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."

Comments

Price...

[chrysalis]

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.

Re:Price...

[perfessor multigeek]

I wholeheartedly agree.
Man oh man.
In the old days /. just simply refused to acknowledge Macs at all so I guess that this sort of thing should be considered progress. Still no grasp of the obvious but better than the previous invisibility. Still . . .
OK, children, gather round for today's bowl of clue.
First of all, if you're gonna talk Apple mods, then start at applefritter. They've built Macs into everything from 1930's radios to LEGO people to ziplock bags.
Next, (I can't believe that I'm doing this twice in one day!), let's get the vendors and refs out of the way:

Mac of All Trades Getcher used macs here! Pretty visuals, delicious prices, detailed info. Selection could be better and there's no old stuff at all but I can deal with that. Have I bought from them yet? Nope. Am I likely to in the future? Yep.

MacResq The best place I've found overall to pick up gear. Even the guys in that article figured that out.

Powermax Cheesy setup, improving selection, good prices.

Shreve Expensive, distracting, but the best place to get weird low-end stuff like Mac Plus manuals and Daystar cards.

Small Dog Shrinking selection, great quality, excellent service, annoying interface. Bottom line, these are the guys to turn to for premium service, support, and savvy. Been around quite a while and, hey, they enclose coupons for Ben and Jerry's.

Guide to Mac CPUsThis is Apple's own site for detailed specs on all their machines ever. I'm starting you off on the page for older machines to remind you that a well-configured 1996 Mac w/ a USB/Firewire card can run OSX just fine, thank you very much.

Focus of Mac Hardware good workaday resource for doing mods. No cool toys. Considerable good data.

Missoula Mac User Group, Yeah, I know that you haven't heard of them; neither has anybody else outside of Montana AFAIK. Best place for overall newbie resources.

ResExcellence In the old days I would have suggested MacFixit, but these guys have taken their place. If you've been in the Mac world for a while you'll recognize them as the old-time source extraordinaire of ResEdit hacks.

Think Secret The only rumor site I like that I forgot to mention yesterday.

Okay, moving right along. CPUs. Those yahoos think that the only option is to start from scratch. Get a clue. The last pre-Jobs big boxes kicked almighty ass. Amelio may not have been a gifted businessman but he was a much better heavy gear guy. As far as I'm concerned your best bet for DIY is to buy an 8600. It'll be $230, tops. You get a great case, big power supply, floppy drive, cables, and so on. Probably also a Zip, for which I will pity you as that model of Zip just LOVED to come down with the Click o' Death. Even if you flat throw out all the electronics you're still way ahead of starting from a place like Tom's.
Next, processor speed. When will those yahoos figure it out? Before you get obsessed with latest and greatest ask yourself, "what exactly will I be DOING with this machine?" If you're running stuff like BBEdit (ah, my one true love!) or Photoshop for still work then any 400MHz box with fast drives and plenty of RAM will be, for all intents and purposes, instantanteous. Buying anything faster just means that you're acting like the small-donged dimwits who buy $20K stereos to get fidelity five times better then they can hear.
Drives. I'm always amazed at how terrified Windoze-damaged (let alone *nix) folks are at the thought of external drives. Get over it, already. On a Mac all that driver clash claptrap is a distant and not very credible folktale. Get a basic little 6 Gig internal and invest your money in external Firewire devices. You think this LAN party stuff is cool? On a Mac pretty much any well configured boot drive will boot any similar recent Mac. Stop carrying your entire box with you; stick to drives. Even better, get two or three smaller ones instead of one big one and, short of FBI seizures and vast fires, you become crash proof. Mac dies? Plug your drive (you did remember to back up your core data, right?) into another Mac and you're up and running again in minutes.
The future. If you're such an almighty techie that you just *need* to build a new cooler world every year or so, then remember, Mach kernel plus gigabit ethernet equals mongo shared resources. Even if you're too lazy to set up a formal Beowolf system, it's pretty damned easy to just keep adding machines and splitting the jobs between them. Instead of buying a whole new box, maybe you should just buy a second one and start spreading load to it.
OSes. Yup. No question, Jaguar is pretty spiffy. But almost every vendor site above (as well as eBay and co.) will sell you older legit disks and serial num.s for about fifty bucks. If you buy from a place like Small Dog you'll even be clearing out some of that famed Apple back inventory.
That's it. You want more? Then go to my site already (though best to wait a few weeks for my next redesign). Want more then that? Then pay me and I'll think about it.
Promising to not ever again use up time posting tutorials on /.,
Rustin

This is from a thread on Arstechnica...

[juuri]

You can follow other people's progress here:

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tp c&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=4820959925

How To Make An Apple

[RomSteady]

Get required components: fertile ground, apple seed, water, fertilizer

Plant apple seed in ground.
Add water and fertilizer at regular intervals.
Remove weeds at regular intervals.

Eventually, you'll have an Apple.

EULA violation

[BitwizeGHC]

It is a violation of the EULA for Mac OS to run it on any non-Apple-branded hardware. This goes for things like MOL too.

Re:EULA violation

[evilviper]

Just because it is in the EULA does not mean it legally enforceable. I would suggest everyone talk to their lawyers before doing so.

Re:EULA violation

[GauteL]

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.

Fun to read, but impractical

[marcsiry]

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.

Why not a clone?

[stew77]

OS X is a chance for the clones to come back: This German vendor is selling OS X compatible Umax clones with G4 CPUs for EUR 729+.

case mod not 'building a g4'

[spasm]

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'.

cheaper education systems

[mbaudis]

apple frequently dumps older systems at the education stores. about 5 monthes ago, stanford had G4/533/CD-RW/40GB + 17 inch LCD for 1249 (that is 350 added to the screen). other examples are 899 (same time) for iBook 600/DVD. all new machines.

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Paying to build a Mac from scratch? That's like buying parts and building a Fiat.

I hate to have to be the one to break this news to you, but if you're buying a fiat, parts are all you're getting.

Not wanting to pay Apple prices

[Galvatron]

From page 2 of the instructions: New processors start at around $400 regardless of vendor.

Ouch, given that an Athlon XP 2000+ can be had for under $100, it sounds like you're still paying Apple prices.

who cares?

[jchristopher]

Cramming an Apple motherboard into an ATX case is hardly "building a Mac from scratch".

Now, if they had used some generic PowerPC motherboard and got it to boot OS X, that would be news. This isn't.

The Last Thing Apple Wants To Do

[reallocate]

The last thing Apple wants to do is encourage and enable people to "experiment" with OSX on non-Apple hardware. You've noticed, I suspect, that Apple has never marketed an x86 version of any of its operating systems That's because Apple is hardware company, not a software vendor. Sure, they write their own OS, but it is precisely the tight integration of that proprietary OS with proprietary hardware that maintains the "uniquesness" of the Mac. Whether or not that uniqueness is worth the price is a matter of opinion, but the approach does ensure that only company that builds Macs is Apple.

Re:The Last Thing Apple Wants To Do

[Golias]

You've noticed, I suspect, that Apple has never marketed an x86 version of any of its operating systems That's because Apple is hardware company, not a software vendor.

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.

What next? A Mac logic board in a Mac case?

[dpbsmith]

Wow, this is so exciting... first a PC board in a Mac case, now a Mac board in a PC case.

How long before someone takes a G4 Mac, removes the logic board from it, puts it back, and put up detailed step-by-step photos on a Web site showing what he or she has accomplished?

Re:If only apple would support this.

[LiquidPC]

If you really want to try out OSX, you could just go to ebay and buy a Mac 8500, or something like that, then buy some extra ram and a faster processor card. I managed to get all of this for less than $100.

Then just buy OSX and use XPostFacto, which allows you to run OSX on unsupported macs. Now you have a Mac that allows you to fiddle with OSX for under $150.

How To Build A Buck From Scratch

[reallocate]

Step One: Buy 3 Used Buicks ....