My current thought is there’s something in the Clover config messing everything up. I think I know a way to manually skip the video so I can load up the NVidia Web drivers properly, which may fix the problem. Of course, I find this out when I’m at work.
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Yeah, Paul has a history with having to seethe volcanically at Clover to get it to work. When it does eventually work it’s great, but no getting the drivers correct in the first place is a real pain in the arse.
By the way, while I haven’t been able to fut any ‘fab time’ in on this the last month or so, I have been using it!
It’s pretty fast for the games I like and such. Stellaris runs like molasses on my older Mac Mini, but flies on this. Temperature has not been a problem.
Getting Sierra and the graphics card to play nice was a bit of a problem. I still see some occasional issues with Safari and in-line movies loading wrong, but it’s usually fixed with a reload.
Parts incoming to get back to working on the front bezel.
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Some progress, albeit slowly:
- Got HWSensors up and running, which provides data from the various CPU temperature gages. It may run a little hot when under load, but not dangerously so. (low 60s?)
- One OS problem I’m working on is waking from sleep… Right now, it doesn’t. There’s a bunch of fixes for this, but some are kind of trial and error.
- Work on the front bezel is proceeding! Working on the switch mount (which is going in the floppy slot. Here’s my current plastic piece, which will go in the slot. The pieces attached will press onto the buttons on the control board for the display.
But here’s the pics you really want to see:
It’s alive! Dual monitors being dual and all that. Tennis ball is not to scale. (It’s a small dog toy) and I’m going to be reworking the mount for the LCD as some of the pieces from the Mark 1 design failed.
Closeup on the bezel. I wish the LCD was slightly larger, but it works!
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I think one part of this I really want to work on is rewiring the switch. I need to find another tutorial as I think the switches I’ve got have 5 leads, but I only need to use 4. I think I may have even bought a power supply tester that can also test switches in a drunken fit of Amazon purchases last year. I need to buy another cheap switch unit so I can cut it apart to hook up the one I want to use.
Also, while hunting for someone else, I found that they make SATA cables with a bend to one side… Which might work perfectly to make it easier for me to dress them to the case, freeing up space for air flow and such. Must research more…
I am not really a skilled person with basic electronics.
My first attempt at working on the switch failed, but I’ve got some late info that suggests I was doing it wrong (so totally my fault).
And nothing has blow up so far.
Turns out the switches I want to use have the following pins:
- Normally Closed
- Normally Open
- Common
-
-
+/- are apparently for the lights, but I was trying to use them for the ‘switch’ part of, well, a switch. It looks like I need to use +/- for the power indicator LED, and either NO/C or NC/C for the power button.
Also, I should probably do this right and solder it instead of jsut looping wires, which I promise I’m only using for testing.
Switch work this weekend! Let’s start with the pics:
I had some issues with the heat shrink tubing. The large piece on the middle pins was to add some extra support.
Button works, light works!
Next step is getting this set into the front bezel.
More details on my site if you want them.
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Having to clean up so we can sue my workbench for an upcoming party. On the plus side, this got me to move on some of the front bezel work:
Good stuff:
- The “buttons” for the LCD work!
- The main power button works, and looks awesome!
- I think I’ve figured out how I want to mount the main board for the LCD.
Bad Stuff
- Currently running with the bezel kind of leaning in place, because there’s an HDM and Power cable running out the side.
- May have to cut the main case slightly to enlarge one of the existing orifices so I can get a DVI cable through it.
Plans for when I can get back into this next month-ish:
- Avoid scope-creep.
- May re-do the back “shield” if I get access to a laser cutter. Which $Wife may buy me a class on at a place nearby that rents access.Could also be useful for the front bezel and other parts… Should work on sketching them out in a vector art program (of which I need to find a new one, as my Illustrator CS4 install appears to be freaking out).
- Going to focus on existing pieces, and defer the “minor” stuff like the front USB access until the other bits are done.
- Need to decide how to get the “buttons” done for the front panel. Ideally, I’d like to get a sticker printed on clear backing if I can find a source.
- I’m thinking it would be good to identify and order replacement power cables for some of the cables from the PSU to various bits. I don’t (for example) need a cable that breaks off to power a floppy drive!
Oddities
- Turns out the LCD panel goes into test-mode when the signal is gone. (Like shutting down the PC!) Cycles through primary colors… I think there’s config options for this, as it is intended for industrial or in-car use. Also options for things like auto-on when powered.
- I am keeping an eye out for an AppleCD SC, which I think is the CD-ROM drive intended to st under a toaster-format Mac. They’re expensive on eBay, but I jsut want the shell… So the follow-up project could be to turn that into an enclosure for a backup HD, CD-ROM, and general cable management.
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Small update: Still working on laser-cutting replacements for my badly hand-cut plastic bits. Took a class so I can use a fab lab locally, and now I’m cutting test pieces in cheap wood before burning acrylic.I’m ready to get my 3rd round of prototypes when I can get in.
This redesign will (hopefully) make the back panel work a bit better. Also, it should make getting the monitor up and running feasible: I’ve been running with the case ‘open’ through the front monitor for the last few months.
One issue I need to deal with is finding a better way to ‘lock’ the motherboard holder in place.
So: Project not abandoned, just pushed down the stack.
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Laser cutting is what I’d rather be doing right now, but work calls, and every weekend seems to be busy these days. Maybe next weekend…
Had a miserable weekend for this project:
Friday started out good. Due to my work week, I went over for the afternoon and cut what should hopefully be a good set of parts for the front bezel, rear ‘shield’ and a small piece to work with each of those.
Cutter was not cooperating, and I pushed it and tried to cut past lab-close, which caused the lab operator to eventually boot me out. I got my computer stuff cut, but ended up scrapping out a sheet of tokens for a game prototype.
Then it turns out I left my USB key at the lab.
So I headed over Saturday. Not really my plan, as the lab is about 45 minutes from home (about 10 minutes from work, which is why it’s convenient-ish). So 1.5 hours of the day wasted. As stress relief, I went through and cleaned out 4 boxes of old books.
Got the USB back, re-cut the tokens (which moved from a golden-translucent to smokey black due to the acrylic I had on hand).
Anyway, Sunday I decide it’s a good time to test-fit the pieces I had made. We had already spent the morning shaving the dog, so I was already in pain.
Turns out the cutter was misbehaving. Everything looked good on the top, but the bottoms weren’t quite cut through. OK, maybe I can break the pieces off and trim: They’re not really in a place where a rough edge is a big deal once installed.
First, laser-cut lines in acrylic are too thin to get an x-acto blade in easily. Snapped the blade off, in fact.
Then I managed to snap every piece.
Got my designs reloaded
The tokens I burned Saturday might be usable, as they cut through as far as I can tell. But everything else needs to be recut.
That sucks, sorry. I would not be a happy camper.
It’s annoying, but I can always cut a new set. The good/bad is work has been weird so the last couple weeks I hit 40 hours around Thursday PM, so come in Friday, do a couple hours of wrap-up, and have the afternoon free.
I think the lab I use might have a slight issue with one cutter. I’ll try and use the ‘good one’ for the next batch.
This project isn’t dead!
Recently, I:
- Rebuilt the whole thing to run Catalina
- Decided how to make the case close ‘better’ as the front bezel was dangerously loose.
- Thought about how to finally do the front-panel USB I’ve wanted to add.
So for #1, it’s working surprisingly well. I also got away from the ‘beast tools’ that are currently unpopular with the community, as the developer has a reputation as a bit unfriendly, and taking some shortcuts. Works reasonably well, although Sleep causes crashes right now. it’s a weird crash, because it happens after the system wakes up and logs back in.
#2 is the thing I wish I was working on today. The answer, i this case, is Magnets! Figured I’d put a couple small L-bracket pieces in so they hold the whole thing together easily, with magnets to make it all work.I am trying to build a set for the bottom (where it really needs it) but found my glue was a glob of non-adhesive trash when I tried.
Once this is done I’ll do some rebuild work and look at #3 which scares me a bit because I need to have a lot of stuff work right. If I screw it up it might make the case hard to fix.
I’m also half looking for a replacement video card, as NVIDIA is on the outs for MacOS support. My card is supported in Catalina, but no guarantees moving forward.
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Post pix of the end product! It do sound good.
It has, sadly, kind of turned into one of those projects I’m always tinkering with. I’ll have to post some pics when I get the magnetic bits working and replace the bezels. Waiting on some nylon screws…
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So I was adding magnets to hold the bezel in place over the last couple weeks and had a great ‘duh’ moment:
I’m talking to my wife (who was probably wondering why I had a bunch of the basement bar occupied by a disassembled computer) and explained that I was adding L-bracket/magnet combos in to help keep the front bezel in place. But, I explained, one issue is there’s no easy way to line up the brackets when closed.
Oh yeah, I also have to remove the LCD mounted in the bezel to realign it and add a piece in to prevent a small issue. (A screw was pushing on it, which caused a small visual defect on the screen.)
The light then dawned: If I removed the screen, that gave me a giant whole (9" diagonal!) to put my hand through the get the brackets positioned correctly. 
Only major thing I still want to do with this is rig up front-panel USB (through the old dial location) but still undecided on how to do so. And add RAM, but that’s every computer I work with on a regular basis.
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A Postmortem of sorts:
This was a fun project but I’m sscavenging for parts to make a more ‘traditional’ box in a a regular case. It’ll probably be MacOS compatible, but I’ll probably just run Linux on it, which is what this box was doing the last few months anyway.
I switched to Linux for compatibility with a few things and it worked reasonably well. The ultimate cause of death is, I think, motherboard failure. It boots to BIOS but won’t boot to any drives now. Either the USB has failed or the SATA controller. And several mounts broke in the process of troubleshooting that…
Basically, my desk layout was somewhat incompatible with having the Mac Plus on my desk or otherwise visible, so the built-in display was mostly useless and occasionally caused issues.
This was still fun project. Should I do it again I’d love to try doing it with less case-cutting to be ‘cleaner’ and look nicer. I think i’d try to arrange a follow-up so the Motherboard is on the bottom (and thus loosely in the same place as the connections on a vintage Mac). I’d also consider getting the case from MacEffects so I’m not destroying an old Mac for no good reason.
Having the Motherboard mounted on the bottom would solve a couple major issues and make it look nicer… But then I’d need to fabricate or otherwise work out a way of elevating the power supply. And it needs to be a way I’d trust as the power supply is now sitting above the motherboard, reversing the common weight distribution.
Fun stuff I got to do:
- Problem solving.
- Laser cutting. I cringe at some parts that ere done before I had access to a laser cutter. If I did this again I’d design and measure stuff assuming the laser cutter by default.
- Some basic cabling/soldering work I don’t do often.
Stuff that worked well:
- Custom power button made by researching and following guides to have a chunky, light-up '80s style" power button.
- Mounting drives by cutting lengths fo C-Channel to hold drive brackets worked well. Sticking with SSDs reduced a lot of vibration issues, of course.
- I did use the box for several years.
- My iterated designs for the bezel mount improved and worked better (but see below).
- Surprisingly few heat issues.
Stuff that worked poorly:
- The LCD wiggled out constantly.
- The design was slightly overstuffed in the end. Drive and power cables a bit longer than needed, but shorter lengths cause problems as well. This caused a problem for the magnetic bezel mount.
- One thing I never figured out was good way to handle ‘retaining pin’ type needs. Basically, the motherboard was mounted on a piece of acrylic that slid in, which worked well enough, but then attacking stuff pushed it back out. I never found a good way to keep the pieces in place I liked. I’d want to engineer this better if I did it again.
- Hiding the LCD buttons in the floppy slot worked but was an ugly hack. I know it could have been done better.
- I need to drill more probably.
So my short-term project is a spare motherboard (Amazon sent me a spare back when I started this project) and moving everything to a case from BitFenix that looks like something Apple would release if they’d ever sold boxes to gamers and thus amuses me.
Once I’m moved I also have an SE in storage that I think I might get recapped, modded to use a CF card for storage, and make workable. Or get the MacEffects case above…
TL;DR: Fun project, but it’s time has ended.