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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 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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Given that he has decided to go with a Mac in the first place, it's not like he has that many choices. Apple only makes 2 kinds of systems, iMacs and G3/4s. A G3 is gonna cost at least double what the iMac will. Even if you throw away the monitor, if the iMac meets your needs, it's the best choice.
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.
You obviously shouldn't be allowed near mission-critical data either.
For the price he's paying, he could be getting a lot more robust hardware.
The OS is secondary here; we're talking about robustness and reliability, and it's the hardware that is primary determinant there.
You're the only person who mentioned NT. If you think Mac and NT are the only two choices, that speaks volumes for your technical knowledge.
Leave the mission-critical data center hardware choices to those of us who make our living making those choices; you obviously don't have the training or knowledge to speak intelligently on the subject.
I think it's pretty clear that this guy is horribly misguided, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near mission-critical data.
It's a nice hack, but it's the wrong solution to a poorly-thought-out problem.
The guy doesn't even blink an eye over the fact that he's paying for monitors and disposing of them. With that kind of waste in his business model, he has to be either:
1) Not making any money.
or...
2) Overcharging his customers.
Either way, purchasing service from him is irrefutable evidence of schizophrenia.
But, as I said, it's a nice hack. Kudos for that part.
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!
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
One of the MCSE wannabe's at work here was calling them Compaq clones.
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?
Hey comon, he is only selling the plans for $40. WIth that one time investmenet you could then make as many iRaqs as you like for $50 in parts.
This is a MUCH better deal than
http://www.marathoncomputer.com/pr_irack.html
is selling these at $349 a piece.
He took the time and effort to figure it out and believes he should be compensated.
Every rule has an exception, and this is the only rule with no exceptions! Huh? -- Spatch
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...
Yeah! He should be putting those important databases on NT.
Who the hell does he think he is using a secure OS?
The guy doesn't even blink an eye over the fact that he's paying for monitors and disposing of them. With that kind of waste in his business model, he has to be either: 1) Not making any money. or... 2) Overcharging his customers.
Lets see: He's spending less than $900 (iMacs can be had for $549 or less, plus an estimated $350 for the rackmount case) for a rack-mount server capable of running a very widely used database program, on an OS that is very easily maintained and has proven excellent uptime stats.
Wow, what an idiot he is.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
You're probably right.
Hardware hacks of any kind are most definitely not the place for mission-critical data
I'm not sure I agree with this. Of course, I tend to view the entire space program as one big hardware hack, so there ya go.
He's not really doing anything that radical. If the voltages are correct, and the current-handling is there, then a power supply is a power supply is a power supply. As long as he's got the pin-outs for the connectors that need changing, there's not that much to it.
One additional thing I haven't seen commented on: The cooling requirements for the iMac board would be much lower than any case designed for PCs could handle.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
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.