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| Marvin the Mac Plus G4 Cube Mod. |
| Written by Chris Tangora | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 31 May 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Charles Mangin has shared with us his creation named Marvin, a Mac Plus case with a G4 Cube insides and iMac SuperDrive. He's grabbed a few pieces of dead external hard drive cases to make it look nice and has spent lots of time detailing his creation with multiple USB slots and an 8.4" LCD touch screen. So why'd he choose Marvin? He chose it because of the paranoid robot Marvin from Douglas Adams ' The Hitchhickers' Guide to the Galaxy. The project started out originally as trying to get an old powerbook inside the Mac Plus 1MB. Aparently things didn't go well, but that didn't stop Charles. He moved on from the PowerBook idea onto the G4 cube. The results are excellent, this is a great mod and Charles really put the effort in to use all of the original Mac Plus ports he could for new purposes, so it looks like a real Mac Plus from the front.  Here's the original MacPlus before the operations ... and here it is naked, exposed to the world ... 
Next Charles went through and disassembled the insides so he could use them again fro the mod, it's at this point we take our first trip down memory lane, to the Motorola 68000 chip ... ahh ... we were so young then...
 
SAFETY NOTE !!!
It should be noted here, that a CRT is a deadly thing. There is enough electric shock inside a turned off CRT to kill you. Do not remove or adjust or touch a CRT unless you are a trained technician. ** had to say that ** On that note, please recycle the CRT properly as there are gases inside of it that could cause an implossion, a very messy and dangerous thing. Okay safety cap off, time for more modding! Charles has the guts out and is now ready to start transplanting the Cube's insides over to the Mac Plus frame.  The shell of the Mac Plus The Cube inards & the iMac Superdrive (mounted horizontally) More of the Cube's insides fitting nicely in the Mac Plus' frame.Next he tested the 8.4" touchscreen LCD from dynamixcomputers.com  It works! Some temporary mounting for positioning and testing how to get the IR to work though some empty slots. You can see the USB and power for the LCD in a more finished version before placing on the frame. Everything fits in fairly neatly, with even some room to spare. It's all coming together ... It's alive!Now Charles goes about some excellent detailing for this mod. We'll start from the back and work forward.  You can see the open space to the right. This was from his first attempt at getting a PowerBook inside the Mac Plus. He has the power cables coming out of it now, but that is about to change. Here's the final view from the back, notice the mesh metal from an old Lacie hard drive, the power cable thorugh the ether-talk port & the proximity sensor from the Cube in the upper right corner. Closeup of the proximity power button sensor from the Cube. The Apple logo is a nice touch. Here you can see the power cable and where it will be going.Now onto the front. The ADB port for the original keyboard was replaced with two USB ports (for the new keyboard/mouse).  The USB ports fit so nicely there, you can find the hack for the old school USB mouse mod at another of Charles' flicker streams. A third USB port is tucked away under the floppy disk drive flaps. The iMac SuperDrive fit nicely where the ventelation slots used to be. The final product. A job well done Charles!  The finishing touch, using BootX to give it the proper old school feel.Now just for fun here's a shot of the old mother board, brings back memories don't they?   Thanks for the submission Charles! This is a really cool mod. Thanks for sharing! If you want to see more of Charles' work, here his original Flicker Posting.
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