Recent content by SiliconValleyPirate

Hey, I have a PC in a graphite G4 case (I bought the case already empty from eBay, so I a wasn’t responsible for said G4’s demise!) so I can’t exactly crow about how awful that is ;) As a penalty clause I bought 3 G4s during the build at silly-low prices and used one (with broken handles thanks...

I will add my voice to the crowd on SATA to IDE adapters, I too had the same issues with my Cube. *Avoid* cheap unbranded ones. They are often bad quality (I got one that 6 of the ATA pins weren’t soldered correctly on!) and use knock-off controllers that are only tested in a few x86 PCs. I...

I have an STL for a 3D printed sled that will carry a 2.5” SSD and a SATA to PATA adapter (try to pick an adapter that lines up the same as a HDD!). It may well also work with a PATA SSD convertor and a 44-pin to 40-pin adapter. I made it originally for my Cube for exactly this reason - fitting...

Okay, wasn’t sure as you mentioned trying to jury rig it with a CR2032. Because of the lower voltage that might have given it a headache. It does sound like either the reset, CUDA or power on circuit is faulty, or the PMU is decidedly unhappy. Without delving into oscilloscopes and logic...

The refusal to start sounds like a PMU issue. It’s difficult to say what the fault could be as the board’s been out of the chassis for some time, so it could be physically damaged, could have had ESD shock etc. I do know that B&Ws are pretty sensitive to scrambled PRAM. I’ve had several over...

Wow, that brought back a few memories. The 68040 pins are relatively robust if you are careful. I once had a 68040 pin pigtail (bend back and around on itself) on me when I tried to put it in the socket. I managed to straighten it by working slowly and carefully over about an hour. Some good...

That is correct, there are 44-pins in the main connector and an additonal 4 pins separated from the main connector by one blank space. The additional 4 pins are the Master/Slave jumper. I have fitted a couple of MSATA and M.2 SATA to IDE adapters recently in a Mac mini G4 and a PowerBook G4 12”...

Okay, this was a really pleasant surprise. I found in a recent sort-out a USB 2.0 PCI card in a box of old stuff. It has a NEC720101 chip, no ROM onboard or anything that would indicate it's a Mac specific card, but I thought as a giggle I'd lob it in the GigE G4 and see what happened. First and...

I figured that'd be the case. I assume the serial can't be changed arbitrarily, at least without the tools an AASP had (has?) to do that kinda of stuff. This is the case. The chassis serial is CK prefixed, the MLB serial (in the About this Mac/System Profiler read back) is XB prefixed. That...

Okay, thanks, Alex, that's some useful info there. This makes some sense now at least. CTO options on the G4 PowerMacs were usually SCSI, RAM, CPU speed, and drive configs, so didn't need a main logic board swap, thus I doubt that's the case. Also, I bought a Mac Pro CTO in 2006 and it still...

I have a wonderful mystery on my hands realting to the GigE PowerMac G4 I grabbed off eBay and am preserving. I am often interested in the Seriel number of Macs because they can be decoded into specs and other details. One of these, on earlier machines, is the build location. The vast majority...

If you are following my thread in the Hacks forum you know I embarked on (and have completed) a project to build a Hackintosh in a G4 Graphite case. In order to finish the project I had to pull some donor machines from eBay, but I made a deal with myself that if I did that I'd restore at least...

If it's any help I've got a Powermac G4 running Tiger pretty decently form 16GB a IDE to CF card adapter, so that might be an alternative avenue for you? IDE Is certainly less fussy although the IDE in the G3 Beige is molasses slow. It'd prove a point at least, though.

My SuperMicro board is something similar, another in the X8 series for sure, no SAS sadly but then macOS probably wouldn't support it anyway. I forget exactly which board. It does a pretty damned decent job of running Catalina tied in with the RX 580 and a SATA SSD. I need an Inatek USB 3.0 card...

This thread should probably be titled 'Doing Cruel and Unusual Things to PowerMac G4s - Part I', but hey. Here goes: The Prologue At the beginning fo this year I was looking for a new tablet. My trust Nvidia Shield K1 was very much showing it's age and infirmity. I looked around and there...