To Make An Apple (Score:4, Funny)
Plant apple seed in ground.
Add water and fertilizer at regular intervals.
Remove weeds at regular intervals.
Eventually, you'll have an Apple.
Re:How To Make An Apple (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:How To Make An Apple (Score:2, Funny)
"In order to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
EULA violation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:EULA violation (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:EULA violation (Score:4, Insightful)
They certainly are not in Norway. If you buy a copy of MacOS X you can do whatever you want with it as long as you do not distribute it. This is also how it should be. After buying a product it just opposes all common sense of right and wrong to not be able to use the product as you see fit. Wether that is destroying it publically, running it on your elite G4-based toaster or just putting it in the refrigerator.
Parent
Re:EULA violation (Score:2)
Again, consult your llama.
Re:EULA violation (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think gas stations could get away saying: "This gas is certified to work only in Ford cars. We are not responsible if your non-Ford car blows-up."?
Re:EULA violation (Score:2)
Re:Mac OS is proprietary (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
I hate to have to be the one to break this news to you, but if you're buying a fiat, parts are all you're getting.
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Fun to read, but impractical (Score:5, Insightful)
Add the time to build eating into billable hours, and it would come out as an expensive proposition.
There are lots of reasons to build a machine yourself- better control over the parts, getting a custom config that you can't easily buy, and saving money. I wager that most people's reason to buy a Mac- it works, out of the box, to make us money- is not really compatible with those ideals.
I do agree with one sentiment addressed in the story, and that's avoiding the outlandish prices Apple charges for standard parts such as RAM and hard disks. Most savvy Mac users buy base configs and then load up the RAM and HD's via cheaper, third party suppliers.
Re:Fun to read, but impractical (Score:2)
Now, I primarily got the machine to play Windows only games, so Apple wasn't even in the running, but if it had been a general purpose computer upgrade, I might have considered the Mac, if it only had a $100-$200 price premium. But $1400 is way too much.
So this would be interesting to me, except that it turned out to be "scavenge parts to make an older generation Mac for cheap" rather than making a machine equivelent to what Apple sells now, just with a price comprable to a home-built PC, or even a Dell.
Re:Fun to read, but impractical (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh, *what*?! I have an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ machine. I am currently running XP on it and have mirc, mozilla, winamp and outlook open. I just "added another" by opening kali and it loaded in 2 seconds. Opening Word after that loaded in an impressive 1.5 seconds.
What is your definition of "bug out" exactly?
-- iCEBaLM
NOT from scratch. (Score:2, Troll)
Re:NOT from scratch. (Score:2)
The main problem with building a Mac from scratch has less to do with the parts, but it has to do with the fact that Apple is the only supplier of logic boards, and they only sell seperate logic boards (and cases, for that matter) to Apple Certified repair-people who can only install them into Macs, not re-sell them. The CPU, RAM, cooling, etc. are all pretty much stock parts or slight differences from readily available parts.
Wow! This is great! (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a great deal to me. At least I won't have to spend time on the phone with tech support, since there won't be any.
Re:Wow! This is great! (Score:2)
Reminds me of that old saying... (Score:2, Funny)
Glad to see someone is extending this brilliant principle to the Mac world.
Re:Reminds me of that old saying... (Score:2)
Really, it's a PC just for the sake of tinkering and THAT is why I decided to build it. If I were buying for my company, I'd go with Dell or Compaq.
--Mike
What about the case? (Score:3, Funny)
Why not a clone? (Score:5, Informative)
Another reason not doing it is because of the look (Score:2, Insightful)
case mod not 'building a g4' (Score:5, Insightful)
this is a glorified case-mod project for a specific end use, not 'building a g4 from scratch'.
cheaper education systems (Score:4, Interesting)
Not wanting to pay Apple prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Ouch, given that an Athlon XP 2000+ can be had for under $100, it sounds like you're still paying Apple prices.
Intel chip on logic board? (Score:3, Insightful)
"from scratch" - get real (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if he'd started from some non-Apple PPC motherboard, that would be more impressive.
Re:"from scratch" - get real (Score:3, Insightful)
who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if they had used some generic PowerPC motherboard and got it to boot OS X, that would be news. This isn't.
And why hasn't anyone linked to my (Score:4, Funny)
What next? A Mac logic board in a Mac case? (Score:5, Funny)
How long before someone takes a G4 Mac, removes the logic board from it, puts it back, and put up detailed step-by-step photos on a Web site showing what he or she has accomplished?
How To Build A Buck From Scratch (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No offense... (Score:2)
Re:No offense... (Score:2)
Re:Commercial application of this? (Score:2)
Re:Pretty cool, but its not my box of springs (Score:2, Informative)
TomsHardware.com [tomshardware.com] recently ran an article (with pictures) on how to build a PC yourself. It's really quite simple though. I have an abnormal fear of tools yet I've been building my own computers for 10 years. If you can install your own video card, you can build a computer.
Re:I want to build a SPARC, but can't buy parts (Score:2)
However if you do still feel like building a StrongARM based machine from scratch (very difficult, I hope you're into board fabbing and have the gear to solder lots of exotic surface mount components), you might want to check out the LART [tudelft.nl].
If starting from something premade is OK with you, there's an excellent developer community for Linux on iPAQs at handhelds.org [handhelds.org]. The iPAQ has a huge expansion bus that you could probably use to do neat things with. Of course some hardware hacking would still be required. You can probably get one with a broken batt and/or screen off eBay pretty cheap.
Another option for a premade unit is the Lucent/Phillips IS2630 screenphone (Shannon). There's a project to run Linux on them called TuxScreen [tuxscreen.net]. Unfortunately they don't have any more of them for sale, but you might be able to find someone who bought more than one or who is done with theirs that's willing to sell you one. This is a pretty sweet phone, and there's lots of docs on modding it, but it's sure not a PC.
The Last Thing Apple Wants To Do (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:The Last Thing Apple Wants To Do (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you are correct that Apple is a hardware company, but that is not the reason for them not using x86.
Woz himself said that he chose a Motorola clone chip for the Apple ][ because it was the cheapest CPU available at the time. Later, the Motorolla 68k was chosen for the original Macintosh for reasons of cost, performance (at the time), power efficiency, and familiarity (among Apple engineers). The PPC was developped jointly by Apple, IBM, and Motorola and it was easy to build in a compatability layer to the MacOS for running stuff from the old 680x0 chips. The G3 was branched off the very efficient PPC 603 line, and the G4 is essentially a G3 with Motorola's AltiVec system added to enhance vector performance.
If Jobs had a time machine, he very well might want to go back and tell himself to insist on a CPU that handles x86 instructions. There have been a few shining moments when the PPC platform was the fastest chip for home use around, but most of the time that has not been the case.
On the other hand, IBM went the x86 route (and an outsourced OS), and the results were disasterous for their PC division. Once Compaq reverse-engineered their ROM's, the game was over. Everybdoy was buying "IBM Compatable" computers, and no matter how good OS/2 became, there was nothing IBM could do to change the trend.
So, I agree that making the move now would be a bad idea. If Apple were to move to x86, things would be fine as long as they didn't become more than 10% or so of the market. The moment they became a bigger player than that, somebody would consider it worth their while to clone them the way Compaq cloned IBM, and Apple would change from being Dell's strongest rival to just being a very tiny Microsoft, except without an Office suite for income, almost overnight. In other words, it could kill Apple.
Parent
Re:If only apple would support this. (Score:4, Informative)
Then just buy OSX and use XPostFacto [macsales.com], which allows you to run OSX on unsupported macs. Now you have a Mac that allows you to fiddle with OSX for under $150.
Parent