[Cube] Cube and SSD

[Mac User #330250]

Hello Cube users!

This is my own Cube story:

I had my Cube all set up for use in the living room, mainly to play
music using iTunes. It was running fine until one day it stopped working.

It was a stock G4 450 MHz with a Radeon 7500 and one 512 MB DIMM.

I upgraded it using a single 533 MHz G4 7410 daughter card from the
Power Mac “Digital Audio” series that is the exact same size. I had to
adjust the multiplicator since the “Digital Audio” runs a 133 MHz system
bus (hence 4x133=533 MHz) whereas the Cube’s system bus runs at 100 MHz
(hence 5x100=500 MHz); but that was easy because only one resistor had
to be removed.
Additionally that gave me the benefit of getting a 7410 G4e instead of
the original 7400 G4. (The G4e is more efficient, uses less power and
generates less heat.)

I also maxed out the memory (3x 512 MB DIMMs).

I removed the optical drive because it was broken. I also noticed that
it was a CD drive, so I initially looked for a DVD drive as a
replacement… but soon found that I wouldn’t need an optical drive
anyway, so I left it removed for good. It simply would have been a waste
of money.

For graphics I used a GeForce2MX from my Power Mac G4 “Quicksilver” that
I fitted with a bigger heat sink—mainly because the Radeon 7500’s fan
was making noise and would have needed repair/replacement.

Initially I used a 2.5 inch SATA-II (SATA-3GB/s) hard drive. A standard
converter from IDE to SATA is good for the job and I used the optical
drive bay for the Y cables, the adapter and the drive.

I then got an SSD (SATA-II), also the size of 120 GB.  Concerning speed:
I think any SATA SSD drive is getting the maximum speed out of the old
ATA-5 (IDE; UltraATA/66) bus anyway.

And that was it! I had what I always wanted: a completely noiseless (and
fanless) Power Mac running Mac OS X!

It worked like a charm. I also had Leopard installed on a separate
partition, but the Cube (@500 MHz) really rocks with Tiger, so this was
my preferred system.

I was starting to build a partition with Mac OS 9 on it, and maybe
another one with 8.6 (which the Cube never officially supported) to play
some good old games on it. But that was very time consuming and I wasn’t
finished by the time I moved it into the living room.


About three weeks after I had it moved there and used as a music station
it stopped booting. Reason unknown. I got it booting into safe mode
(holding the shift key) a couple of times, I also tried a stock Rage 128
graphics card and the original  Radeon 7500, but that was not it. I then
tried to remove some DIMMs, maybe the memory was at fault. But that
wasn’t it either.

I have it sitting on a shelf ever since. If time permits, I will
investigate further. But I really don’t know what’s wrong with it.


Anyway, it is so good to read that others still use their Cubes!
(If I get mine working again I’ll be the happiest person…)

Cheers,
Andreas  aka  Mac User #330250


On 2014-04-04 18:47, Bill Fox wrote:
> Glad to know there are others out there still running productively.