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Author Topic: A Power Mac G4 MDD renovation…  (Read 375 times)

Tazintosh

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A Power Mac G4 MDD renovation…
« on: November 24, 2024, 09:11:31 AM »

Some will say, well, that's straight enough, but it's ain't counting the insane amount of issues I experienced. It was like a curse: each solved issue was leading to another one. :-\
Here are a few of them:

  • Once my PSU was cleaned and mounted back, I tried to turn on the computer and my differential circuit breaker triggered and cut the power! I've unmounted it, tried it alone on another socket without issue, until… until the breaker popped again. etc. I've again opened the PSU and discovered that the piece of foam glued one side of the metal case was not dried, and the pressure (while closing the PSU lid) made a short with the heat dissipators. :o Turns out I had to dry it at 40°C for another 10 hours!!! -afro- And all was fine again !
  • The IDE ribbons (? I don't know the english name for this) are insanely sticking to the back of the metal case. While trying to remove them, one of them have been cut (destroyed) by the small lugs on the metal. Since the IDE ribbons from the spare mono 1.25 where also damaged (not me), I had to buy new ones from another MDD on LeBonCoin. The guy accepted to sold spares. Cleaned the old double sided tape with essence F and installed new ones.
  • This same guy also sold me 2 more speakers… yes :-\… because when I cleaned (even super carefully) the speaker, it's membrane simply decomposed like a cristal glass breaking in front of my eyes! :-X So I took the speaker from my spare mono 1.25 and the same happened! For the next two speakers I've received, I used a micro painting brush and grease (compatible) to "hydrate" the membrane.
  • The EMI gaskets were also in bad condition and decomposed. So I bough an EMI gasket sheet (≈ 20x30 cm) to cut out a new gasket.
  • I've also replaced the two foams on each side of the case (they are compressed between the metal case and the plastic cover.
  • Any other issue you might think of, I may probably have deal with it :o

During all this restoration process that stretched for at least a couple of months, I also searched, found and enhanced other stuffs.
  • Found a Dual 1.42 with two audio dedicated PCI cards for 80€ !!!  8). I decided to replace my Dual 1.25 logic board + CPU with the Dual 1.42 one and of course cleaned the wonderful copper heat dissipator (remade the copper tapes around it. Since I swapped the electronic, I also swapped the metal sticker info label from the back of the computer. Remade the CPU and GPU thermal paste with Arctic MX-6.
  • I also installed an Airport Extreme card as well as a Bluetooth one (but I don't remember if it was from one of the MDDs or as spared on LeBonCoin).
  • Of course the RAM have been maxed out to 2GB.
  • Bought a couple of SCSI cards
  • Installed a 250GB SSD on the ATA100 bay, using an IDE to SSD adapter and set 2 partitions for OS X and OS 9.
  • Finally, lately, I found another Dual 1.42 for 50€ including a… Radeon 9800 AGP!!!

I'm happy with my MDD now, built from 4 MDDs!
If you have any question, shoot it out, I just hope hope I'll be able to answer.

Here are a few images took during the process:

I've literally plenty of spare from which many will be sold:
  • heat dissipators from the metal one, the full aluminium and a copper one.
  • cases, handles and plastics.
  • Two motherboard have already been sold, sorry
  • A Mono 1.25, a dual 1.25.
  • Multiple Radeon 9000 Pro AGP
  • Bays.
  • Antennas.
  • Two PCI audio cards.
  • Feel free to ask.
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robespierre

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Re: A Power Mac G4 MDD renovation…
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2024, 09:27:26 AM »

Hi, for future reference, you can replace the "foam rubber surrounds" on old speakers. They are a known point of failure with age, so kits are sold with new ones. They attach using contact cement.
The speakers inside a computer case are not much, of course, so just replacing them makes sense to save the labor of gluing new foam rubber surrounds. But if you need to fix an old $1000 Wharfedale you may be glad to know about this.
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Tazintosh

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Re: A Power Mac G4 MDD renovation…
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2024, 10:21:26 AM »

Hi Robespierre,
I indeed found some informations about this, but everything I watch was involving to glue from the inside of the speaker and as far as I've seen, the "box" of the MDD speaker is sealed. I didn't wanted to cut it out because this often ends up with bad looking reassembly.
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