Upgrading the Apple iMac G4 with an Intel NUC

[@element14presents]

David does amazing builds and lots of teardowns on The Electronics Inside. Have an idea for a build or a teardown? Let us know on the element14 Community! bit.ly/3lk8bKT

[@meskahmusic]

Would you do a build like this for clients? Or a detailed guide?

[@Elemental-IT]

using keystone jacks and 3d printing keystone holders, you could have saved all of the custom PCB work and had a totally modular setup. running the ribbon wire from the display to the control board through the arm as well as the control nipple would have saved a lot of soldering as well. your approach is more bespoke and requires more skill though, and so I applaud you sir. well executed and amazing result!

[@quasiportal6138]

Does anyone know if there are 3d printable files for the original shell? Strongly considering getting the shell in frosted resin to emulate the clear electronics look!

[@mattsword41]

love how (rightly) pleased with yourself you are at the end :) Congrats!

[@Zen-Koru]

I really want to make my iBook G3 clamshell into a fully functional windows laptop but i don't know how because there are no tutorials online

[@joeventura1]

Link to the PCB? Getting File not found on the link you provided. Please and thank you

[@bartz0rt928]

It'd be nice if you could integrate the power supply (broken out to just a power cord connector). The one you have is obviously too big, but if you check the power consumption and get an appropriate laptop supply I feel like that might be possible. Other than that, you could install Elementary. It's a Linux distro that looks a lot like OSX. What would be _really_ cool is if you can make some kind of levered mechanism that pulls some broken out USB ports forwards when you open the door of the optical drive.

[@a531016]

I think the ideal solution for the front port involves a capacitive button that can live behind the cover, and a servo to actuate it? That sounds like a fun little upgrade! The power supply could be doable, the 130W one is enourmouse and way over powered for the application, It's just nice not to have any 230V (in my case) inside the case?

[@ricksterk7014]

This is utterly amazing. I love stuff like this (I'd never manage it!!)

[@a531016]

I enjoyed making it! Thank you for watching!

[@tezzadezza9174]

Great video! I’ve just bought one for £100 fully working! Bargain and I’ll be upgrading it definitely - absolutely beautiful computer!

[@sveinarnenetteland797]

Very nice job !

[@peterr.4768]

Great work. How did you solve the issue with Wifi and Bluetooth inside the faraday cage?

[@andrewp869]

Nice Work David!!

[@marcello4258]

You could have thrown in a Mac mini Board I guess.. to save a lot of the hustle I wonder if there would have been a way to keep the old screen and just place a nuc board in it for airflow I would have gotten rid of the chassis from the nuc as erll

[@arcane02]

Could the internals of a new mac mini be used inside the g4 base? I have both lying around and would be interested in trying it

[@a531016]

I'm not sure, it'd definately be on the snug side if it does fit! Do you have accurate dimensions of the new mini?

[@AngeloTelesforo]

I’ve seen somewhere here in KZbin someone putting a m2 Mac mini inside an iMac g4.

[@AngeloTelesforo]

Found it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWXZhIJpd75peLs

[@SzymonJakubiak]

Great work! 👏

[@a531016]

Thanks!

[@ianstorey1521]

Amazing! It was (and now is) a beautiful design. Did you consider adding weights near the top connector to balance the spring? My brief experience with these was that the hinge was perfectly weighted.

[@a531016]

I was expecting to have to add something to it, but it ended up well balanced in 90% of positions and tilt. I think the cables needing to "wear in" a little is actually the limiting factor more than the weight?

[@FujitheChef]

What was the cost breakdown for this project?

[@FujitheChef]

Oooo maybe a future build using a Framework laptop mother board!

[@a531016]

The big costs were the NUC, Monitor and PCBs, which were £110, £120 and £30 (but I ordered a few spare PCBs in case i had issues). The iMac I think was about £40 a few years ago? So all in about £300?

[@richdegenhardt]

Very clean mod! Do more projects like this!

[@a531016]

I'm glad you like it! I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out!

[@AngeloTelesforo]

You do know there’s a tension regulator in the coil mechanism, don’t you?

[@clivekingshott4323]

A beautiful design, they should use it again!

[@AngeloTelesforo]

That should be considered sacrilegious!

[@AngeloTelesforo]

That connector is a mini VGA implementation.

[@techguy348]

would've like to have seen a laptop display put into the display area instead, it would have possibly been easier to route that through. Also since there is a new display housing, the light guide for the power LED and the built in microphones are now gone...

[@MAYERMAKES]

now that is areally well executed mod! made the old honker realyl enjoyable again! And i might add: David just encountered quirks with converting DXF curves into outlines in Kicad which is quite the niche problem, so he actually did 99,9% of the Kicad design without any help from me!

[@a531016]

Thank you again for your help!

[@tramcrazy]

I love this! So well executed. Would be an amazing decoration piece as well as functional machine. Perhaps a mini itx motherboard and low profile noctua cooler would cram in more computing power but that would need a more complex power supply setup obviously

[@a531016]

Mini ITX is juuuuusst about possible, but it'd be a real challenge - and may require some brutal modifications to fit (board trimming and mounting hole modification). And you probably couldn't fit any expansion to it, so it's a realy challenge. Not that it couldn't be done, but a challenge!

[@laurencejohnson4106]

A fun project!👍👍

[@Kryefjala]

I have one that turns on but hdd does not work

[@leenevin8451]

Boot from external

[@allluckyseven]

Very neat little project. Alright, a bit more than _little..._ What I would do differently... I would make more than a single PCB, and would make them in a shape that would help keeping the NUC inside firmly in place. So they would probably be shaped like this: ([ ]). The one in the front would also extend some of the connectors. Maybe the CD drive cover should have holes to mount the USB ports externally. They may need a lot of TLC to look "right", though... As for the white part of the bezel, I think you could get white double-sided tape or something like that to hide the seams of the 3D printed parts, but I would've preferred to print one single part if I could get someone with a large enough printer bed to do it for me. However, if that's not possible you could make some notches to try and hide the seams a little bit better.

[@a531016]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it! The idea of the larger PCB (also, excellent use of the ([ ]), it was perfectly descriptive!) is a very good idea. I kind of wish that rather than using the internal cables I'd designed the PCB with internal male connectors to plug straight into the NUC. Although that would have mean it would only work with one model on NUC, and this has some flexability? A large format printer and a lot more time would have been ideal, and with a perfectly tuned printer and some pre treatment of the acrylic, I wonder if you could have printed it straight on? But 600 X 400 mm is quite an ask!

[@allluckyseven]

@@a531016 Well, I guess you do have more flexibility in terms of which NUC to get, but if they have standard mounting holes (sort of like what VESA has for monitors) then maybe one could do something that would allow it to be screwed down. I mean, I guess you could even glue the NUC inside of the Mac case if you wanted to, but having a proper mount would be better, IMHO. It's a bit of a Jobs-ian thing, I think, knowing what's inside, if it's not neat it would bother me to no end. :D As for the monitor bezel, I wonder if, instead of 3D printing a big rectangle, you couldn't instead have it be CNC-ed. Like, from a piece of white Sintra or something like that, which is some kind of PVC foam board. Ben used to do this sort of stuff with Sintra, IIRC... And I guess it would probably remain its whiteness. I'm not sure if the filament you used tends to become yellow with time/sunlight, but it's something I would worry about.

[@JuliansRandomProject]

I uploaded a video awhile back where I put a raspberry Pi in the G4 and kept the original display. Nice job dragging that wonderfully designed desktop into the future :)

[@a531016]

RetroPi - that's a good shout! I'll look forward to watching that shortly. In truth, I'd like to try a G3 mod too, but I hear the integration with the CRT is notoriously hard?

[@CrazyMan_Engineer]

Should have printed the white part of bezel as one piece.

[@a531016]

I agree that would have been the ideal solution, but a 600 x 400mm bed it quite big!

[@LaurenceReeves]

Damn, I forgot about element14. Didn't this use to be a massive channel back in the day. Nice work, but I can't get over the gaps on the monitor, it looks too DIY. Needs a flush trim all around the monitor.

[@Nukle0n]

"LED" screens are still LCD, just they don't use CCFL tubes for backlighting anymore. Calling them LED is buying into the marketing crud of the TV industry that came up with calling LCDs "LED" to make people think they were getting something like an OLED which actually is a different display tech.

[@a531016]

That is very true, TFT Vs IPS is probably the better comparison. Although for me the LED backlight was probably the important feature, as it was significantly less power draw on the 19V power supply, a thinner package and meant I didn't have to deal with the high voltage drivers CFLs need?

[@Nukle0n]

@@a531016 IPS is still a type of TFT, maybe you mean TN to IPS? But yeah it is an upgrade, especially in power consumption, it's just that marketing has infiltrated people's way of saying this. Like how 2k now to some mean 1440p, when it really means 1080p.

[@memsom]

I wonder if it would have been simpler to take the board from the monitor, put that in the base and just run the wires to the screen through the arm?!

[@Agnoletta]

Could always do a Hackintosh offscreen.

[@MarcoMassa86]

well done! amazing "upgrade" (?)

[@a531016]

Thanks Marco - I hope the OS didn't offend you too much?

[@JasenPotts]

Huge upgrade.

[@a531016]

Of course, the screen is lovely, and the NUC can be whatever your budget can handle!

[@Handy-Harry]

Fantastic

[@a531016]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@GiacomoLucantonio]

iMac G4 with M2 mac mini!

[@a531016]

It should be possible - it's just what budget would allow!

[@ajvdg2]

Would be amazing with an m2 Mac Mini !

[@a531016]

It's be an easy swop for someone with the right budget!

[@ajvdg2]

It would be indeed

[@wxfield]

Ugh. Windows. Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave.

[@a531016]

Maybe, but just as much as he would be if I'd pirated Mac OS onto it too?

[@marcdraco2189]

Hardly an upgrade. It’s o longer a Mac. Just a monitor with a NUC inside.

[@wxfield]

@@a531016 He would not have minded Linux. Jobs and Torvalds had a healthy relationship. Jobs and Gates had a very adversarial relationship..for good reason. Like I say..SPINNING in his grave.

[@a531016]

Did you guys watch right to the end? Watch from 19:43 again and try to read between the lines a little...

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

Man what's the point of having an Intel Mac at this point considering it'll be phased out in favour for their M seires ARM chips Edit: great project all the same, only thing I'd do is see if you can't use PD for your project rather than a barrel Jack, considering even 20 volts is close enough to 19

[@a531016]

That's a good question! 100W PD would have a good chance of powering this whole project - althought the PCB design would be beyond my current ability!

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

@@a531016 Hmm. Well on Amazon they have 20v PD to 12v DC barrel jacks... They also have PD boards where you could straight wire a DC barrel jack to

[@a531016]

@@adventureoflinkmk2 I picked up a couple of PD to laptop charger type adapters a while back, they integrate the PD negotiation to a chip on the adapter (I opened one up to see). If I was going to integrate it into a project like this though, I'd want the USB type C to be in the device, so the IC would be integrated?

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

@@a531016 yes, you'd want the cutout for the USB C port on the device and let the IC do the work

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

Although I don't see why sending 20v directly would cause harm

[@zaprodk]

That soldering iron tip is RUBBISH. Get a fatter or shorter tip that can actually transfer the heat to the joint. Also, you need to clean the iron before soldering, not after. If you solder, then clean and put it in the stand, the iron oxidises and turns black as we see, and it doesn't transfer heat anymore and soldering becomes very hard. The tip you have can probably be revived if you dip it into some "tip tinner" and from that point, make sure there is always solder on the tip, so it doesn't oxidise again.

[@a531016]

I know I know - I had more on order, but they didn't arrive in time!

[@mirrorcatz]

well Hello David... ummm, I don't know how to tell you this but... you're going bald. bye 🤣

[@androxilogin]

Oh goddamnit. I wasted time watching this because of the clickbait thumbnail. Ya threw a mini pc in the shell. Big whoop.

[@a531016]

I feel this one was less about the hardware driving the machine, and more about a sympathetic and useful upgrade to the monitor? As anyone can use whatever "PC" core they like (mac mini, NUC, ITX etc). But they would still need to use the old 17" low resolution display? No clickbait intended - sorry if you felt mislead!

[@dave4shmups]

Great work!