Cube for $20!

[TheMacGuy]

I posted on my local craigslist looking for old macs. While no freebies have come up yet, I have gotten quite a few odd emails. 1 wouldn't take a fair amount for 2 Core Duo Mac Minis for my entertainment room, one said they had an older Mac Mini, but in the second email said his house was broken into a while ago and it was stolen along with some other things and didn't realize it until now. Then I get an email from this lady saying she has 6 older Macs for sale and if I was interested to call and she sent a phone number. She sent me pictures of the computers which were 5 iMac G3 (1 Bondi with tray loading drive), 2 blue PowerMac G3's, and an old CRT Studio Display. I would have boughten the Bondi iMac, but I have no room at the time. So I went to call her back asking if there was anything else. She said she almost forgot about her Cube. When I asked her how much, she responded "$10". My immediate thought was "SCORE!". She said she had the speakers but nothing else for it, and I told her I would come and pick it up the next day. I went down to pick it up, and the Cube was still in a pile of junk in her extra room. I had to dig to get it. Coming out of the mess, I see a flat-screen Studio Display and told her that it would have been the period correct monitor, and she said I could have it for an extra $10. So I bought the Cube, original Studio Display, and broken speakers for $20. Not a bad deal. The Cube even has an AirPort Card in it, so if it doesn't work, I can transplant the card into my eMac.

The bad part is that there is rust looking spots on the top of the Cube on the metal inside the acrylic casing that she said was mold and that it was a common problem. I'm trying to take it apart, but haven't had any luck. No power supply, so I can't test it. Reeks of cigarette smoke. And the main Cube won't stay suspended in the enclosure anymore. I will take some pictures and post them later when I get a chance. For right now I'm just going to sit here drooling over it.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Forgot to mention, she said her brother worked for Apple as a Senior Engineer for about 10 years and thats how she got the Cube.

 

[TheMacGuy]

UPDATE #1: Was able to remove the "mold" from the Cube's outer shell. Gave everything a good cleaning, but it still smells like smoke. The entire machine cleaned up very well! Minus the scratches on the acrylic, it looks amazing! Going to screw the top back together, and let it dry over night and hopefully get the smell of smoke out of the internals of the machine. Going to take some pictures now to post. BTW: spec tag from the factory reads: 450MHz/1MB Cache/64 MB SD RAM/20 GB HD/DVD ROM/Radeon CRD 10-100T/MDM/Airport Card/Mac OS/KYBD. From this I'm getting a 450 MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 1 MB L2 Cache, 64MB of SD RAM, 20 GB Internal HDD, Radeon Graphics card, AirPort Card, has Mac OS (doesn't say OS X), and original came with a Keyboard.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Nice nab! [] ]'>

 

[TheMacGuy]

UPDATE #2. Done for the night. Wish I would have gotten pictures of the Cube before I cleaned it, and the pile of stuff I had to move around to get to it, the Studio Display, and broken speakers. Yes, I have tested the speakers and they are officially dead. I'm sad about that. My MBP will recognize them and try to play music thru it, but nothing come out of the speakers.

More pictures will be posted later, but I need to find a quicker way to upload them to a photo sharing website. This photo I uploaded to TinyPic and it only lets me do 1 at a time and I have 9 pictures

 

[TheMacGuy]

Thanks! The woman had no idea what she had. If I had the space, I would have picked up a few iMacs. In the same room as the Cube I saw 2 G3s on the ground. One in Ruby and one in Indigo.

 

[mcdermd]

Ruby . My second favorite behind Sage.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Ok, here are the rest of the pictures (I decided to try Flickr):



Front of Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Front of the Machine



Top After Cleaning by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Top of the Machine After "Mold" clean up



PowerMac G4 Cube by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Machine Logos



Worst Scuffs on the Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Worst of the Scuffs



Front of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Front of the Display



Studio Display Logo by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Studio Display logo



Back of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Back of the display after cleaning



Display Plug by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Display Adapter



Broken Speakers by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr

Broken Speakers

 

[TheMacGuy]

UPDATE #3: Just ordered a genuine PowerMac Cube power adapter and a standard desktop power supply power cable for about $45. Total investment so far: $65. I'm also going to have to buy an older AirPort base station (pre-Extreme) M5757 to get it up on Wi-Fi along with my eMac. Cords should be here any day. Will update when the cables come in.

 

[jsarchibald]

I use car wax on the Cube plastics to get them looking great. Gets rid of the small scratches!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

There were small Acrylic Polishing kits available at sign supply stores and acrylic fab shops back in the day. With the correct polishing compounds it should be possible to get rid of fairly bad scratches on the AcryliCubicle.

 

[mcdermd]

Pledge. Works on motorcycle ABS also.

 

[TheMacGuy]

I'll try the car wax and the Pludge ideas. I know have some somewhere in my house. Question is, are they still good? Guess we wil find out!

 

[highlandcattle]

I believe those speakers only work on G4 powermacs so don't toss them yet. Wait until you have been able to test them with the cube or another powermac g4

 

[TheMacGuy]

Don't see why they wouldn't work with other computers. They are just USB Speakers that came with the G4 iMac/PowerMacs. The MBP recognizes them, and will push the audio thru the USB port, but no sound comes out of the speakers. Should I try them on my eMac? I know its the Cube or iMac G4, but its a G4 from about the same time period and has both 10.2.8 and 9.2.2 installed.

 

[jongleur]

Don't toss the speakers!!!.

I believe that the somewhere in the early releases of 10.6 Cube speakers (probably the USB adapter) stop working. Either try them on a 10.5 system, or earlier, but definitely keep them until you can try them on the Cube.

If they don't work at all, may I ask for first salvage rights for the speakers and USB adapter for spare parts for my Cube.

 

[TheMacGuy]

All right. Going to try it on my eMac running Jaguar (10.2. 8) . Hope it works!

HOLY! THEY WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!! And sounded pretty good too!! Question is, how can I replace the rubber on the outside of the speaker?

 

[jongleur]

Hurrah!

Did some looking. Looks like Cube USB speakers worked up to 10.6.3. With the 10.6.4 update and they are recognised, but don't do what speakers are supposed to do.

 

[CC_333]

Looks like Cube USB speakers worked up to 10.6.3.

These are different than the other kind that plug in to Power Macs with a special jack, right? I thought it would be neat to use these things on a more modern computer (for instance, an Intel Mac Mini), but it requires either cutting out the junction box, splicing the resulting bunch of cables together, or buying a somewhat expensive adapter that has the special jack.
I don't want to do anything destructive, so the adapter would be the way to go, except I don't want to spend that much money on something I probably won't use very much (but who knows?)

Maybe I can keep an eye out for the USB variant. One caveat, however:

With the 10.6.4 update and they are recognised, but don't do what speakers are supposed to do.

Could that be due to a missing/crippled driver? Perhaps finding the relevant driver file in 10.6.3 and transferring it to a 10.6.4+ install would allow the speakers to work as they should.
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