<div align="center">The Cube G4 Thread</div>

Since quite a few of us have Cube G4s, I reckon a thread wouldn't go astray on these little wonders! What upgrades and mods have you done to yours - and what do you use your Cube for?

As a few of you know, I purchased a dead Cube G4 off dovla on these forums. The motherboard's PCI-like slot was damaged, causing no video output at startup. I was able to repair the motherboard by recreating the damaged pins - and this worked, but it was very fragile. After a few days, the video output failed again, and no matter what I tried, the board had given up the ghost.

I bit the bullet and purchased a second-hand Cube motherboard off eBay US. Installed it last night and it didn't boot - but once the CUDA switch was reset, all was fine. I just love having such a compact, silent and reasonably powerful machine sitting on my desk.

These are the upgrades I've carried out so far:

• overclocked 450@500Mhz (only one resistor needs to be moved)
• 3 x 256MB PC133 SDRAM = 768MB total (scrounged from crappy PIII's)
• 80GB 7200RPM Seagate HD installed (this is the quiet model)
• flashed Geforce 2MX 64MB AGP graphics card
• rebuilt AGP graphics card bracket (having the graphics card loose is not a good idea).

(pics to come soon, once my home connection gets up and running again!)

It's probably worth mentioning a bit more on the Geforce 2MX card in the Cube. The card I used is some fanless generic GF2MX 64MB model. Even without flashing, the card worked fine under OS X - apparently Cube firmwares later than 4.1.8 (mine has 4.1.9) will work with some PC cards. In addition, vanilla Geforce 2MX cards work best - MX200 and MX400 seem to have problems (link). I do have 2 x reference MX200 cards that I'll try out later, however.

The main issue at the moment is that the generic GF2MX installed has Samsung 6ns RAM, and the reference BIOS installed is for a card with < 5.5ns RAM. Looks like I'll have to edit the BIOS once I find out the ceiling of this particular card's RAM. At the moment it's causing artifacts after a minute of Flurry or Expose.

In addition, these cards will overheat iF run without a fan in the Cube. I've found a low-profile HSF once used on my Geforce 4 Ti graphics card that will need some modding to fit, but should run silently at 5V once installed. Again, pics to follow.

Anyhow, share your Cube upgrade stories!

JB

This is a little something I did for fun quite a while back. I've always intended to re-shoot and produce a better version, but it doesn't seem to be happening. The basic idea is that you are inside a Apple G4 Cube looking out.

http://www.eeoh.com.au/chris/extras/cubiccube/

The cube in question is 1.2GHz G4, 1.5GB RAM, 120GB HD, DVD-DL Burner with a GeForce 3 card.

Enjoy your cube,
Chris

Chris, that is so awesome!!

I have a Cube but have not really modded it much, unless you consider maxing out memory and hard drive to be modding. So I'd be very interested in hearing how you guys managed to do all this (cubewoners.com is a labyrinth to me).

Great thread Byrd!

Hi all! yes, i'm much the same. stock 450, sadly 512Mb ram(had full 1.5 one time, regret taking out to upgrade another G4), 120Gb seagate 7200, combo drive. i've used for a while now with various firewire externals drives and external dvd burner. happy to surf, do minor dtp stuff, play my 60Gb music collection. guess a decent vid card would give me some hope in the gaming sector . . . i run off an LG L1730S lcd, Creative itrigue 2.1 speaker set(beautiful and awesome sounding), imic for audio output,... i do still have the cube's original speakers, recent model usb Apple kepyboard, aiport and unwired off ethernet. Byrd, let me know what success u have with the vid cards.
i did add a fan when i was in South Africa, but seemed to give me problems along the way, voltage or something. would shut my cube down in the middle of working. think my powerboard is a little faulty as well, but touch wood, all been working now fawlessly since i disconnected the fan. well it's winter, so no heating problems for a while to come.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(chrismclay @ Jun 29 2006, 10:00 AM) [snapback]189866[/snapback]</div>chris, that is so cool! just that you're seen the top view and underside view from inside.... cool anyway :-)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OziMac @ Jun 29 2006, 10:12 AM) [snapback]189868[/snapback]</div>I'm with you OziMac - I'm not a fan of Cubeowner's forums, especially when some of the more interesting sections are locked for further posting :unsure:.

As for the Cube's internals, it's from the same era as Sawtooth G4's - using the same processor (stock CPU can be interchanged) and similar specs/bus speeds. The Cube motherboard can be considered to be a smaller version of that. It's a wonderfully moddable case as well - my girlfriend wants to make it "girly" with vintage wallpaper inside the inner shell but we'll see about that

No doubt down the track I'll look into purchasing a third-party CPU upgrade for the machine too. These aren't that expensive - $300 - 400AUD. I'd really just prefer a slower second-hand 1.2Ghz Sonnet or something, which has less problems with putting stress on the VRM or heat.

JB

at the risk of being showered in stones, has anyone considered putting a mac mini inside one? :unsure:

forget it. you know, eventually mini will pickup a similar iconic status to cube, i believe. so forget about putting a mini into a cube, please!! please!!!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mctastic @ Jun 29 2006, 12:14 PM) [snapback]189900[/snapback]</div>
most likely, but the cube's look so cool. i think i'd prefer to see a cube on my desk than a mini but i'd rather the mini's specs

You could stack a few minis inside a cube, and make it a mini raid

... But this thread isn't about minis. It's about cubes.

A long while ago now, i accidentally bought two cubes at the same time. here is a pic of one of them.
My intention was to upgrade the hell out of them, so i purchased a sapphire 9800pro (known to fit and work in a cube after flashing), a 120GB HDD, and scrounged around for more ram. CPU Updates are/were too expensive, but that wouldn't have stopped me if I had had the money at the time.

I never ended up getting the 9800 pro working in the cube, which is a pity. I eventually sold it to another cube fanatic, so hopefully it made it's way into one.

In the end, my cube specs were:

• 450MHz G4
  120GB HDD
  768MB Ram
  DVD-Rom
  Stock video card (with modded power distribution board so wider cards could fit)
  installed Fan
  OS X Tiger Server

It was a very nice machine, and dovla ended up buying it before he sold his older one to you Byrd.

[quote]
You could stack a few minis inside a cube, and make it a mini raid

... But this thread isn't about minis. It's about cubes.

hmm.. mini-tower :P u sure there isn't some proprietary port in the mini for this purpose?? how 'bout pimpin' your mini up....

like the new avatar Disko

out of interest, i sold off all my other mac stuff before coming to OZ. the one mac i've travelled with is the mini. i have a hand bag that the cube and about $3000 worth of other stuff fitted in, and carried as hand luggage! think that bag alone weighed in at 20Kg's! if this was a mini,... hmmm, i would have been able to bring in more booze <_<

interesting thing, when i prought it through customs, through the scanners at the airport, they asked me to open the bag, 'cause their machine couldn't scan through it. basically they took my word that it was a computer. . . i'll say no more.

h34r:

why ws the cube not as popular as the mini? they the same thing to be fair

Fluffy, the cube cost as much as a normal powermac, without the expansion options.

yeah. should have been. at the time, aside from cooling issues, etc. i think many didn't believe it packed the same punch as the tower. i've worked on so many of the towers, and i recon the cube is better. ok, the later model 433(i think) or was it 466, 533 mhz range was much better. a cube with those specs would have been good.
like many cool designs Apple's come out with, many are shelved eventually. i think the cube's incarnate, the mini, shows how the engineers don't give up on reviving a good ol idea. look at the early day performa. i know from that time the Apple had a thing for all-in-ones. behold, the imac. and so on and so forth...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(The Fluffy Duck @ Jun 29 2006, 01:09 PM) [snapback]189926[/snapback]</div>The Cube failed because Apple targeted it towards professionals as a "luxury" Macintosh, and it was much more expensive than G4 Towers being sold at the same time. However, professionals didn't want a computer that "couldn't be upgraded" unlike cheaper G4 towers of the time. So, it sold in small numbers and was discontinued a year after being released. After then, it became a cult Mac.

I don't agree that the Cube and Mini from the same paper - their internal design is completely different, and the Cube is considerably better in terms of elegance and design (and access to internals) People that buy a Cube do so for it's silence and classic Apple design - the mini, because it's cheap

Disko: how did you mod the VRM to fit bigger graphics cards - did you get that extension cable and mount it somewhere else?

JB