My retro sleeper finally in its forever home.... god this took so long

[Ncc74656]

 

[Juror22]

I poked around a bit to find out what you were up to in there - very, very nice!

 

[Ncc74656]

I poked around a bit to find out what you were up to in there - very, very nice!

it was a long build.... lots of changes along hte way... but finally there

 

[alectrona6400]

You should document this! I have a Performa 6360 that had a PSU failure and I didn't really feel like fixing it anymore after I got my 6400. How'd you do everything? What computer did you use as a base?

 

[Ncc74656]

You should document this! I have a Performa 6360 that had a PSU failure and I didn't really feel like fixing it anymore after I got my 6400. How'd you do everything? What computer did you use as a base?

i might have a spare 6360 psu laying around.

oh man... i really should sit down and go through it but it was a 2 year thing.
it started with me wanting my old computer back as a kid. it was a 630cd. so i thought i could get a PPC to run more stuff and i founda 6300cd.

shortly there after i discovered the 6360cd with its ability to run a G3 upgrade card. i thought i could run WC III and quake 3 and startrek voyager and halo! so i bought htat, a G3 card, and a 9200 radeon. but it just never paned out. the bus is limiting, the glitches loading the GPU and CPU upgrade together.... just poorly designed.

i did buy every upgrade tho... joystick, all the CD's, 128MB ram, bunch of video cards, tv capture with remote, OG game boxes, lots of stuff

that gave me an idea to maybe put another motherboard in there. so i started 3d modeling to see what might fit. i started with beige G3 but it was way too big. i went on google image search and scaled images of boards to see what might fit.... used sketchup for this. the b&w G3 was next but again... then the G4 - had promise but... how far could i go??

i then discovered the DA, QS, and MDD systems. i needed os9 so MDD was out, the DA was ok but the CPU was in a bad spot. the QS tho.... that had the CPU in the back, the ram up front and a decent layout...

i bought two G4 QS systems and got to work...
gutting the 6300cd system for its case i discovered there was NO WAY i could plug anything into the G4. the board fit but thats it... so i desolderd all the I/O (sound/network/firewire/usb) and ran headders vertical for later. drilled new holes and tapoped them for standoffs in teh case. i braised some in to hold stuff together.

the PSU was another issue. the G4 needing 25v power for standby (required to do what i planned with the keyboard (using the ADC power button as a turn on with the ADB keyboard)). so i bought a 1/2U server PSU, removed caps/coils and upped the amperage on the lower voltage rails as our old systems just required way more than anything modern does.

after that i bought enough parts to build a rectifier (full bridge) of 110ac-25vdc. i was already maxing the psu so i didnt want to tag onto its rails. i tacked that on outside the PSU and printed a small case for it.

next came the GPU. god that was a pain..AGP ribbon cables worked but only some times. i bought a bunch of 8500 PC radeons and flashed them. then i picked up two broken ti4600's as i wanted more performance. i repaired them (got one fully functional but the other needs clock reductions to be stable). i band sawed the back of one card off to make it fit into the case (i guess they added all that extra PCB to ensure no one put them in a cube due to cooling and here i am stuffing it into a performa)

i picked up a PCI sata card for PC, flashed that and got a 90 degree pci adapter to lay it flat. this ran out to my HDD which i also cut in half. a 512gb crucial with Dram whos board only took less than half its case. i fit that behind the front panel connector box of the performa.

speaking of front panels.... my god. the QS used digital multiplexed logic for its buttons so i started working on a PLC to adapt the QS board to the performa. however not long into that i had to take a break. for about 5 months. coming back to it i decided to simply solder onto both boards swiches to connect them together, i fit both into the performa tin box for its front panel and used the performa connector ribbon out to the G4 board. the LED/power/reset/and audio all work on teh front of the system. i wired the IR sensor into a small arduino controller but have not done anything with it yet.

the CPU was another issue. one system having a 733 and the other a 933. i overclocked both but the 733 was NOT able to install any os properly. struggled quite a bit there. it was also a revision B board so i kept it in the G4 and used the A revision in my hackintosh here. thinking id push it further than the small forum factor. so i bought some PPC 7455 revision B cpu dies - reballed and swapped those onto the daughter board. 3d printed the jigs - took two attemps. this gave me far more OC ability with lower voltages. at 1.2v i was able to reach 1.45ghz on the single core as opposed to 1ghz on the factory chip. i modded the VRM to get a bit more voltage in (external off the 3.3v rail of the PSU) and this got me up to 1.7Ghz but not fully stable.

i played around this for quite some time. i have large writeups of testing stuff on this forum and others while i was doing this. testing various hardware configs.

i ended up pulling back the clock to reduce temps. given im mostly using this for retro gaming...

i now had to figure out CD drive things. the scsi was out, so i went looking for other drives. i really wantd to keep one in there. i had a blueray burner lying around that i use for ripping 4K UHD disks with modded firmware. very compact and it fit! so i bought a second (normal BR drive) and threw it in there. small metal bracket i cut out and bent. i tig welded some nuts to it so i could bolt it in from below. some small spacers were needed on the other side and i screwd it through the side metal of the case. shallow screws so the side plastic slides right over them.

i did the same thing with the factory ductwork for the CPU heatsink... i did swap the heatsink, i made a copy out of copper instead of AL which helped cooling a great deal! i used kryonaut thermal paste as well. i thought about liquid metal but decided agsint it for this build. i used a bit of 3d printing to get some better ductwork around the VRM coils on teh daughter board. not needed at lower speeds (sub 1.2Ghz or so) but anything over that and they desperatly needed more cooling.

the GPU turned into more of an issue. not being able to use the ribbon cables ( i tried 7 different ones but each time it would sorta boot but not alwasy to desktop. timing issues i think) so i ordered an old server rack 90 degree reversed riser. this required me to desolder the DVI ports from the GPU and solder a DVI cable directly to the board. i then ran this back to the rear panel.

speaking of rear panel. i used cardboard, fusion 360, 3d printing, and then finially i plasma cut a sheet of metal and bead rolled it. tacking on small bits of metal to affix two usb ports (just a two way splitter style for a motherboard headder), some 3.5 audio ports, a rj45 port, and the DVI. all of this fitting inside of the factory plastic clipped backing plate. the DVI going where the factory monitor port went. USB in the two small expansion rectangles, and the RJ45 in teh modem ADB port hole.

i used retro bright on the whole system to clean it up. i media blasted the metal to clean that up after my welding and such

another tangent..... the damn keyboard. ugh. so no G4 came with a usb keyboard with power button. the early b/w and first like sub 500mhz or what ever had them but past htat firmware quit supporting it. so i got a wombat to run adb to usb. that worked fine EXCEPT no power button..... testing things i think i found the voltage dropped from 3 to 1.2 or something whe you pressed it? but it was not the only button to do so... in the end i had to use a secondary PLC to sniff the wombat. when the wombat output the power buttons hex code - it charges the gate on a PNP fet that in turn triggers a relay that simulates pressing the power button on the QS front panel I/O. the issue? all of this needs stand by power and NONE of that is there.... so i had to use a buck converter off the 25v power rail to keep the 5v wombat/plc alive when teh computer is off... luckily apple keeps the 25v active anyway as thats kinda what its deisned for.

the front speaker... its not done yet but thats becasuse i have desk speakers. i have a 1x4" dayton audio neo driver. i wired a 20v class D amp to the 12v rail and plan to make a ported enclosure out of fiberglass to run this off of. when ever i get to that. i tried 3 different class d amps before i built my own. they had noise and poor power filtering. i wired them in parallel with the audio output which is split between front and rear I/O


all the fans are noctua - i found proper sized fans for the PSU/CPU/and case... they provide ample cooling. i ran some off the board and otehrs direct off the PSU.

so in this process i got the idea..... how far can i push this system?? as if i wasnt doing enough already...

i started looking at CPU upgrade cards. WAY too much money and hard to find (never mind i spent 800 on the G3 card for the 6360 to start with...) so i found a donor dual 1ghz card for 80 bucks on ebay for a QS. i took this card, swapped the dies, added new L3 cache chips (extra 1MB), and flashed the firmware with some data i found online. i then injected a bit more voltage and got then running at 1.4Ghz.

i then overclocked hte front side bus on the board. this was an issue for memory.... running 1.5gb was no longer possible. 1gb was my max. i tried 12 different ram stick configurations to no avail. maybe if i ordered kingston or such but i bought a dozen ram sticks online and more htan half tested bad... so... either way, 1gb on these... unless your doing A/V or rendering work - its more than enough. this did take my CPU's to higher frequencies but stability was an issue. i got a post and boot at 1.7 (dual) but not stable. i also dont have a copper heatsink for the dual CPU's. just to test i took an old water block and put that on with a LC loop. it benched better for longer but still was not stable. i ended up at some odd frequency number i forget. multiplier X 166 and such.

i now had to add large 120mm fans (using the second B series board in the QS tower now) to keep the CPU card cool... using thermal cameras i found components that were getting really hot so adding some shrouds to guide air under the heatsink was needed. i started with PLA+ prints but they melted...... i was going to PETG when i realized i coudl just hit the garage and plasma some AL chunks out. i tigged them to the factory heatsink to make skirts and taht solved my issue.

the next step in this chaos was the video cards.... this was a solid month right here. i started benchmarking EVERYTHING. idk why.... rage pro, 7000, 8500 (pc and mac), ti4600 AND modded quadro cards i flashed from PC to mac among others. all on teh G4 (pci and agp). i did a large write up on this process. NOW i wanted to break 1000 points in geek bench.... sooooo better video it was.

around this time i tried doom3 - like 15 fps... it was worth a shot. (halo worked) but the idea stuck so...

i was going to buy the best card osx could handle. imagine my surprise when i found out the MAC cards were PCIE.... or AGP pro. they never made a high end radeon for AGP mac... wtf? so i knew about vivo editions, disabled cores, binned chips from WAY back when i was in Jr. high building my PC. so... i repeated that process.

sifting ebay i found a X800 radeon vivo edition and bought it. i flashed the firmware for mac, desoldered some resistors on the card to force AGP 4X mode and put liquid metal onto its heatsink (she was gonna get pushed). i clocked it up massivly to a X850XTPE version card (with bios) and it took... i cleared 1000 points on a QS G4 in geekbench. (400-520 is about average from what ive read up on).

so now i had started this wanting to play escape velocity. then PPC games like bioshock, and then WCIII or halo. this past couple months were all about doom.....

after all of this, i threw these parts into the performa case (GPU sitting outside of it just to test) and i launched Doom3. 1024x768 i was running at 47FPS on high settings! totally playable. i did the first mission.

I proceeded to put my 8500/single 1ghz back into the performa and box it up. the other parts went to the QS tower. being mostly an os9 box the performa will swap between the 8500 and ti4600 as needed. i found the radeon to be more stable however so for now, thats what it has.

the room got a desk from amazon. thank god i wanted a small machine system anyway becasue the desk is like for ants... WAY smaller than the photo made it seem... i picke dup the same power strip box i had as a kid, its empty inside... like fr... i could put a quadra in it with room to spare... empty metal box with wires and a tiny board - what a joke. i got my old speakers, rebuilt those (had to recone one) and all im missing is a monitor. howver i think im going to run a 32" LED just for the sake of it.

i ordered a DVI capture device for 3.1 usb - that with a DVI splitter works perfect on the 8500 (the 4600 is wonky still) to putput to my laptop for OBS capture. another bit i didnt mention networking... i repurposed som eold phone lines in the house for a 10baseT setup but that was not good enough. so i picke dup some coax to ethernet adapters and reused old tv wiring. i have 1gb networking from both of these systems to my basement which goes into a 24 port 2.5gb/10gb SFP+ switch that is connected to my 235TB truenas core server (running i3 12400f and 128gb ram with SAS controllers) so my primary system as well as both macs have comunication and access to that storage pool. on that pool are ALL of the mac addict disks. i can run them over the network wtih zero lag.

i ripped them all, one by one as i bought all of them on ebay over the past year and a half. the couple that were damaged i grabbed the torrent version of.

i plan to stream retro games when i finish house projects. so that was the goal. two years ago... and here we are. 95% done.

id like to truly clean things up, my 3d printing and modeling skills have increased drasticly sense i started making this system. id be more exacting now. im also building a 4x4x2' CNC milling machine at my house that would be great to make some custom heatsinks with.

and there we are... the log of how i got here. this took me about an hour to try and remember/type up. im sure i forgot some things. i do have photos on imgur but again, the peace meal nature of this over the years.... nothing is presentable in a consolidated forum as of yet.

 

[Forrest]

Very Nice

 

[pizzigri]

That Is Crazy. And I intend this with the utmost sincerity and respect.
In my case, I did want to make a 6200 case Frankenmac, and once I managed to finish it like you initially designed, with a 6500 LB and a Sonnet G3 500/1MB, and found out - just like you - that it would not suffice (and i never got to use the 7000 videocard...), I essentially gave up and left it as is.
As you can see form my signature.
Today, though, I would use the innards of a G4 mini at 1.42 with OS 9.2, and I actually have a beat up but perfectly functioning and loaded Mini set aside for such a project.

 

[Ncc74656]

so the mac mini... i didnt think that could run 9 native? that is using the G4 with no L3 cache? like the MDD?

there is no expansion on that right? its an ide HDD right?

there isnt any expansion slots im sure, is the GPU soldered through an AGP interface like the onboard rage usedto be? if so could you take the chip off and install an interloper board to give you an AGP (4/8X)?

 

[pizzigri]

This guy sells "9.2.2 Ready" G4 Mac Minis with the OS preinstalled. He uses fast SATA SSddrives and the Mini already has the 9200 card in it. Details are included in his post, also links to Macos9lives:
Link to the post

 

[LaPorta]

i might have a spare 6360 psu laying around.

oh man... i really should sit down and go through it but it was a 2 year thing.
it started with me wanting my old computer back as a kid. it was a 630cd. so i thought i could get a PPC to run more stuff and i founda 6300cd.

shortly there after i discovered the 6360cd with its ability to run a G3 upgrade card. i thought i could run WC III and quake 3 and startrek voyager and halo! so i bought htat, a G3 card, and a 9200 radeon. but it just never paned out. the bus is limiting, the glitches loading the GPU and CPU upgrade together.... just poorly designed.

i did buy every upgrade tho... joystick, all the CD's, 128MB ram, bunch of video cards, tv capture with remote, OG game boxes, lots of stuff

that gave me an idea to maybe put another motherboard in there. so i started 3d modeling to see what might fit. i started with beige G3 but it was way too big. i went on google image search and scaled images of boards to see what might fit.... used sketchup for this. the b&w G3 was next but again... then the G4 - had promise but... how far could i go??

i then discovered the DA, QS, and MDD systems. i needed os9 so MDD was out, the DA was ok but the CPU was in a bad spot. the QS tho.... that had the CPU in the back, the ram up front and a decent layout...

i bought two G4 QS systems and got to work...
gutting the 6300cd system for its case i discovered there was NO WAY i could plug anything into the G4. the board fit but thats it... so i desolderd all the I/O (sound/network/firewire/usb) and ran headders vertical for later. drilled new holes and tapoped them for standoffs in teh case. i braised some in to hold stuff together.

the PSU was another issue. the G4 needing 25v power for standby (required to do what i planned with the keyboard (using the ADC power button as a turn on with the ADB keyboard)). so i bought a 1/2U server PSU, removed caps/coils and upped the amperage on the lower voltage rails as our old systems just required way more than anything modern does.

after that i bought enough parts to build a rectifier (full bridge) of 110ac-25vdc. i was already maxing the psu so i didnt want to tag onto its rails. i tacked that on outside the PSU and printed a small case for it.

next came the GPU. god that was a pain..AGP ribbon cables worked but only some times. i bought a bunch of 8500 PC radeons and flashed them. then i picked up two broken ti4600's as i wanted more performance. i repaired them (got one fully functional but the other needs clock reductions to be stable). i band sawed the back of one card off to make it fit into the case (i guess they added all that extra PCB to ensure no one put them in a cube due to cooling and here i am stuffing it into a performa)

i picked up a PCI sata card for PC, flashed that and got a 90 degree pci adapter to lay it flat. this ran out to my HDD which i also cut in half. a 512gb crucial with Dram whos board only took less than half its case. i fit that behind the front panel connector box of the performa.

speaking of front panels.... my god. the QS used digital multiplexed logic for its buttons so i started working on a PLC to adapt the QS board to the performa. however not long into that i had to take a break. for about 5 months. coming back to it i decided to simply solder onto both boards swiches to connect them together, i fit both into the performa tin box for its front panel and used the performa connector ribbon out to the G4 board. the LED/power/reset/and audio all work on teh front of the system. i wired the IR sensor into a small arduino controller but have not done anything with it yet.

the CPU was another issue. one system having a 733 and the other a 933. i overclocked both but the 733 was NOT able to install any os properly. struggled quite a bit there. it was also a revision B board so i kept it in the G4 and used the A revision in my hackintosh here. thinking id push it further than the small forum factor. so i bought some PPC 7455 revision B cpu dies - reballed and swapped those onto the daughter board. 3d printed the jigs - took two attemps. this gave me far more OC ability with lower voltages. at 1.2v i was able to reach 1.45ghz on the single core as opposed to 1ghz on the factory chip. i modded the VRM to get a bit more voltage in (external off the 3.3v rail of the PSU) and this got me up to 1.7Ghz but not fully stable.

i played around this for quite some time. i have large writeups of testing stuff on this forum and others while i was doing this. testing various hardware configs.

i ended up pulling back the clock to reduce temps. given im mostly using this for retro gaming...

i now had to figure out CD drive things. the scsi was out, so i went looking for other drives. i really wantd to keep one in there. i had a blueray burner lying around that i use for ripping 4K UHD disks with modded firmware. very compact and it fit! so i bought a second (normal BR drive) and threw it in there. small metal bracket i cut out and bent. i tig welded some nuts to it so i could bolt it in from below. some small spacers were needed on the other side and i screwd it through the side metal of the case. shallow screws so the side plastic slides right over them.

i did the same thing with the factory ductwork for the CPU heatsink... i did swap the heatsink, i made a copy out of copper instead of AL which helped cooling a great deal! i used kryonaut thermal paste as well. i thought about liquid metal but decided agsint it for this build. i used a bit of 3d printing to get some better ductwork around the VRM coils on teh daughter board. not needed at lower speeds (sub 1.2Ghz or so) but anything over that and they desperatly needed more cooling.

the GPU turned into more of an issue. not being able to use the ribbon cables ( i tried 7 different ones but each time it would sorta boot but not alwasy to desktop. timing issues i think) so i ordered an old server rack 90 degree reversed riser. this required me to desolder the DVI ports from the GPU and solder a DVI cable directly to the board. i then ran this back to the rear panel.

speaking of rear panel. i used cardboard, fusion 360, 3d printing, and then finially i plasma cut a sheet of metal and bead rolled it. tacking on small bits of metal to affix two usb ports (just a two way splitter style for a motherboard headder), some 3.5 audio ports, a rj45 port, and the DVI. all of this fitting inside of the factory plastic clipped backing plate. the DVI going where the factory monitor port went. USB in the two small expansion rectangles, and the RJ45 in teh modem ADB port hole.

i used retro bright on the whole system to clean it up. i media blasted the metal to clean that up after my welding and such

another tangent..... the damn keyboard. ugh. so no G4 came with a usb keyboard with power button. the early b/w and first like sub 500mhz or what ever had them but past htat firmware quit supporting it. so i got a wombat to run adb to usb. that worked fine EXCEPT no power button..... testing things i think i found the voltage dropped from 3 to 1.2 or something whe you pressed it? but it was not the only button to do so... in the end i had to use a secondary PLC to sniff the wombat. when the wombat output the power buttons hex code - it charges the gate on a PNP fet that in turn triggers a relay that simulates pressing the power button on the QS front panel I/O. the issue? all of this needs stand by power and NONE of that is there.... so i had to use a buck converter off the 25v power rail to keep the 5v wombat/plc alive when teh computer is off... luckily apple keeps the 25v active anyway as thats kinda what its deisned for.

the front speaker... its not done yet but thats becasuse i have desk speakers. i have a 1x4" dayton audio neo driver. i wired a 20v class D amp to the 12v rail and plan to make a ported enclosure out of fiberglass to run this off of. when ever i get to that. i tried 3 different class d amps before i built my own. they had noise and poor power filtering. i wired them in parallel with the audio output which is split between front and rear I/O


all the fans are noctua - i found proper sized fans for the PSU/CPU/and case... they provide ample cooling. i ran some off the board and otehrs direct off the PSU.

so in this process i got the idea..... how far can i push this system?? as if i wasnt doing enough already...

i started looking at CPU upgrade cards. WAY too much money and hard to find (never mind i spent 800 on the G3 card for the 6360 to start with...) so i found a donor dual 1ghz card for 80 bucks on ebay for a QS. i took this card, swapped the dies, added new L3 cache chips (extra 1MB), and flashed the firmware with some data i found online. i then injected a bit more voltage and got then running at 1.4Ghz.

i then overclocked hte front side bus on the board. this was an issue for memory.... running 1.5gb was no longer possible. 1gb was my max. i tried 12 different ram stick configurations to no avail. maybe if i ordered kingston or such but i bought a dozen ram sticks online and more htan half tested bad... so... either way, 1gb on these... unless your doing A/V or rendering work - its more than enough. this did take my CPU's to higher frequencies but stability was an issue. i got a post and boot at 1.7 (dual) but not stable. i also dont have a copper heatsink for the dual CPU's. just to test i took an old water block and put that on with a LC loop. it benched better for longer but still was not stable. i ended up at some odd frequency number i forget. multiplier X 166 and such.

i now had to add large 120mm fans (using the second B series board in the QS tower now) to keep the CPU card cool... using thermal cameras i found components that were getting really hot so adding some shrouds to guide air under the heatsink was needed. i started with PLA+ prints but they melted...... i was going to PETG when i realized i coudl just hit the garage and plasma some AL chunks out. i tigged them to the factory heatsink to make skirts and taht solved my issue.

the next step in this chaos was the video cards.... this was a solid month right here. i started benchmarking EVERYTHING. idk why.... rage pro, 7000, 8500 (pc and mac), ti4600 AND modded quadro cards i flashed from PC to mac among others. all on teh G4 (pci and agp). i did a large write up on this process. NOW i wanted to break 1000 points in geek bench.... sooooo better video it was.

around this time i tried doom3 - like 15 fps... it was worth a shot. (halo worked) but the idea stuck so...

i was going to buy the best card osx could handle. imagine my surprise when i found out the MAC cards were PCIE.... or AGP pro. they never made a high end radeon for AGP mac... wtf? so i knew about vivo editions, disabled cores, binned chips from WAY back when i was in Jr. high building my PC. so... i repeated that process.

sifting ebay i found a X800 radeon vivo edition and bought it. i flashed the firmware for mac, desoldered some resistors on the card to force AGP 4X mode and put liquid metal onto its heatsink (she was gonna get pushed). i clocked it up massivly to a X850XTPE version card (with bios) and it took... i cleared 1000 points on a QS G4 in geekbench. (400-520 is about average from what ive read up on).

so now i had started this wanting to play escape velocity. then PPC games like bioshock, and then WCIII or halo. this past couple months were all about doom.....

after all of this, i threw these parts into the performa case (GPU sitting outside of it just to test) and i launched Doom3. 1024x768 i was running at 47FPS on high settings! totally playable. i did the first mission.

I proceeded to put my 8500/single 1ghz back into the performa and box it up. the other parts went to the QS tower. being mostly an os9 box the performa will swap between the 8500 and ti4600 as needed. i found the radeon to be more stable however so for now, thats what it has.

the room got a desk from amazon. thank god i wanted a small machine system anyway becasue the desk is like for ants... WAY smaller than the photo made it seem... i picke dup the same power strip box i had as a kid, its empty inside... like fr... i could put a quadra in it with room to spare... empty metal box with wires and a tiny board - what a joke. i got my old speakers, rebuilt those (had to recone one) and all im missing is a monitor. howver i think im going to run a 32" LED just for the sake of it.

i ordered a DVI capture device for 3.1 usb - that with a DVI splitter works perfect on the 8500 (the 4600 is wonky still) to putput to my laptop for OBS capture. another bit i didnt mention networking... i repurposed som eold phone lines in the house for a 10baseT setup but that was not good enough. so i picke dup some coax to ethernet adapters and reused old tv wiring. i have 1gb networking from both of these systems to my basement which goes into a 24 port 2.5gb/10gb SFP+ switch that is connected to my 235TB truenas core server (running i3 12400f and 128gb ram with SAS controllers) so my primary system as well as both macs have comunication and access to that storage pool. on that pool are ALL of the mac addict disks. i can run them over the network wtih zero lag.

i ripped them all, one by one as i bought all of them on ebay over the past year and a half. the couple that were damaged i grabbed the torrent version of.

i plan to stream retro games when i finish house projects. so that was the goal. two years ago... and here we are. 95% done.

id like to truly clean things up, my 3d printing and modeling skills have increased drasticly sense i started making this system. id be more exacting now. im also building a 4x4x2' CNC milling machine at my house that would be great to make some custom heatsinks with.

and there we are... the log of how i got here. this took me about an hour to try and remember/type up. im sure i forgot some things. i do have photos on imgur but again, the peace meal nature of this over the years.... nothing is presentable in a consolidated forum as of yet.

Award for the longest post I’ve ever seen.

 

[Ncc74656]

This guy sells "9.2.2 Ready" G4 Mac Minis with the OS preinstalled. He uses fast SATA SSddrives and the Mini already has the 9200 card in it. Details are included in his post, also links to Macos9lives:
Link to the post

i may buy a mini just to play with. id like to see how it bencharks compared to other stuff. id like to check out the OC ability and MAYBE tinker wtih a gpu upgrade. would be cool to get a X1900 in there