[G4] PowerMac MDD internal modem substitution

[Dave March]

Okay,

I got my Dual 867 last week, and it's a real peach. 
No surprise there.

But sure enough, it didn't have an internal modem.  I
knew that was a possibility, and that I'd have to find
a way to deal with it.

So, the modem out of my old iMac is a v.90, and
despite the phone jack being mounted directly on the
card, it has the same part number as the ones sold for
the older G4 PowerMacs.  Now, the MDDs "officially"
ship with the (optional) v.92, but I had seen vendors
offering v.90s for all G4 PMs -- all the same. 
Hmmm...

So, with a little modification, mine should work,
right?

Well, I set to work, carefully removing the phone jack
from the modem (remind me to get some Chemwik -
grumble), since it won't fit on the logic board that
way.  I cut two 12" lengths of sheilded wire,
double-looped them through one of those
ferrite-cylinder inductors ("filter") like they put on
monitor cables, soldered up the ends to the modem and
the jack, grounded the wires' sheilding to the modem's
mounting screw), and sort of wedged the jack
temporarily in one of the PCI-card openings to test
it.  Fired it up.

Yes.

It works.  Beautifully.  Better than it did in the
iMac.

Heh.

Sooner or later, I'll redo the wiring, put a connector
on the modem card, and give it a properly mounted
phone jack.  But in case anyone cares -- yes, you CAN
install and iMac modem in an MDD, and then use it to
tell the world!

:-)



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