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Build Your Own Mac
DaytonCIM writes "TechTV has a great article by Kevin Rose on how to build your own Mac: 'When it comes to PCs, geeks usually make a decision between buying a prebuilt computer or building one, component by component. This isn't true when it comes to Macintoshes. You're stuck with whatever Apple has to offer, with only a few measly dollars differentiating the products from retailer to retailer.' It will be broadcast on The Screen Savers today."
I think this was the link
I made my own but found I kept dropping the transistors on the carpet and losing them.
I was able to build a 500mhz G3 based iMac for under 300$ from parts I picked up on e-bay. I then installed it into a Marathon iRack 1U case.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I did what this article describes. In an effort to minimize my investment, I bought the components individually from ebay and online stores, put it all together, and had a custom PowerMac. The problem is that some of those components aren't brand new, and they may very well fail. Then you're left with a cheap-ass PowerMac that needs a new power supply. And one of the PCI slots is a little flakey. And...
It's easier to just buy a used PowerMac on ebay (or from a friend), which is what I ended up doing after I pieced together the parts individually. I still play around with that Frankenstein Mac, but it's not as useful as the used PowerMac.
However, if you invest in newer parts, I think you'll have better success than me. The stuff I bought was pretty old (and damn cheap).
This 480 hours of labor saves you all sorts of money, even after you have to spend $20 on tools and junk that you need to jimmy the stuff together.
In the old days these were called CAT Macs. or catalog Macs.(circa 1987-1994) There wer a few companies that specalized in building custom enclosures for Mac IIs and such. ATS or Atlanta Technical Specalists built a great product. John Yaeger came up with the design and production of cutting up PC AT cases and mounting custom power supplies, logic board plates and port covers to give enough room to make some killer Macs of the day.
Those were the days when Larry Pina was king.
For the price of the processor you can have a reasonable PC.
This is not a troll, just a note of what happens when hardware is made in small quantities, and is not actively updated as fast as the competition.
In the land of PC's, people that want the absolute best, or the absolute cheapest build their own.
In the land of Apple, if you want the best, buy it directly from Apple. Cheapest? Probably eBay.
Build my own mac?
...
I used to do that all the time, was easy...
2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese
I know a lot of MAC enthusiasts here will start commenting that "See you can build a mac just like you can a pc!" and I myself don't wish to start a flame war here but Building a MAC is no where near the ease of building a PC.
For a PC you need 2 main things the parts and 1 Screwdriver.
Building a MAC on the otherhand requires the parts, a Screwdriver, a Wire cutter, Dremel and cutting discs, 4" nylon wire ties, Electrical tape, Die, tap, and drill - (see the macoptz link on the article if you don't believe me)
The reason for this is because Apple - although they sell parts separately DOES NOT SELL THE MAC CASES BY THEMSELVES - so in order to make your powersuply and mac board work with a pc case requires all the time and effort of making a custom mod of your pc box. IMHO a very time consuming process unless you do that sort of thing on a regular basis and have all your stuff readily at hand.
I'm totally in favor of people trying this - just be forwarned that this is not a simple buy the parts slap the pieces together turn it on project - it's time consuming and requires a lot more tools and skill than needed for pc building.
Ave Molech Setting
...just don't try to install GNU-Darwin on it. ;D
BTW, Mac OS X 10.2.3 was just released via Software Update. Check my journal for more info.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The link for the motherboard in the story points to a refurbished motherboard which also costs $200!
I have built systems for the last ten years not because of the geek factor, but because most premanufactured systems are crap, and the ones that aren't cost way too much money.
given that I think most are looking for quality, who would put a refurbished motherboard in their system, let a lone a $200 one.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
TOP SECRET RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
1 sesame-seed hamburger bun
Half of an additional hamburger bun
1/4 pound ground beef
Dash salt
1 tablespoon Kraft Thousand Island dressing
1 teaspoon finely diced onion
1/2 cup chopped lettuce
1 slice American cheese
2 to 3 dill pickle slices
INSTRUCTIONS
1. With a serrated knife, cut the top off the extra bun half, leaving about a 3/4-inch-thick slice. This will be the middle bun in your sandwich.
2. Place the three bun halves on a hot pan or griddle, face down, and toast them to a light brown. Set aside, but keep the pan hot.
3. Divide the ground beef in half and press into two thin patties slightly larger than the bun.
4. Cook the patties in the hot pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Salt lightly.
5. Build the burger in the following stacking order from the bottom up:
bottom bun
half of dressing
half of onion
half of lettuce
American cheese
beef patty
middle bun
remainder of dressing
remainder of onion
remainder of lettuce
pickle slices
beef patty
top bun
How to Download YouTube Videos
As both a Mac and PC owner :
One of the main points (beside price) of building your own computer is to be able to choose your components, which you dont really have when it comes down to building a Mac since the supported hardware list is so small. _Drivers_ are the biggest hurdle to putting your own Mac together. Unless you want to run Yellow Dog Linux on it, but then it's not a Mac anymore, is it?
You cannot even use standard PC video cards on a Mac, since the Mac architecture expects extension cards to have OpenFirmware compliant firmware. Hence, nice Mac-specific NVidia AGP cards that wont fit anywhere else. Again, there are ways around that, but reliabiality suffers.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Drop one transistor on carpet and it is lost. But drop a million and you say "look at all those damn transistors."
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
there is a weird thing with PPC processors these days. it has something to do with the IMB/Moto design and manufacturing thing. also the "processor" is not just a bare chip like a PC user may think. it's a whole processor card, including the backside cache bla bla bla. not that it really narrows the gap, but there is a lot more than a bare chip.
Moto makes the chips that Apple currently uses in machines, IBM makes a lot of the ones that are used for upgrades. there is some agreement over pricing and speed. the rumors have long said IBM can outclock Moto's chips, but are not allowed to sell them because they are held back because of contractual agreements. rumors, but interesting because it seems IBM will be making the new Apple super-chip in mid/late 2003 when the 970s roll out.
also of note, a $399 PC is a piece of junk compared to any Mac. i am talking about the physical components. everything from power supply to ram, it will not have gigabit ethernet, it will not have firewire with individual busses for each port. things like that where the prices of Macs add up.
Then why does Mc'D's keep canning your ass?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Logic board: $200 Sonnet CPU: $700 Video card : $220 Memory: $200 hard drive: $150 pro keyboard/optical mouse: 99 Operating system: 129 ___________ Not including any shipping thats' 1730 $ for a SINGLE PROCESSOR MACHINE already without a case, power supply, cd/dvd drive, or even any cables or power cords. Or you can get a DUAL CPU system assembled with an air port card, extra memory, and operaing system from mac mall for $1690
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
the rumors have long said IBM can outclock Moto's chips, but are not allowed to sell them because they are held back because of contractual agreements.
It really is just a rumor. Not only can IBM make chips that clock faster than motorola's chips, they do make them and they do sell them, so whatever contract you may have heard of wasn't or is no longer true.
Also, I believe that the current iBooks use IBM G3s. The 750CXe I think.
Somebody on Slashdot modding down Wil Wheaton, yeah right! :)
:)
Heh. I think it's a hobby for some people to take their mod points and burn them hitting me -1 five times in a row.
Hey, at least this time it's for a good reason.
also of note, a $399 PC is a piece of junk compared to any Mac
Your price reference is for the processor alone (my original intention). For that money one can purchase a high quality AMD processor and motherboard of your choice. When looking at total cost of the PC vs homemade Mac, you can get far nicer, all brand new, components for the PC. And it will be the latest generation.
Note that the motherboard referred to in the article was $199 and it was a refurbished unit. High quality or not, for that much scratch, I want new stuff.
Gigabit ethernet is useless for 99% of Mac users, other than for bragging rights. A Gigabit solution is just now getting to the point of being affordable. It is still useless if you are mainly concerned with internet usage.
The 970's, if they do come down the pipeline, sound really cool.
In reality, the Macintosh market is not one of customization, it is one of reliability and ease of use. Something the PC still can't do.
No no no... If you're going to troll, do it right: You'd misspell "preferably", you wouldn't put the apostrophes in "world's" (twice), you certainly wouldn't get the "it's" usage right. I like the letter transpositions and the "WIndows", though - those were a nice touch. The lack of line breaks is excellent. But "cheep"? No, too obvious. You certainly shouldn't get the distinction between Unix and Linux.
Nice try, though. I give it a "B". Keep working at it - you have real troll potential.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
If you're going to bash TechTV for a connection to Microsoft, get the facts straight.
TechTV is owned by Vulcan Ventures, who's primary investor is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. TechTV disclaims this ownership whenever they report on Charter Cable or Allen's America's Cup team, but they do not disclaim it when they talk about Microsoft since Paul Allen doesn't control that company, Bill Gates does.
microsoft is not a hardware company. they make software which is closed, proprietary and holds a monopoly position. apple makes both hardware (mostly closed, although in many places standards-compliant) and software (much closed, but much open).
Apple wouldn't have had to create a "switch" campaign if they hadn't reversed their decision to license out their OS.
why not? they still would have a different hardware architecture (whether it was made by umax or apple) and a different os.
As I recall, Power Computing at one point sold more Mac-OS running computers than Apple did!
which is why the macsimilies were cancelled. apple is primarily a hardware company and uses the hardware profits to subsidize the r&d costs of the os. if hardware profits are cut, the os suffers, thus decreasing the attractiveness of the entire platform and further eating marketshare.
Their market share keeps declining, even as the quality and innovation of their products is on the upswing. How strange.
this statement could be interpreted as meaning that market share and quality/innovation of product are somehow causally related. if this were true we'd have been watching betamax tapes and driving bmw's for the last ten years. don't trust me... trust derrick from o'reilley.
It's eerily similar to watching socialist command economies flounder and fall, while free-market ones thrive and give consumers more choices at better prices.
no... it's earily familiar to watching monarchies flounder and fail while revolutionaries thrive. my analogy is no better or worse than yours. both are unsubstantiated and ubsubstantiatable and serve to do little other than inflame.
2 1337 4 u!
here's the lowdown (as if anyone cares) of the Mac I've been piecing together for a few months now:
Its a 7600 case painted gloss black w/ silver highlights on the power button, the cd eject button, and, of course, the apple logo.
inside you'll find a beige g3 rev 3 mobo. a 350 MHz G3 clocked up to 433 w/ 1MB cache, 6MB internal Rage Pro graphics. Beefed up to 768 MB RAM. Added the A/V card that was optional on these models. Added a USB/FW combo card, a fast ethernet card, a Radeon 7000 PCI graphics card, 2 HDs(12 and 20, soon to be 12 and 80), a and a DVD-ROM for movies. This baby kills. Check out the list of ports:
1/8" stereo audio in
1/8" stereo audio out
RCA stereo audio in
RCA stereo audio out
RCA video in
RCA video out
S-video in
2x S-video out (one onboard, one on Radeon card)
Original Apple Monitor Connector
VGA
DVI
2 USB
2 FW
10/100 Enet
10 Enet
SCSI
2x serial
ADB
3x Monitor support (2 off the Radeon, one off internal video - the internal video can be a monitor or television, Radeon can be any 2 of either DVI, VGA, or S-video or composite video.).
Its not a gaming station as I'm stuck w/ PCI graphics and a 66MHz bus on this (Tomb Raider runs great but forget about Jedi Knight II), but I'm not done w/ it yet. Next up are the final 2 additions:
-SuperDrive (found a vendor that sells a black model CHEAP, so it'll match - just bought one for my B&W G3 and it rules.)
- Single or Dual G4. XLR8 made a dual g4 upgrade, but they're out of business. So I'm trying to find a dual 450 or 500 upgrade for this baby, and if I can't find one I'll swap in a 450 from a B&W I'm upgrading, clock it up a tad, and be done with it.
OK, so there's the setup, now here's the use:
computer sits by the couch/loveseat/lazyboy w/ a flat panel monitor, wireless mouse and keyboard. the computer's display is mirrored on the tv set via the Radeon. Cable TV runs directly into the TV. Cable TV also runs into a VCR, which is plugged into the Computer via S or Composite Video. Audio out from Computer (which also serves as a CD player, DVD player, networked MP3 player, CD burner, DVD burner, and PVR) goes into a reciever to speakers. Everything else is also hooked into the reciever. Reciever audio out is looped back into the Computer through 1/8" input on Computer while the VCR uses RCA audio in.
The Computer's video is hooked into the Receiver as well, with the output going into the TV, and an auxilliary video and audio output going back into the VCR.
This way, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING can be recorded both digitally and analog with live monitoring and multiple recording points. Please keep in mind that a CD-changer, record player, and tape deck are all plugged into the receiver as well. Because of the way its set up, the TV can be just a TV or have the full computer interface and due to the VCR hooked into the computer, can retain TV functionality in addition to all the other uses that a Mac has.
The computer is running on Mac OS X Jaguar, so its a cinch to set up an audio/video file server and a limited-use user account specifically for the functions of using it as a media center. Not to mention the use of a Wacom tablet for interaction, plus all the user apps that mac Mac OS X so great - iMovie, iPhoto, etc., all integrated into a total entertainment environment. Plus, using bluetooth, if I'm watching TV and my cell rings, I'll get a nice pop-up message on my TV of who's calling with their picture. I drool when I think about it. Much cooler and more expandable/useful than MS's media center, and the components were dirt cheap. most were scavenged off eBay or are hand-me-downs from a B&W G4 that I've been upgrading as well. Fun stuff!
Beyond that, add into the mix the Computer's ability to run things like Pro Tools or Deck. And iTunes will soon have Rendevous support, so as soon as my friends come over with their iBooks or PowerBooks, their music is available on my entertaiment system automatically. Or use a USB or FireWire TV tuner and run cable directly into the Computer as well. The sheer geekiness of it is astounding.
The possibilities are endless, and I'm like 85% there. I really should have been chronicling all this (especially all the clocking experiments) or something, but I usually only get to work on it in the wee hours when I'm all cracked out (not literally mind you).
Oh well, that's it. I think its cool, its been fun to build, and I hope nobody is mad cuz they read the whole damn post and feel ripped off.