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Build a Macintosh From Scratch
An anonymous reader writes "MacOpz has posted a great step-by-step tutorial on building your own G4-based Macintosh from scratch. This article includes where to get parts, what modifications must be performed, and tons of photographs. A must-read for anyone that wants a Mac but doesn't want to pay Apple prices."
The problem is that when you sum up everything, you end up with something _more expensive_ than just buying it from Apple.
Oh and of course you also have to purchase MacOS.
{{.sig}}
As a professional who relies on my Macintosh to generate income, the supposed "price premium" of Apple hardware over a build-it-yourself amounts to a half day's billing.
Add the time to build eating into billable hours, and it would come out as an expensive proposition.
There are lots of reasons to build a machine yourself- better control over the parts, getting a custom config that you can't easily buy, and saving money. I wager that most people's reason to buy a Mac- it works, out of the box, to make us money- is not really compatible with those ideals.
I do agree with one sentiment addressed in the story, and that's avoiding the outlandish prices Apple charges for standard parts such as RAM and hard disks. Most savvy Mac users buy base configs and then load up the RAM and HD's via cheaper, third party suppliers.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
Just because it is in the EULA does not mean it legally enforceable. I would suggest everyone talk to their lawyers before doing so.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I don't understand why a bunch of people want to run OS X anyway. It's proprietary and completely closed source. If you're a serious graphics designer, sure, I can see your reason for wanting OS X.
But, slashdot geeks... I can't understand why they'd want something that removes all kinds of ability to tinker and has a shitty EULA. The OS may be a step up from Windows, but the EULA is almost as shitty.
Even Linux Journal ran a freaking article on OS X. LINUX Journal. I just don't understand the facination with OS X. I've used it briefly, and while it does appear to have a good GUI, it's not free.
Christ, I sound like Richard Stallman. Somebody shoot me. It's just the way I feel.
The PC Case is just ugly. I'm considering to buy an iMac, partly because of it look, seriously. I'm a hardcore programmer. But Mac's look is just irresistible. I think the Unix core make it a partical machine for coding (besides web browsing, etc).
uh.. read the article. it's not 'building a g4 from scratch' so much as 'getting an apple mobo & other random g4 parts off ebay and mounting them in a pc case with some noisy fans', primarily because "it's impossible to use a Zip drive, CD-ROM, and DVD-ROM together in the same machine with any G4 that Apple has ever shipped".
this is a glorified case-mod project for a specific end use, not 'building a g4 from scratch'.
Ouch, given that an Athlon XP 2000+ can be had for under $100, it sounds like you're still paying Apple prices.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I was looking at this picture of the backside of the logic board with some interest, having never seen the insides of a modern Mac before. I couldn't help but notice that one of the chips on this board, the middle of the three largish square ICs, appears to be made by Intel (there is a very distinctive large, lowercase i to the left of some other illegible text, which is one of Intel's trademarks). Its impossible to tell what it is from the picture. Is it a PCI bridge? The ethernet controller? You would think Apple would not be keen on using Intel components whenever possible, but then I guess any corporation is going to put profit first. Does anyone know what it is?
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Now, if they had used some generic PowerPC motherboard and got it to boot OS X, that would be news. This isn't.
Yes. Apart from the USA after the DMCA, I do not know about other countries where EULAs are enforcable.
They certainly are not in Norway. If you buy a copy of MacOS X you can do whatever you want with it as long as you do not distribute it. This is also how it should be. After buying a product it just opposes all common sense of right and wrong to not be able to use the product as you see fit. Wether that is destroying it publically, running it on your elite G4-based toaster or just putting it in the refrigerator.
Technicly, you have to use an Apple Branded MoBo. The thing they are worried most about probably are the ROMs, but since it is a real apple board, they are real Apple ROMs on there.
Ahh, but putting a PC motherboard into a PC case IS building a PC from scratch?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Well, you are correct that Apple is a hardware company, but that is not the reason for them not using x86.
Woz himself said that he chose a Motorola clone chip for the Apple ][ because it was the cheapest CPU available at the time. Later, the Motorolla 68k was chosen for the original Macintosh for reasons of cost, performance (at the time), power efficiency, and familiarity (among Apple engineers). The PPC was developped jointly by Apple, IBM, and Motorola and it was easy to build in a compatability layer to the MacOS for running stuff from the old 680x0 chips. The G3 was branched off the very efficient PPC 603 line, and the G4 is essentially a G3 with Motorola's AltiVec system added to enhance vector performance.
If Jobs had a time machine, he very well might want to go back and tell himself to insist on a CPU that handles x86 instructions. There have been a few shining moments when the PPC platform was the fastest chip for home use around, but most of the time that has not been the case.
On the other hand, IBM went the x86 route (and an outsourced OS), and the results were disasterous for their PC division. Once Compaq reverse-engineered their ROM's, the game was over. Everybdoy was buying "IBM Compatable" computers, and no matter how good OS/2 became, there was nothing IBM could do to change the trend.
So, I agree that making the move now would be a bad idea. If Apple were to move to x86, things would be fine as long as they didn't become more than 10% or so of the market. The moment they became a bigger player than that, somebody would consider it worth their while to clone them the way Compaq cloned IBM, and Apple would change from being Dell's strongest rival to just being a very tiny Microsoft, except without an Office suite for income, almost overnight. In other words, it could kill Apple.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.