Slashdot Mirror
Rack An iMac
Andrew van der Stock writes "Check out this link and see a rack-mounted iMac. Very Cool." Shades of the 21" Frankenstein iMac covered a few months ago here on Slashdot. This is a cool hardware hack of the "gotta get it done" variety. Talk about faith in a platform! But what is he doing with all the old iMonitors? Perhaps ESR and friends could use some interesting targets ...
I'd rather see him put an AS/400 in one of those iMac cases he has sitting around now. Crack probably wouldn't do it for him though. Angel dust would, but you have to avoid the problem this guy had while he was on the stuff.
After all, they could... no wait, scratch that.
I would have to disagree with you and say that more than the subject line is "antimac"...
Um, yah, totally... thanks for not stereotyping, fucker. Maybe this poster should realize that just because someone uses a mac, that doesnt make them a total clueless piece of shit.
So, the Raq 3i versions count as PCs.... IDE, x86, PCI, etc etc.
wow, a hair-trigger mac advocate comment... on slashdot! FUCKING AMAZING!!!11!1!1!1
The only part that is even remotely derogatory to mac users is the subject line. I took the subject as mostly tongue in cheek. Of course its an anti-mac comment though, it doesn't acknowledge the absolute superiority of macs over all other computers, for all tasks.
But I bet you tell people that a 400Mhz imac is just as fast as a P3-733.
(before you jump on me too, i'm typing these words on my brand new 500Mhz powerbook, which is incredibly badass).
wrong. site never went down. looks like those macs actually make pretty good webservers after all. until one buggy CGI crashes the whole OS. =)
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by including the Devil's Letter (also known as 'H') in your post. Please refrain from using tis vile letter in future posts and repent so tat Yu Suzuki may save your sinful soul. For your convenience, a corrected version of your post appears below.
if you just have 5 or 10 computers in your parent's basement, racks aren't cost effective. if you're colocating servers, or have a big server farm, they're the only way to go.
Possibly the worst of all computing worlds ?
Non-commodity hardware running a minority OS on top of a crap release of Unix, with Microsoft applications, in a student (e.g. skr1pt k1dd1e) environment. Does it get any worse than this ??? I can't believe it does.
thank you
By: John May jmay@pointinspace.com I can't quite say where this all started, or why I ever initially thought it'd even be possible, but once the idea was in my head I found myself quite addicted to making it happen. My situation is this: I run a web hosting/authoring company (Point In Space Internet Solutions - http://www.pointinspace.com/) specializing in serving on the Macintosh platform - partially because I've been a die-hard Apple user since my father built our first Apple II (when you could actually get the schematics, and even the parts), and partially because of the types of sites we host (Filemaker, Lasso and the likes). Filemaker is a great, easy to design, friendly database to use to add dynamic data to web sites, however it has this one little limitation of only being able to host 50 databases on one machine - hence the need for lots of machines. Since cost is always an issue, it seemed only logical to me that there must be some way to take advantage of these phenomenal computers called the iMacs, which have plenty of horsepower for serving, and can be acquired for less than a grand - much cheaper than the Apple "servers" that run three to four thousand dollars a piece. Now, the problem with this whole theory is that there's this big thing built into the iMac called a monitor - something which negates the factor other than low-price that I wanted to satisfy - space efficiency. I'd seen these servers called the Cobalt Raq, great little one rack-space computers, however PC-based. So, I asked myself, why couldn't the iMac be a Raq with a little coaxing? After looking around the internet for rack-mount boxes, I actually found that Marathon Computer had beaten me to the punch (or so I thought), and was going to be shipping a product called the iRack - a rack-mount case all configured to have an iMac's guts dropped right into it. To make a long story short, after getting the run-around from them for a month, with "one more week" quoted to me for a shipping date for weeks on end, it seemed like I needed to find another solution (FYI, as far as I know they still aren't shipping). So, I decided to do it all from scratch, something which scared me a bit considering one wire connected to the wrong place could mean certain death for the iMac. After a little bit of investigation with the trusty multi-meter, I found that the iMac's power supply conformed very closely to a standard ATX PC supply. This being known, I picked up a standard PC one-unit rack-mount case with power supply, fans, and drive mounts. A custom-wired power adapter, a little modification of the back panel and some 3/4" stand-offs and I managed to successfully mount the motherboard and get the machine booted. The only remaining complications were constructing some longer cables for the monitor plug and CD-ROM, the latter of which required some special-order high-density connectors from good 'ol Digi-Key. Total price: the rack case and about 50 bucks in parts. Since then I've built two more of these and they've been serving out databases flawlessly for a month now. The satisfaction factor was certainly worth the effort and long nights. Take a peek at the pictures below (click on them for a larger version) to see the results: Do-It-Yourself Plans now available for purchase! Click here for information and ordering. Rather have me convert your iMac? Drop me an e-mail and let's make a deal! -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Some additional Q & A from readers: Q: Are all the iMac's ports still available once rack-mounted? A: Sure thing! As you can see in the pictures, the motherboard mounts up against the back of the case, making all the ports accessible. The monitor plug is on a separate card, which just gets mounted separately to the case backing. Convienently, it's a standard Mac monitor plug. Q: What are you doing with the empty cases? A: Good question! What's left when it's all over is the case, monitor, power supply and speakers. I've toyed with the idea of turning them into "iMonitors", but the computer's power supply would need to be detached and it's buried deeper in the case, so I'd need to do a bit more tearing-apart to figure that one out. One popular suggestion has been to carry on the tradition of the Mac aquariums (iQuarium?). Q: Is the iMac really a good machine to use for a server? A: Why not? All the parts (hard drive, motherboard, etc.) are quality components, just like in its bigger brothers. The power supply gets replaced by the one provided with the rack box, which is an industrial-grade one meant for serving. Like I said, I've had three of these running for a month non-stop with absolutely no problems as of yet. Q: What about heat dissipation? A: If you look at the pictures closely, especially the top-view of the open rack, you can see the metal cover over the processor towards the bottom of the picture. The rack's fans are mounted up front, and blow into the case, which just happens to create a nice current right over the processor. There's actually mounts there for a second hard drive, which I've been told can be connected as a slave to the IDE bus, but that would land right in the path of the air current, thus I decided against adding an additional drive. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ This site hosted by Point In Space Internet Solutions - Host it right, on a Mac! (Mention you saw this page and receive your first month's hosting free)
hey that rhymes!!!!
and that's the bottom line, 'cause the anonymous coward said so!
His whole website is filled with lists of his greatest achievements. This guy is more full of himself than anybody I've ever known. Bill Joy, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and other *real* programmers will one day spit on Woz's grave, mark my words.
Am I missing something, or does this seem a totally pointless thing to do - I appreciate he's Mac fan, but surely buying an iMac and taking out the screen and case is nothing other than a colossal waste of money?
Biscuits!
Have you tried Powdermilk Biscuits?
My, they're tasty, and expeditious...
thank you.
Quickie?
And that's exactly why the original comment poster asked the question about power discrepancies. Duh.
Ah. That explains why my new rackmount wouldn't boot.
as I said... :)
easy to carry tho - eh?
Hey dude, what's the URL for his website... I've got to see that. Does he list stealing long distance phone service as one of his great achievements?
Oh, but one problem - how are you going to run Mac software on that decent PC? Of course, why the hell he ever got hooked on Macs in the first place is beyond me.
I was really trying to be helpful. When Slashdot featured that 21" iMac it took me all day before I could see the site. I hate commenting until I read the article text so that I don't sound like an idiot for repeating something already in the article (maybe that's just me).
The point isn't the OS. Hardware hacks of any kind are most definitely not the place for mission-critical data.
What is that, some variant of Huffman code? No, sorry, uffman code.
And if like me you are paid a very high hourly rate, time spend building the damn thing could easily add up to $1000 to the cost.
I`ve mount racked an Amiga A1200 - 3 years ago. ideal for stage-work and multimedia scripting in live venues. alan
I just want to know why it is that all these iMac users want to dismember and reassemble their machines in a different form? If they think the Apple is so great, why don't they leave them as is. I expect to see "I turned my iMac into a PC clone by putting the components in a beige case" pretty soon.
waste them mod points
Load up WinNT on your (soon to be fried) boxen, and then install FileMaker?
Jon Katz, Nazi, Grits, Beowulf cluster, Natalie Portman, Scientology, Python rules, Perl sucks
Not when the rack is bolted to the wall and the floor.
Actually, the Raq1 and 2 lines use MIPS processors. Cobalt switched to AMD when they released the Raq3.
It took a while for some moderator who didn't know what was going on to finally fall for it and waste mod points. Good job, none of the original stuff above ever got attention. At least they are reading stuff and not just modding down stuff as soon as they see a keyword, right? Well, some times they do, like when OOG got slammed down when he made a great point earlier this week. That was a little funny, went to show how stupid the moderation idea can be. Anyway, congrats, you taught me a valuable lesson - put the words in sentence form, even if they say nothing.
I love my 8 x 300Mhz R12K Onyx2, with Infinite Reality 2E Graphics :0
When I went to the link, I got a 'page not found' ... was it removed?
Instead of sharing with the hacker community this Shylock is pedaling his "plans" for $$$. What an a**hole. The problem with Mac and BeOS is that you get nickled and dimed to death. Even the most obvious hacks are turned into "shareware" or other closed source ripoffs. It is not as though he accomplished something that couldn't be done by most high school "shop" students. Heck, even the nerds in the A/V club might figure this one out.
http://www.marathoncomputer.com/, which has been mentioned in posts on past Apple/G3/iMac-related /. stories, looks like they will be offering a 1U rackmount soon based on the iMac.
Kinda overly priced at $350 just for the metal, but not horrific if you have a cheap source for iMacs, a use for them (Linux, BSD, OS9 and what not) and are crimped for space.
Perfect, efficient and blue
Now I'll destroy it
Is it just me, or is the practice of rackmounting computers a bit like cleaning your room when mommy tells you to, or locking away your papers in a filing cabinet, or cleaning your shoes on Friday, or washing your car, or using shampoo, or any of those other anal-retentive neatness freak things? I can't put my finger on anything specific, but there's something unsettling about someone who's so hung up on neatness that they'd rack up an iMAc.
Hilarious. Bravo.
Us Ninja use the Racks for the iMacs, but we don't like to because we can't torture people with them if the computer's on it! We shove hot grits down the pants of all Linux fools who says Mac sucks. Ever USE a Mac? ahaha!
Maybe a little more crack and this guy might try to rack mount an AS/400 ? Good idea tho, rack a mac is intersting. too bad hes a mac addict. and send me a case, ill make an iQuarium!
Started out quite dull, but last paragraph made worth the read.
Wow!! An anti-mac comment... on slashdot!! FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's really good, the way I wrote it didn't make a statement. I really like the way you tied it together, especially the idea of Python vs. Perl having a religious impact. That would relate back to the Slashdot story regarding Freeman Dyson's work on religion's role on society, except here you would have an example of technology impacting religion. We can see some evidence of that already with the new Perl Monks website. Why "monks" unless their are religious implications? Pretty soon there will probably be a Python Priests website since Python fans would want their language to offer a religious form of expression/membership as well.
No matter what you do, even if you put it in a pretty (un-bubbled) case....... it's still an imac therefore it will still be slow and freeze every hour or so
..........sig...........
one time i hung my pants on a rack and poured hot grits down them, but i wasn't happy with it, because its better to wear the pants so you can smear the grits all over your purple puckered anus. thank you.
Of course, his customers would get pretty pissed about him only serving their databases during the *day*. ;)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
heh..I just helped a mac using friend of mine put together a dual celerey linux box. He went all out on the black components, monitor and evert'ing, got gobs of storage, ram, a matrox G400, sblive platinum (he was very upset the livedrive is beige). It gets used as a router.
Oh well.....
'great little one rack-space computers, however not Mac-based'.
This gives a different connotation than your post. The point is that he is a Mac-guy providing services to Mac-people. It's not that he wants to avoid PC's exactly, but rather he wants to use Macs wherever possible.
Cheers.....
Now that's a well written troll if I've ever seen one.
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Obviously you bolt the mac to the rack, not the handles.
My comment above was somewhat ambiguous
:)
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
> I wonder if anyones put a Mac into an Amiga
> case.
I think many Amiga owners would rather put their Amigas into some other case, so there are probably plenty of gutted Amiga cases out there to experiment on!
(The A500 and A1200 were the most popular Amiga models. They were computer-in-a-keyboard style cases that hindered expansion, so there was quite a business in "towering" these computers to get some expansion room.)
-- Rick
I can see how others could easily misinterpret your post as sarcasm, but after a year and a half of reading Slashdot I am all too well aware of the inability or disinclination of so many of its readers to read the articles before commenting on them, not to mention the regularity with which mentioned sites do indeed get slashdotted.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"i don't know why people get so het up about it, if someone makes a bad remark about your computer it not exactly going to stop it working issit?"
Of course not, but they can't help considering it as a statement that their male appendage is insufficiently large.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Must be nice to have free i-Macs lying around : )
Seriously though, the article says "Total price: the rack case and about 50 bucks in parts." No mention of what the rack case cost him, but there ain't no such thing as inexpensive rack mount stuff. (exclude the obvious stolen, surplus found in dumpster, etc). That $349 may be more reasonable than you imply once you consider all factors.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Actually, the current Apple Power Macintosh G4 Mac OS X Server machines have dual power supplies... and a powerd daemon to go with them. It's not hot swappable, however. It is instant switch-over.
Also, there are many servers out there that don't need more than 3 64bit slots. Matter of fact, many rack mount systems sacrifice slots - leaving only one or two available. With built in 10/100 ethernet, built in firewire (for that brand new firewire SAN to be supported in MacOS X), 2 USB ports, what exactly do you need more than 3 64 bit PCI slots for anyways? Let's see... gigabit ethernet card, dual channel 64 bit PCI Ultra/160 SCSI card, what else? I know that some people do need them, but not usually as servers and certainly not in this price category (under $10k). Plus, PCI expansion chassis's also exist.
In general, Macs do make nice solid quality machines compared to most x86 machines - not as solid as real Sun boxes (not the Ultra 5's), but then the price is a whole lot cheaper. It takes a lot of effort (which can mean dollars which is often discounted) to identify, specify, and purchase quality x86 systems. It is possible, but with vendors changing components all the time, it can be difficult.
New Motto: "We put the Day into Database"
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
why should anyone even care what the comp looks like, to either extreme? tis what it does that makes the diff.
Dahling...it is better to look good than to feel good!
- Another clueless pomo Mac hacker...
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
A quote from the article:
I'd seen these servers called the Cobalt Raq, great little one rack-space computers, however PC-based. So, I asked myself, why couldn't the iMac be a Raq with a little coaxing?
Say what? This guy means to tell us that a MIPS-based Linux rack-mount solution is a "PC"?
I guess mac folks tend to think of the world as "Macs" and "everything else". I wonder what he'd make of a Macintosh running SuSE Linux...
-josh
I hope not. For teachers and schools out there are still in some parts of the country very Mac dependant. The teachers know it and let us be frank it is an easy interface for the kids to get use to. Now, when you have this mac dependant environment, then having a couple of Macs acting like you file/printer servers actually make sense.
The teachers can usually work the thing without mucking it up and the little buggers are damn easy to set up and maintain.
If they abandon this market, they are dropping a decent little percentage of their market share.
Everyone thinks Apple = iMac or iBook. This is not always the case.
ACK
Ah, I see... yes, that IS expensive .. I didn't realise how much :) ..
... might be quite a nice system.
Actually since writing that post of mine I started to search around the net for stuff relating to powerpc mainboards etc, not just apple offerings. I came across this:
Motorola PowerPC ATX board which looks really great, especially the part about dual 604e's at 400Mhz
I can't seem to find a place to buy them online (or even get prices so I could price a system up) but I might try and get some info from that website themselves.
--
Delphis
I wonder if you can find the main board + cpu + rom on its own to buy as 'spares' for an imac you don't own so you need not buy a whole imac and just throw bits away. Which is nice from a cost point of view as well as a I-don't-want-gaudily-coloured-plastic-crap-all-ove r-the-place point of view too..
That way you could just rack mount what you want.. or, what I'd like to do, get a powerpc mainboard and plop it in a standard ATX and run linux on it without having to pay the 'Apple-tax'.
I glanced at Apple's site but it didn't say anything about a spares list. If someone knows a source, I'd be interested to know the basic costs.
--
Delphis
hey and it looks cool
and what about a clus.....
john
out
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
I can verify that the raq2 is mips based.
I run three of them at work.
Telnet to ns3.compton.net, the banner says it all.
Two problems come to mind cost and heat disapation. If you have ever used a portable you will realise how hot those things get.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
My school buys alot of Imacs. But the so called mouse that is included is replaced with a real one. Hence there is a lot of mouse leftovers. They are actually decorating a wall in the basement.
What about sending these, and the leftover cases from rackmounting Imacs to an artist. He/She could make a nice piece of art with it.
The reason for the rackmount sounded a bit strange. Does Filemaker only support 50 databases on the same machine!? And why does anyone bother use Filemaker as a server DB if that's the case.
The trouble to port the Filmaker DB's to a real DBHS is probably less than rackmounting a bunch of Imacs I would argue.
But in any case, it's was a cool project!
Did'nt Industrial Light And Magic rackmount a wohle lot of Mac Power PC's a few years ago for rendering purpouses?
A happy weekend to you all!
/Patrix, Sweden
That' right -- like a PC. I guess non-Mac people just assume that Mac people don't know what they are talking about with no justification.
...Not that a rack-mounted machine really counts a a PC under any stretch of the term "personal computer." The Raq 3's may have not been out when the guy first did this. I remember reading about someone making a 1 unit rack-mount out of a revison 1 iMac a long time ago, though I think it was on one of the Mac news sites and not Slashdot.
Read the spec sheet if you don't believe me.
On the other hand it could've been a simple mistake. I thought that the Raq 2's were x86 based as well, but the spec sheet for them talks about a "64-bit processor," probably the MIPS you mentioned.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You think you're joking, right? Check out the SID Station, a rack-mounted synth that incorporates the Commodore SID chip.
I've been an Apple certified tech for a couple of years now and I can give you the dope on this. Parts for anything that Apple has put on the market within the last year are controlled by Apple. For instance, you can get a logic board for a beige G3 from a third party vendor or possibly (by now) a Blue And White logic board. You will NOT be able to obtain say, a Black and Translucent G4 board for several more months unless you happen to work for an Apple Authorized shop.
Even if you work for an authorized shop it still wouldn't be economically viable to do. Like most vendors Apple imposes a core charge. That means 2 or 3 hundred bucks MORE for that logic board if you don't send Apple back a bad part (since you are supposed to be repairing them NOT building them). Also, repair parts are not commodity priced. The logic board for last year's beige G3 Server will cost you at least $600 BEFORE the core charge. A third party vendor MIGHT let you have it for $450 or so.
If you want to make Apple based servers it would be more feasible to check out the used and discount markets. Since most Apple parts are made by Apple it isn't as easy to build them as PCs or even Alphas for that matter.
Wrong!!!
What about Steve Wozniak???
He is the God of all nerds single handedly engineering the Apple I and Apple II
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
Um, he said $50 PLUS the rack case. I don't know how much that is, but it's probably $100-150, for a total cost of $150-200 (maybe more). Which is, of course, still cheaper than $349, but it's a lot more than $50.
The man bothered with an iMac because it would do his job. Why invest in bigger when iMac is good enough? I congratulate him on a job well done. He solved many problems on the way to his elegant solution. I work with IBM compostables by choice, but see nothing wrong with the way Apples do the job. I used and enjoyed them on a one-year contract. Again, my congratulations to a problem solver.
If you read the FAQ, you see:
The power supply gets replaced by the one provided with the rack box, which is an industrial-grade one meant for serving.
So, he's not using the iMac powersupply.
It doesn't seem to me that this is a very economical solution. IMacs are great for leting anyone get a computer but they are also expencive. You should be able to get a rack mounted PC for far less money and effort with more than likely more power.
I could probably do even better mail-order.
Of course, you probably don't understand what I just said. Nevermind.
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
What's he doing with all the monitor hardware?
Any way to adapt the crt from an imac to fit a "PC"? (PC in quotes cause... face it, macs are Personal Computers too. But no one says IBM clone anymore, so I'm at a loss as to how else to phrase it.. :^)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Yes, and its quite easy to do.
but, if you didnt read the main reason he was doing this, it was because of the fact that an iMac at $999 is by far a lot cheaper than a much more expensive G4 server...
Even though the monitor and casing of those iMacs are going to waste, its still more cost-effective to use them for Filemaker than it would be to do the same with a G4 tower, esp. since FilemakerPro makes no use of the Altivec instruction set, which gives the G4 its biggest boost.
Just my $.02 worth...
Stop over-analyzing your analizations
and wouldn't they be rendered useless in that case, it appears pretty small to have a card standing up in it.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
This being known, I picked up a standard PC one-unit rack-mount case with power supply, fans, and drive mounts. A custom-wired power adapter, a little modification of the back panel and some 3/4" stand-offs and I managed to successfully mount the motherboard and get the machine booted. The only remaining complications were constructing some longer cables for the monitor plug and CD-ROM, the latter of which required some special-order high-density connectors from good 'ol Digi-Key. Total price: the rack case and about 50 bucks in parts.
dood, he gives you all you need right here. pull the motherboard out, grab a multimeter, and go to work... if you dont want to do it, its fine, but all you need to do is read up on the specs for the imac, and you should be able to figure out the rest.
isnt it always more fun to do-it-yourself? if not, like the prev poster said, "its only $40"... that shouldnt break any of us.
for that matter, you dont *need* to worry about the cdrom... which would solve some of the problem, just drop it into an existing cluster, and there you go... another processor for your use.
personally, i've always preferred macs, and currently using an 8500/200 with linuxppc (though often still use the mac os because of my job... which will hopefully change with the mac-on-linux dev). i would love to try this... now where can i pick up a really cheap imac?
.sigs are dumb!
ha, that reminds me of a close friend who refuses to buy a mac for just that reason. he wants something imposing (think black and rack mounted), even for his home computer.
why should anyone even care what the comp looks like, to either extreme? tis what it does that makes the diff.
.sigs are dumb!
All due respect to these folks and all, but it would be useful to do a rack mount conversion of a real machine such as a 450 G4. Given the overall design with the nice access it has, it ought to be a piece of cake. It would be nice to see some "mil grade" servers out there.
Appleseed! A parallel mac cluster for numerically intensive computing.
it's a start!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This, and an earlier story about welding a mac to a 21" monitor made me think.
I wonder if anyones put a Mac into an Amiga case.
How about an IBM PCII case
Okay, what about a briefcase - A portable iMac but much more stylish than the official portables.
While an iMac isn't my first choice for a server it's still a pretty cool thing to do. I only wish that he wasn't selling the plans for it.
I don't want to do this myself but I would like to read about it a bit more.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Thanks! I searched (a bit) on the MacAddict site without finding it, so you're a big help here. It really mattered a lot to me to be able to see this mac-in-a-box for myself...
Ought to be able to sell 3 or 4 of 'em before getting slappend silly by Apple's lawyers.
Even scarier would be to rig up a PC inside the old case and scare the shit out of one of us Mac users.
_________________________________________
"As a long Mac user"
Typical Mac user... Brag, brag, brag... "Mine's longer than yours"... brag, brag, brag...
You just made me lose all respect for myself :(. Now go to your room and just think about what you did, you good-for-nothing little ragamuffin.
Green Monkey
As a long Mac user, I'd be willing to admit that Apple abandoned the publishing market too... Apple's relationship with Adobe and Macromedia has been strained on a regular basis since they've embraced the PC market, and Apple has stopped (or will stop) selling machines that are friendly for content creation. (You want 6 PCI slots? You don't want colorful screen widgets to distract from your work? Tough.)
--
Des Courtney
Those who complain about affect & effect on
I can't quite say where this all started, or why I ever initially thought it'd even be possible, but once the idea was in my head I found myself quite addicted to making it happen.
My situation is this: I run a web hosting/authoring company (Hot Grits In Pants Internet Solutions - http://www.hotgritsinpace.com/) specializing in serving on the HotGRIT platform - partially because I've been a die-hard Grit user since my father poured hot grits down my pants (when you could actually get the formula for hot grits, and even the ingredients), and partially because of the types of sites we host (Trollmaker, Lassie and the likes). Trollmaker is a great, easy to design, friendly database to use to add dynamic troll to Slashdot, however it has this one little limitation of only being able to post 50 trolls on one story - hence the need for lots of story. Since cost is always an issue, it seemed only logical to me that there must be some way to take advantage of these phenomenal computers called the Commodore 64, which have plenty of horsepower for serving, and can be acquired for less than a grand - much cheaper than the Commodore 65,536 "servers" that run three to four thousand dollars a piece.
Now, the problem with this whole theory is that there's this big thing living inside a Commodore 64 called a monitor lizard - something which negates the factor other than low-price that I wanted to satisfy - space efficiency. I'd seen these servers called TRS-80, great little one rack-space computers, however PC-based. So, I asked myself, why couldn't the Commodore 64 be a TRS-80 with a little coaxing?
After looking around the internet for naked and petrified boxes, I actually found that Portman Computer had beaten me to the punch (or so I thought), and was going to be shipping a product called the iHick - a rack-mount case all configured to have a deer's guts dropped right into it. To make a long story short, after getting the run-around from them for a month, with "one more week" quoted to me for a shipping date for weeks on end, it seemed like I needed to find another solution (FYI, as far as I know they still aren't shipping).
So, I decided to do it all inside my basement, something which scared me a bit considering one wire connected to the wrong place could mean certain death for the ENTIRE FRICKIN PLANET. After a little bit of investigation with the trusty multi-meter, I found that the Commodore 64's power supply conformed very closely to a standard Nuclear Power Plant supply. This being known, I picked up a standard nuclear one-unit reactor core with power supply, cooling rods, and uranium. A custom-wired power adapter, a little modification of your mom's back panel and some 9" "stand-offs" and I managed to successfully mount your mother and get my machine booted. The only remaining complications were constructing some longer cables for the monitor lizard plug and DVD-R, the latter of which required some special-order high-density connectors from good 'ol Digipen. Total price: the rack case and about 50 bucks in hot grits.
It's already been done, check it out at http://www.irack.com/. I admit, it's still a nifty hack though.
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You can Rack-Mount any of the recent translucent blue/white G3s or grr]ey/white G4s by removing the 4 handles (allen keys) and bolting them to a standard rack.........
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
I hadn't heard anything about dual power being available - if they're doing at least that much then it's a start (though instant switchover isn't anywhere near as useful as hot plug).
I agree with you that Apple hardware is generally well-engineered compared to the typical generic x86 machine, but they don't compare to the Suns or to "high-end" x86 servers like the top-end Compaq Proliants. Lack of hot plug power and external RAID only dooms them there. I know there's some good RAID cabinets available from Micronet and other vendors for the Mac, but I still firmly believe that 3 PCI slots (even if they're 64-bit) does not a server make. Part of the reason is that I assume Fibre Channel instead of FireWire for a SAN (Fibre Channel has a big head start and presently supports faster speeds), and that'll take up a slot, any legacy SCSI devices you run will take up a slot, and gigabit Ethernet will take up the third slot. And if (as I usually do) you want separate RAID for the system disks than from the data drives, then you're full. I know Second Wave makes expansion chassis, but it's a kluge compared to just engineering the slots in.
PowerExpress would have been a good platform to ultimately build MacOS X servers on, but it was killed). Preserving the Apple Network Servers, which _had_ all those features (hot-pluggable everything, plenty of slots, and dual processors) would have been even better. Slots aren't nearly as important in a rackmount (and I'm not complaining about the hacked iMac lacking them), but they do matter in a conventional server - and Apple doesn't have enough of them. USB and FireWire are great for a general purpose computer's peripherals, but not for a server (though FireWire eventually will be useful once the speed hits 800 MBits). Built-in 10/100 is good, too, but if you want to load balance or use Fast EtherChannel to trunk it'll cost you a slot.
Heck, I love Macs as much as the next guy (Lord knows I've got enough of 'em, and I'm replying to you from my iBook), and I think MacOS X is the shite, but I just don't think Apple has what it takes to play anything other than workgroup server ball. It's a pity, because the new OS is industrial-strength.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If you go to your local gun store, they sell black paint markers for touching up scratches on a gun's finish. They come in gloss and matte, and they worked really well on my DVD-ROM drive!
Just make sure you mask off anything you don't want to paint with masking tape.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Okay, ya, nice project, but once you take an iMac out of the pretty case its an overpriced piece of shit. Oh wait, its a piece of shit in the pretty case.
Linux O Muerte!
I saw this the other day linked from a Mac site. Yeah, it's great to put an iMac in a rack mount. But why did this guy do it? In the pictures, he's got it sitting on a table in an office, not rack-mounted. Seems a little stupid to me in this instance.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Hacking aside, this is the direction they really need to go if anyone's ever going to take a Macintosh multi-user machine seriously again.
Has Apple totally abandoned the low-end server market?
Now we just need beowulf-type clustering for a stack of these things...
The link in the old "21" Frankenstein iMac" story ain't working no more... Here's a link that works: http://www.macaddict.com /community/reallifemac/12_28.html
Well, I'm not an electrician, but I wonder how long these things would last. I noticed that he stated that the iMac power supplies were 'very close' to that of an ATX. How long will these last? It would seem to me that without some form of fault tolerance, even minor discrepancies in current could eventually cause major troubles. Maybe I'm wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
Obligatory open source zealotry: Selling the plans?!? What the fuck?!? Hardly open source.
The iMac isn't a bad computer b straight computer terms for the money (the original model can be had for around $600-$700 or so), and with WebStar and Filemaker they make solid, stable low-volume web servers that are _very_ easy to set up and maintain, even for the non-wizard. An iMac (at least the original version) is basically a highly modified laptop logic board that has been wedged into a monitor - the chipset and I/O are all on one small board and then the CPU, RAM, and Mac ROM are on a daughtercard, which is also how Apple typically designs their laptops. The drives are standard IDE.
Filemaker is a slick database for basic we functionality, and it has a built-in XML-based set of command functionality that you can insert directly into your code. There are some really nice wizards for the novice, too. Filemaker does not traditionally handle heavy loads well, and the MacOS has plenty of issues of it's own in a multitasking world, but for lower-volume websites the combination will give you pretty good bang for the buck with relatively low admin overhead.
What's interesting here, of course, is the case hack. At his costs, an iMac makes a decent rackmount system, though Apple has had an inability on their own to handle the server market - they have never quite "gotten it". Apple had, briefly, a terrific AIX-based series of "Apple Network Servers" that had Apple design, hot-pluggable everything, were CHRP multiprocessor 604e-based (they couldn't even run the MacOS on their own), and MacOS-based applications for managing the server and utilities with a Mac look and feel running under AIX. They were pricey, but very competitive with IBM's own AIX boxes and with the Sun and SGI boxes that usually get sold into the printing and publishing market. However, these came around late in Apple's dark days, and were unceremoniously "Steved" along with Newton and their never released PowerExpress 6-slot G3 Mac as a cost-cutting measure.
Since then, Apple's been particularly weak in the server space (even more than usual) - throwing OS X Server on a 3 slot G3 or G4 with only one power supply and calling it a server don't make it one. An iMac-class rack server would be a nice little seller (especially if redundant power and or disk could be hacked into it), but a project like that wouldn't make Apple a ton of profit so it won't happen. Hopefully an enterprising third party will be able to make something of it.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You could fit a PowerBook inside a 19" rack completely. All you'd have to do is let the ports poke out the back. Then you could open up the front of the rack and take it home at the end of the day.