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HTMac with a twist
I would like to start off by saying, like so many others, I use one of my Macs, as part of my office stereo system. A 450Mhz G4 Cube to be exact. But I want to set it straight that I do realize this is for a “MOD” contest. I didn’t just add a bigger hard drive and hook up my cube to a T.V. I tore out its guts and rebuilt the little bugger.
First off I needed to purchase a few things. A bigger 100gig laptop hard drive, and a dual layer super drive. Now, sadly neither of these items are going into my cube. BUT, the combo drive, and 60gig hard drive from my Powerbook will be. These are mods I have separate guides for. I would just like to give a brief glimpse of them here.
To fit these laptop parts I first made a custom mounting bracket for the combo drive, easy enough. The combo drive gave my cube the ability to burn CDs.
Next a custom bracket and 2in IDE extension cable and I have the hard drive in. The slim 2.5in HD improved the airflow and is also MUCH quieter than the original drive.
Previous upgrades to my Cube also include adding more RAM, installing an ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card, then installing an aftermarket GPU fan on it, a red LED base fan in the bottom, and the WI-FI card from my old Graphite Airport base station. I purchased Creative Lab’s Sound Blaster MP3+ for sound output. And also bought a wireless mouse and Keyspan’s Digital Media Remote to control iTunes and DVD Player. Finally for when I turn my computer on, I wrote an Applescript to automatically open iTunes and randomly play songs from my favorite playlist. It.4.2 and OS 9.2.2. OS 9 for Connectix Virtual Game Station. Playstation One emulator BABY!
Before I get to the feature presentation, I did one more thing. I built a custom stand for my 20in G5 style LCD, patent pending, so it could fit into my bookcase shelve.
Now, everything stated so far isn’t a mod, IMHO. Excluding the LCD stand, hard drive bracket and combo drive bracket, these are all up grades. So without further delay. I give you the Light Bright Cube meets the G4 Cube HTmac mod.
When I was at a local Savers, I came across this interesting toy from way back when. And the first thing that went through my mind was, “I’ll be damned if my Cube couldn’t fit in that.” $3.00 later it had begun. Unfortunately due to a faulty flash card, I lost most of my guide pix, so these were taken after it was complete. There wasn’t much to be done to the toy, almost as if the makers of Lite-Brite had intended the Cube to go inside with only minor modification.
At this point the only tools I needed were:
dremel
philips screwdriver
wire cutters coarse metal file
Here is the Lite-Brite. Upon getting home I quickly tore it down and took out the bracket which held the light. This also made a good vent for air to be pulled through from the base fan.
1) This is the hole I made for the power button.
2) I had to dremel a slot for the combo drive.
3) These are for the standoffs that hold the plate the cube attaches to. 4) This is the stock hole for the carrying handle.
5) This was the bracket to hold one of the walls in. I trimmed it with some wire snips.
6) Then I filed the part that snapped into the bracket. This was to make sure the Cube’s top plate would fit.
Here is the Cube’s top plate with the bracket I made for the power button. The material was the blue plastic from the rear drawer, which had no use anymore. This gave the power button a nice blue glow when it was lit up. In all there are about six layers of the plastic super-glued together to make the proximity switch work.
These are the short standoffs I used to hold the base plate to the top of the Lite-Brite.
A picture of the top plate screwed in place. The standoffs screws circled in red.
This couldn't have been a better fit.
Now you can see the vent I mention earlier. You can some what see the red glow of the base fan. Also you can now see where I had to dremel out the bottom for the cables to fit.
And now the glamour shots
The open tray and it's multicolored-peg goodness.
The entire set up, great for watching DVD’s while my powerbook is rendering video in FCP 5.
A close up of the handle and power button. (circled in red) I really need to clean off the rest of that sticker. The next step is to paint it a flat black and put in UV lights to light up the pegs.
Note the G5 style grill, great for keeping the Cube cool and increasing airflow.
Another shot of the back showing the hole where I dremeled.
Well there it... It has form, yet function.
macDeviant
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