|  | August 06, 2010
Building a Green PC February 15, 2010
Building an ION powered HTPC with XBMC October 10, 2008
The "Cambridge Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 2008" September 12, 2008
"Florian", the DVD burning robot September 05, 2008
The "i-EPIA" May 22, 2008
The "GTA-PC" April 14, 2007
The "Digg" Case January 19, 2007
The "ITX-Laptop" December 07, 2006
The "Tortoise Beetle" October 02, 2006
The "DOS Head Unit" |
| | | | August 31, 2006
The "Janus Project" August 05, 2006
The "Leela PC" June 26, 2006
Nano-ITX in a Football May 17, 2006
The "EPIA Alloy Mod" April 11, 2006
Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods February 18, 2006
The "Rundfunker" October 24, 2005
The "ITX TV" October 06, 2005
The K'nex-ITX August 05, 2005
The "Waffle Iron PC" July 21, 2005
The "Supra-Server" July 18, 2005
The "Mega-ITX" July 07, 2005
The "Encyclomedia" May 25, 2005
The "Accordion ITX" May 16, 2005
The "FileServerRouterSwitch" May 15, 2005
The "Mini Falcon" May 13, 2005
The "Bender PC" May 11, 2005
The "BBC ITX B" May 10, 2005
The "Frame" April 20, 2005
The "Jeannie" March 09, 2005
The "Cool Cube" |
| | | | January 30, 2005
First Nano-ITX Project? January 17, 2005
The "iGrill" January 15, 2005
The "Gumball PC" December 15, 2004
The "Deco Box" December 03, 2004
The "TERA-ITX" October 06, 2004
The "Coealacanth-PC" September 17, 2004
The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD" August 26, 2004
The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX" August 25, 2004
The "SEGA-ITX" August 13, 2004
The "Quiet Cubid" August 06, 2004
The "BMWPC" July 14, 2004
The "Moo Cow Moo" July 02, 2004
The "Mini Mesh Box" June 17, 2004
Jukebox ITX May 24, 2004
The "ERN005PC" (KANA) March 13, 2004
The "Underwood No. 5" February 04, 2004
The "Humidor CL" January 23, 2004
The "Attache Server" January 22, 2004
"Racing The Light" January 21, 2004
VIA's Flat Panel DevKits Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "Mac-ITX"
By Iain Sharp -
Posted on 30 July 2004
With it all crammed together it works like a dream.
Last but not least comes the back panel. I built a little board to fit in the space where the Mac had its connectors supported by a bracket taken off the Mac's logic board. A mini-ITX USB/Firewire PCI header was adapted to fit in the Mac's original expansion connector space. I also added an Ethernet port to the expansion slot. All the IO connectors go to the corresponding sockets on the ITX board. Its all a pretty tight fit. To power on the PC I built an "auto power on" circuit so that it boots as soon as the mains is switched on. However for backup the old Mac "programmers switch" is kept to hit the PC reset and power buttons. I really like that detail! A special daughter board mounted over the top of the old Mac analog board contains a relay connected to a disk drive power lead. This switches the internal monitor on when the PC is switched on.
For those of you who want the specs here's the key parameters:
- Motherboard: VIA EPIA MII-12000 with 512MB of RAM
- Disk: 40Gb Hitachi 2.5" drive
- Optical disk: Panasonic UJ-825 slotload DVD+/-R/RW, DVD-RAM, CD
- Display: Monochrome CRT - max resolution 800x600, S-Video and Composite Output
- Expansion ports: 2xUSB 2.0, 1x Firewire (an additional 2xUSB and 1xFirewire could be added)
Thanks to the excellent Basilisk II the Mac-ITX can be turned in to - well, a Mac! The 68k Mac emulation is virtually perfect, and you would never know that it wasn't the real thing. Except in one respect - my emulated Mac now runs about 15 times faster that the original SE/30. Does this make Mac-ITX the most elaborate Mac upgrade of all time?
So, how about the result? I think its pretty cool. It looks so much like the real thing you have to pinch yourself. There are a few things I plan to improve. With three fans its pretty noisy. I want to fit some quieter ones and see if the PSU box can be redesigned so that the system fan cools the PSU as well. I also want to fit an infra-red detector in the case. Still for now I have a nice, retro and unique home server.
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