[Cube] Cube and SSD

Fri Apr 4 03:12:12 PDT 2014

You have done quite a bit with your Cube, too. Fantastic! It seems a few upgrades are enough to keep it in usable condition when compared to many machines, even now. I never tried putting in the Radeon 7500, but my machine does have a fan fitted in the base bracket for the dual CPU and NVIDIA GeForce2 MX. I bought my 500 MHz Cube new from Apple with the 17” CRT Studio display back in 2000. Even the power brick is working fine and the case is not cracked. It just has some mould lines visible when illuminated from the side. It has Leopard 10.5.8, too. 

One thing I would love to do is clean the inside of the Studio display casing, but I don’t know how to take the back off without damaging anything. It’s very dusty after 14 years of use. I am fully aware of the high voltages inside CRT boxes and grew up playing around with the insides of old CRT TV’s. ‘Only got shocked once:)

The SSD brand and model is OWC Mercury Electra 3G, which OWC supply with the adapter card. Just make sure you select the model described as compatible with ATA. The card includes a power cord that is attached to the card itself, which looks similar to the power cord inside the Cube. You will end up with an unused socket that you just have to tuck in out of the way. Also, if you fit a non-Apple DVD drive then you may most likely have to set the SSD to *slave*  on the card (there are 3 usefully marked positions) as the DVD is likely to be hard preset to *master*. It is a 2.5” form factor bolted to a larger sled designed for a DVD drive bay. The screw holes do not align with the HD heat sink ones and I found anyway it is not possible to attach the comms cable if you try to attach the sled to any of the heat sink bracket holes. I did have a couple of false starts, partly because the adapter card is a bit difficult to align neatly in the space available. The comms cable also needs gentle sliding to and fro to give you enough play to attach the plug.

By trial and error I found it best to partition (one partition on mine) first and then erase. Partitioning is the same as with an HD. In fact, I attached the Cube in Target mode to my Ti Powerbook and used Disk Utility on the TiPB to do the work. My Leopard install DVD was a bit scratched and had given an error on the initial disk check, so I did not want to take chances using it at this point, but I did use it successfully for the Leopard install itself. I just skipped the disk check bit.

I agree the new Mac Pro seems a bit Cube-ish. It will be interesting to see which 3rd party makers will design things to look similar.

On 4 Apr 2014, at 01:08, D-B Hudson <dbhud at jps.net> wrote:

> Hi Steve -- Thanks for the info on your SSD installation in your Cube.  What was the brand/model of the SSD?  Which SATA to ATA bridge board did you attach to the SSD --- was it a "direct connect" or cable/wires connect type?  Was the adapter sized to fit a 3.5 drive or 2.5"?
> 
> Our Power Macintosh Cube G4-500 (which was purchased as Apple Reconditioned in January 2001) has been in use continuously now for 13 years.  It has a Sonnet 1.8GHz processor upgrade + ATI Radeon 7500 video card upgrade + 2 added fans.  Replaced original 30GB HDD with a 120GB HDD and then 5 years ago replaced it with a (partitioned to 128GB) 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.  Also upgraded from 15" to 17" Studio Display.
> 
> Operates on Mac OSX 10.5.8 (Leopard).
> 
> Thanks for any answers to my inquires that you might provide.   D-B
> 
> P.S.  New Mac Pro "chimney" design certainly appears to be a modernized Cube (in concept).
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On Apr 3, 2014, at 2:54 PM, Steven Dive <stevendive at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> If there is anyone still out there in Cube Land, I have successfully just put a 120GB SSD in my trusty Cube in place of a 128GB HD, which is now mounted in an external USB box.. The SSD was supplied with an SATA to ATA adapter by OWC. It was not the easiest thing to fit, simply because the sled to which it was affixed was not really meant for a Cube HD slot. The card plus sled simply sits at an angle resting inside the drive bay. This also further reduces load on the VRM.
> 
> My Cube already had a dual 1.5GHz CPU (PowerLogix from OWC) and a DVD-R (Matshita UJ-815) so it seemed worth a last hurrah! that was also not too expensive and keeps the machine useful. I still use it with an HP Scanjet scanner that I can’t transfer to a new Mac Pro.  Start-up time is amazing, too.
> 
> Steve
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