 
In Blue and White
System complete with original puck mouse Now I’ve been a dual monitor user since my second Mac, an SE 30 so it was natural that I opted for two monitors on my then new B&W. Like all computers my B&W has had to grow over the years to maintain its usefulness. First there was the Twin Turbo graphics card from my old 7200 to run the second monitor and a G-port serial port to run my old HP Laser on a legacy Appletalk network. Then an ATA 33 controller card and two 30gb drives for use with Final Cut Pro when it burst onto the scene later in 1999. This was followed by more ram, a 40gb drive and finally a Powerlogix 800mhz G3 processor upgrade around six months before I retired the B&W from front line service. Whilst this upgrade gave a very useful performance boost I had several overheating problems with it even after I installed a fan on the heat sink. The main reason I retired the B&W was because I wanted to make the move to OSX so I could update my web publishing, editing and DVD authoring software, some of which required a minimum of an AGP G4. This and the fact that the ATA card was not supported by OSX sealed its fate. So in came a shiny new dual 2.5 with a 23” Apple display. Because I always seem to skip a generation or two between upgrades the performance jump was pretty impressive. This tardiness to upgrade is a mix of a lack of money and the fact that Macs really do have long productive lives. I’m a perfect example of this because I’ve been using Macintoshes for over 20 years now and you can still count the ones I’ve owned on one hand. In addition I was quite surprised at how painless the move to OSX was for me. But then most of the bugs and rough edges had been polished off by the time Panther was released. About two months later I was tidying up the office when for no particular reason I decided to fire up the G3, which had been sitting idle in the corner. Nothing happened. The hard drives spun up but apart from that the monitors stayed dark. As it turned out, it was dead. I won’t go into details but even the Powerlogix processor was toast. Soon after it occurred to me that I didn’t in fact want to consign the old B&W to the scrap heap without a fight. But neither did I want to recreate the same old obsolete system. So I decided that what I needed to do was determine exactly what I wanted from a second system. Well it would certainly be handy to have a separate log and capture machine for Final Cut Pro for those time consuming batch capture sessions. Or, somewhere to browse the web while the G5 processed mpeg2s for DVDs undisturbed. In addition, it would be handy to have a Mac that the rest of the family could use without disturbing me. I started by listing my minimum system requirements. First of all it needed to be able to run OSX comfortably. Secondly, it needed a G4 processor and an AGP graphics card to run Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. And most importantly, it needed to be cost effective. However I really wanted to retain the B&W colour scheme so that cast a limitation on my choices for a donor machine. A quick look through Mactracker, a neat little utility that’s packed with info on just about every Macintosh made gave me a list of possible machines. These ranged from the 1999 G4 AGP to the G4 Digital Audio models produced in 2001. All these systems were produced in the graphite colour scheme and vary little externally from the original B&W so should take the plastic panels from the old case with little effort. After a few days checking out e-bay I decided on an AGP G4 Sawtooth model which I purchased at auction. Whilst not as good as the later digital audio model and having only a 2 x AGP slot and 100mhz bus, it was half the price the later graphite cased models were going for at the time. My next purchase was a processor upgrade. I decided on the Sonnet 1ghz G4 upgrade mainly on its sub $500 AU price and solid reputation for reliability. Installation was a breeze. I just unclipped the heat sink, removed the three screws on the original CPU and installed the new one, which had the heat sink already attached. No other configuration is required. Ram was my next consideration. I already had two 128mb and one 256mb PC133 ram sticks from the old B&W and a PC so I purchased an extra 512mb unit to bring the total ram to a respectable 1gb. Just to make sure it was all was ok, I ran an extensive Ram test program called “MemTest”. This program isn’t for the faint hearted because it runs from the command line. However there is at least one GUI front end for it that I know of called “Rember”. Either way, be aware that not all PC ram of the same spec. will work reliably if at all in a Mac so it’s well worth testing. Since that for capturing video footage I would be hooking up one of my external firewire drives from the G5, I decided that two 80gb internal drives would be more than adequate and cheap too. This as it turned out was a good decision because I’d forgotten all about the 128gb limitation of the onboard Sawtooth motherboard ATA controller chipset. Of course this isn’t a serious limitation because it doesn’t extend to any firewire drives you might want to connect. On the graphics front, I purchased a Mac flashed PC Radeon 9200 AGP card with 64mb of video ram to drive the main monitor from e-bay and slotted the salvaged PCI 16mb Rage card from the defunct B&W next to it to drive the second monitor. Flashing PC cards for the Mac is a bit of a black art and you can end up with an expensive paperweight if you aren’t careful. I decided to leave it to an expert and bought mine from a Mac Head. You’ll find all the help you need on the web amongst the Apple community there once you start looking. To round out the upgrade and give the machine USB 2 capability I picked up a USB 2 / Firewire combo card from Dick Smith the Australian equivalent of Radio Shack of all places for $12 AU. Many brands of these cards are in fact Mac compatible. This particular card functions flawlessly apart from some wake from sleep issues, not an uncommon problem. The solution is to disable system sleep which isn’t an issue for a machine that isn’t left on for long periods of time unless in use.
Inside the finished B&W with the Sonnet processor in the foreground Once all the operational issues were out of the way I proceeded to replace the graphite panels with the blue and white ones from my old machine. The panels are held on by a series of barbed tabs. A jewelers screwdriver, a pair of needle nosed pliers and an allen key are all that’s needed to remove the handles and panels. You do need to remove the DVD drive bay and the internal fan assembly to get to some of the tabs and I found it necessary to unscrew the power supply mounting bolts to gain access to a couple of the tabs located behind it. You also need to remove the motherboard from the fold down door to get to the centrally located tabs on the side panel underneath but this is a fairly easy task, just 4 screws on the G4. Installing the new panels is simply a matter of clipping them into place and screwing on the four handles. Whilst good, the illusion is not quite perfect. The giveaway that this is no longer a G3 are the missing “G3” logos that were located on each side of the B&W and the fact that the G4 chassis has vents punched into the side behind the fan on the left side. These aren’t seen with the G4’s panels in place because these panels aren’t translucent. I had considered relocating all the G4 parts into the G3 case but enough internal changes have been made to make it impractical without a fair bit of work. Still, the case matches the two monitors and that’s what counts. A couple of months later I slotted the single layer Pioneer DVD burner from my G5 into the project machine after upgrading the G5 to a dual layer model and the B&W was for all intents finished. I did have one minor issue with the DVD burner, no eject button. Since it didn’t need it for the G5, Pioneer didn’t fit it. Talk about saving a few cents! In addition, because I was using the original B&W keyboard at the time there was no eject button on it either. I thought I was stymied until I found out that the “F12” functions as an eject button in OSX on these old keyboards. Just when I thought the project was finished I noticed a matching 21” Apple display on e-bay. These massive monitors are awesome and cost a bomb in their day and I simply couldn’t resist. Even though it’s at least five years old, this particular example still has plenty of life left in it and produces a nice picture once it’s warmed up. In their day, these monitors were on the wish list for many a graphic designer. The really big innovation of this monitor was the fact that it was calibrated via the monitor control panel in Mac OS. It achieved this feat via a USB connection and as a bonus the monitor also has on its side a 4 port USB 1 hub.
The latest incarnation of the B&W system with 21” Apple display In a bit of luck, the monitor also came with a latter model keyboard that I immediately pressed into service on the project machine and yet another secondhand Mac. A B&W 400mhz Rev 2 in nice condition which I’ll set up as a file server. So was it worth it? It was for me. All up I’ve spent around $1250 Australian which is about $936 US on resurrecting my faithful Blue & White. I know I know this is enough money to buy a brand new Mac Mini. But a Mac Mini wasn’t what I wanted. In addition it was a fun project while it lasted and I certainly learnt a lot more about Macs and OSX during the whole process. From a performance point of view I couldn’t be happier. It’s still a beautiful looking system and now OSX and Final Cut Pro runs very smartly on it. Whilst it’s no G5 it’s no slouch either. So is this the finish, probably not. Once you get the Upgrade bug you never seem to lose it. I doubt there’s a cure and I suspect I’ll be spending many more hours surfing e-bay for further goodies to add to this and other Mac projects. For those interested in upgrading or modifying their Macs there are some excellent resources available on the web. Here are just a few. The Apple support forums are a great place to ask questions. Accelerate Your Mac probably has the most extensive library on Mac modifications and upgrades on the web. Sonnet makes some great processor upgrades. There are plenty of other makers out there too. Mike Wallis
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