Hello!
I have set up the ZenPhoto gallery on my server, so i can host some nice images for you.
Today i went to a site called STEVNSFORT Have a look at the images i shot today.
The gallery on my site can be found at gallery.zapro.dk from now on.
// Per.
Hi.
Although a little late, i just wanted to say that i got myself some more glass for my camera. It’s a Canon EF 50/f:1,4 Lens - Wow it’s fast!
I will put up some images here shot with that lens soon, so you can see what this sucker can do.
In the meantime, have a look here and weep:
http://flickr.com/groups/638983@N22/pool/with/2677701975/
Broken lenses :-O
//Per.
Welcome to my Mac Pro Conversion worklog.
I am not longer modifying the machine for now - it sits still and is VERY stable and a wonderfull workhorse.
I have been lurking at the G5-modding community for some time now, and decided to put my Hackintosh in a good home 
You can follow the OSX86 Community HERE
As the Mac Pro was the newest model avaiable, and had those sweet Drivebays, i needed to hack that instead.
I was able to buy the case as a sparepart, but it was pretty costly, it hurts my heart to cut it.
I had decided on the Intel BadAxe2 MB and a Core2 Duo E6600 CPU. a pretty good combo, and it should OC pretty well, according to what i have read.
The graphics will be delivered by an GeForce 7300GT that seems to do fine in OSX. The RAM is from my old rig, some standard DDR2 type, will upgrade to something more “fun” at some time.
Power measurements of this rig proved power usage at a minimum:
- 1 GB DDR2 RAM 2 modules
- D975XBX2 MB
- 250 GB WD Harddrive
- Plextor DVD Burner
- E6600 C2D
- Geforce 7300GT
Power usage for this: 120 Watts including power losses in the PSU. measured with professional Wattmeter.
Full Load conditions by doing:
yes >/dev/null & Two times.
Testfitting the Motherboard proved that the PCIe x16 slot wasn’t lining up - that wouldnt have been a problem in the G5 case…
It also shown me, that the Drivebays was blocking some of the connectors on the Motherboard, as you can see here:
That mistake took me a day to wonder about. i even tried the board laying down in the case, but it was a shitty idea. Good i didn’t did that.
The original Standoffs for the Mac Pro Motherboard had to go. they are countersunk and glued with epoxy. A quick twist with a big pair of pliers, and they are gone.
As the side of the case is the same piece of aluminium as where the standoffs are mounted, drilling and tapping for new standoffs was not an option. I opted to make some square aluminium pieces with countersunk screws to hold the standoff. I made them at my job in the lunch break
I glued them to the bottom plate with some 3M DP-270 Construction Epoxy. some pretty solid stuff.
I glued the parts on the kitchen floor. as i needed something heavy to hold the board down, and the refrigerator was at hand, i found some beverages in there with a suitable weight and soft bottom to place on the board.
As you can see, the glue flows fine. It will be a strong seal.
The original Sata-plugs and cables is special in the Mac Pro. unfortunately, i didn’t get a picture of the cable before cutting the special plug going into the motherboard
Originally all 4 SATA cables went into one plug, going into the Mac Pro Motherboard. i cut the plug open, and desoldered the wires.
A SATA-Cable is consisted of four wires, two of them which is signal, and the last two is Ground (Shielding)
I cut open a straight SATA cable i had laying around, desoldering the plugs from the wires. i soldered the Mac Pro wire harness into the SATA-plugs and put the housing on again using some hot glue and a Zip tie.
As i really, really wanted to use the nice front-panel again, i examined it very closely. It is occupied by a Custom chip made by Broadcom. Apparently exclusive for Apple, i couldn’t find any data on it. It sits between the Firewire-ports so i guess it’s some kind of Firewire-Hub.
EDIT!: My Firewire-chip on the frontpanel apparently die on me after some days. i don’t know what’s gone wrong, i maybe had a wire shorting somewhere. I am just bypassing the chip now, as a wasn’t using the firewire-800 anyway, it was no big loss. I can’t guarantee that it works for you! YMMV.
I measured, measured, and measured again and slowly applying power, i have figured out the pinout of the connectors on the board and how it works - the good news - we can reuse it 100% without any changes.
We start with the simple parts first. The circuit that lights the Power-LED turns on when the Power-LED wire is grounded. As i remember, that is the same way that a normal PC-motherboard does. The LED is connected permanently to +5V trough a resistor, and then the PC brings the negative side of the LED low to light it.
If it doesn’t fit your motherboard, no need to worry!. You can just solder a small wire directly to the plug going to the powerbutton and LED, and then the LED is active when you apply a positive voltage.
The 8-way mini-molex on board have multiple jobs. It supplies +3.3, +5 and +12 Volts to the board. the 3.3 Volts is used by the Firewire-chip, the 5V by the Power-LED circuit and USB-ports, and last the 12 Volts is for the Firewire ports.
The rest of the wires in the plug are for Power-button and Power-LED. there are two unused wires in the plug. it’s up to you to use them for something, extra LED’s for example. they go nowhere on the PCB.
The internal Firewire-800 plug is connected to the Mac Pro motherboard by a normal Firewire cable internally. This cable is, fortunately a part of the case when you buy it, making everything a bit easier. I cut the cable at one end and traced out the colors in the cable, they was standard Firewire-Colourcoded (White, Black, Blue, Orange, Green, Red) But be aware, that if you cut the cable at the wrong end, the pairs are swapped (Just as in an Twisted ethernet Crossover cable)
I cut the cable at the wrong end, but measuring the connections with a multimeter showed me the connections.
I soldered on a standard firewire-header that fits on the motherboard headers, and it works! - Just remember to hook up the three voltages too, or it won’t work!
The Control-panel shows a Non-recognised unit on the Device Tree, but the ports work just fine!.
The SATA Connector on the Front-Panel is not a SATA-bearing plug. Apple is using it for USB! - Yes you read right. The connections in the plug is pretty straightforward, so i won’t be describing them here. you can directly see on the PCB what goes to what. i would recommend cutting open an SATA-Cable to take the plug and solder some wires for USB, as the wires inside the SATA-cable is very thin and fragile, you won’t solder them to a header-plug going into the motherboard, they WILL break.
The last plug on the Front-panel i haven’t covered yet is going directly to the Headphone-plug, i guess it explain itself too, what to do with it
UPDATE: Aquamac made a great picture of the connections in the USB-bearing SATA plug, look here
So, this far this is the progress. i am working on a Power supply, wires to the Front panel, black wiring on all wires regarding power, and maybe making place for the other two drivebays.
I have a gallery with all the images i took while working on this, you can see them HERE - Warning - no 56K Modems here!.
Good Luck making your own Hackintosh, !
Regards, Per Jensen
Zapro.dk
Hi!
We had a server breakdown, and the backup system failed, so all is GONE!
I am in the works of building the Hackintosh-section up again.
UPDATE1: Found a backup of all the images on the blog: Click here!
In the meantime, have patience!
UPDATE2: Found the text for the site, and is rebuilding the article again!
// Per.