The Cult of the Cool-Mac...: The MII G3 Component Mod

The MII G3 Component Mod

August 22, 2005 (8am EDT)

The MII G3 Integrated Component System Mod
A Step Beyond: More Than Music

By Alan Smithee, NextGenTech News Correspondent

Monday marks the official unveiling of the long-awaited MII G3 Integrated Stereo Component System Mod by innovative young industrialist Andrew Moses. Known previously for his infamous Clear G3 Mod, Mr. Moses has now turned his questionable genius towards the next generation of lifestyle computing.

The MII fulfills the promise of the Clear G3, making it exciting, innovative and most of all genuinely useful.

In this story, we'll show you just how this miracle of pre-modern technology was accomplished.

The MII is a full seventeen inches long and over eight inches high. It has an astonishing 7 FireWire ports and 11 USB ports offering connections both in front and in back.

Building on its Clear G3 Mod ancestor, the MII goes one step beyond. The new form-factor fits into a standard stereo cabinet and adds such innovative features as a modular media drive, IR remote control, video conferencing and video home security.

For its tremendous versatility, the MII has been lovingly nicknamed "supertanker" by technology insiders.

The MII is a curvy, sexy beast. Where the Clear G3 is a sharp-edged tower, designed to sit on top of an entertainment center unit, the MII is designed to integrate seamlessly into a shelf-system. Standard shelf-components are seventeen inches long -- adding more than three inches to the length of the earlier model and offering room for numerous improvements to the original design.

It all starts with a printed plan and a flat piece of 1/8-inch acrylic. This acrylic was cut on the dining table.

After transferring a template onto the acrylic sheet, a #24 X-Acto knife is used to score the plastic, which may then be broken along the score-lines.

Unlike its predecessor, the case of the MII is not simply glued together. The top, front and bottom of the case have been made from a single piece of plastic, delicately shaped to form its gracious curves.

The process is simple. Once a piece of acrylic has been trimmed to the appropriate dimensions, the bend-lines are traced onto it with water-based marker (for easy cleanup). The piece is then clamped to a table and heat is applied at the bend line with a heat-gun at the low-setting. After about a minute, the plastic begins to sag from its own weight and within two minutes, it can be bent to the appropriate angle.

(Whenever you work with a heat gun, take care to avoid using it near flammable items and never point it at yourself or anyone else as it can easily char flesh to the bone. Since plastic releases toxic gasses when heated, you should work in a well ventilated area.)


The acrylic is clamped to a table in preparation for bending.		Once the plastic has been bent to shape, it is test-fit in an entertainment center for quality-assurance.

Since 1/8-inch acrylic is very flexible, temporary spacers are cemented at the rear to give the case some rigidity before the sides are attached. The original 24x G3 CD ROM is updated with a clear panel and custom faceplate (courtesy of Dremel and X-Acto). The eject-button is a clear screw-cap from U.S. Plastic.


The CD is fitted with a clear dust shield, bezel and tray-door.		The eject button is a clear plastic screw-cap.

It's much faster to add files with the modular media drive or over the local network, so the CD ROM drive is more for decoration than utility. The CD tray ejects to the side, which doesn't permit regular use, but it allows the circuit board to be shown to good advantage and it is available for emergency-booting.


A holographic inkjet-sticker is applied long before it is probably smart to do so.		The media drive slides in from the back along clear plastic rails. It fits below the motherboard. The case-fan for the drive pumps air from the front to the rear, so obstructing the sides doesn't affect drive temperature.

Components as numbered (pictured during a test-fit): 1. Hard Drive 2. FireWire/USB Repeater 3. CPU Temperature Gauge 4. Motherboard 5. PCI Cards 6. Small Under-Board Fan 7. CPU with Fan 8. Red LED Case Fan 9. 150w Micro ATX PSU with clear sides and red LED fan (as in the original Clear G3 Mod). [One of the blessings of the Beige G3 is its ability to use a standard PC power supply.] 10. Black Plastic Cable-Wraps 11. CD ROM Drive 12. Clear Rubber Feet from Home Depot to allow air circulation underneath 13. Temporary Spacer to keep the form rigid before the sides attach.


The plastic frame for the FireWire/USB Repeater is trimmed along the dotted lines so that the base fits through a hole in the case, but the front is braced against the face of the case.		In addition to rectangular cut-outs in the front for the Temperature Gauge and FireWire/USB Repeater, holes are drilled in the top and bottom at regular intervals, 3-inches in from the front of the case where they will not be visible when it is installed in the entertainment center.

It can be very difficult to drill acrylic without shattering it. The method that was used here was enlargement with successive bits, first drilling each hole with a 1/8-inch bit, then a 1/4-inch bit and then a Unibit. Rectangular holes were cut with a Dremel using a circular fiberglass cutting wheel and finished with metal-files.

A view from the bottom before the back-plate was trimmed to shape and before the port-holes were cut. The clear legs supporting the motherboard have been indicated. Also of note is the small fan that passes air below the motherboard to add a little cooling in the tight confines of the entertainment center. The legs were cut from acrylic rods from U.S. Plastic.

Removing the back of the case permits access to all of the innards. The back-plate is secured with screws at each corner and at the PSU. The fans are mounted to the back-plate.

The back-plate easily swings away with the removal of a few screws.

The sides are cemented with professional acrylic cement from TAP Plastics (these sides will NEVER come off). A holographic pinstripe from an auto store goes across the front of the case (for that illusion of speed). The FireWire/USB Repeater and Temperature Gauge are glued into their holes with black silicone adhesive which is camouflaged by their black faces. The FireWire/USB Repeater is cabled to interior ports on the PCI cards and is powered directly off of the PSU. The IR board from a Keyspan digital media remote is insulated with electrical tape and mounted on top of the CD ROM drive at the front of the case. Due to lack of sufficient bus-power on the internal ports, the USB cable for the IR board runs out the back of the case and connects to an external USB port.

The completed MII G3 Integrated Component System. Note the anti-vandal switch on the right side and the snazzy pinstripe in the front.

The sides are carefully ground down at the front corners using a Dremel sanding wheel to match the curve of the main body of the case.

A red illuminated anti-vandal switch from the original Clear G3 Mod adds the final touch.

1. Removable Media Drive which permits huge files to be quickly transferred between a desktop Mac and the MII and also stores the iTunes library, which is both played and served from the MII. The Media Drive can be removed quickly and easily without moving the MII by reaching behind the entertainment center. 2. Cable from the IR board connecting to a USB card. 3. Clear Tabs spaced along the back-plate hold the PCI cards tightly in their slots. The PCI cards are (from left to right) a FireWire 400 card, a USB 2.0 card and a FireWire/USB 2.0 combo card.

Images of the MII G3 Integrated Component in Action

The MII with keyboard and mouse in use.

Here is the M2 G3 running iChat for a video chat (thanks to iChatUSBCam, which allows the camera to work with iChat on a G3). It turns out that while video-chatting is kind of useless and boring on the computer, it is useful and fun when you can do it from the comfort of the living room.

One advantage of video-chatting on the tv in the living room is the ability to simultaneously watch a tv show via P-in-P.

The FireWire camera doubles as a security camera with motion-sensing software. It can automatically upload images to a secure FTP server. The application in the foreground is SecuritySpy running in demo mode with the camera pointed at the front door. Behind it is iTunes, which plays through a Yamaha receiver.


Thanks to the Keyspan IR unit, this universal remote controls every device in the entertainment center -- including the computer!		When the IR remote just isn't enough, a USB mouse comes out of its secret hole at the top of the entertainment center.

The MII also time-shifts Internet radio using Audio Hijack.


An indestructible keyboard rolls up and hides when it's not needed.		The keyboard plugs into one of the front USB jacks.

The MII takes the concepts behind the original Clear G3 mod to the next level. It is more than just another case mod. The MII has become a regular part of the day to day life of a user. The heart of this magic Mac was made in 1998 -- over 7 years ago! The MII G3 Integrated Component System Mod demonstrates once again that old Macs can go on to live productive lives far beyond that of the average computer, even if they aren't doing exactly the job they were designed for.

Specifications:
CPU: G3 300MHz
RAM: 576MB
Boot Drive: 40GB Seagate (Partitioned for a 7GB boot vol)
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3.9 via XPostFacto
Removable Media Drive: 160GB Maxtor, Plumax Case with Oxford 911 Chipset
Ports: ADB, Serial Modem and Printer, 10BT Ethernet, ATA (Internal Only), Narrow SCSI, Mac Video
PCI Add-Ons: (11) USB 2.0 Ports, (7) FireWire 400 ports via 3 Cheap Generic Cards
Fans: (2) 8cm LED Case Fans, (1) Pentium Fan (motherboard underside), (1) Pentium Fan (CPU)
Other:
Keyspan Digital Remote IR Receiver
SIIG FireWire/USB 2.0 Repeater
Grandtec Black Indestructible Keyboard
Grandtec PC-To-NTSC Video Converter
Pyro FireWire Web Cam
Belkin Black USB Mouse

Time to Complete: 2 Weeks (Construction-Time)

End Notes

Parts of the MII were scavenged from the Clear G3 Mod, whose once-lovely case is now scrap plastic. Other parts are unique to the new mod. The Clear G3 Mod turns out to have been a terrific idea, but over time I discovered a few shortcomings. For one thing, the sharp edges just seemed out of place on my nice veneer shelf. I got to thinking that my DVDs would look better there, rather than that big dusty box with the distracting red lights. The lack of ports in the front meant a lot of fumbling around when I wanted to connect the keyboard (mostly for Internet radio using Safari) or plug in my camera for a slideshow or hook up a FireWire hard drive to move some files. I actually ran out of USB ports once and I wanted to make sure that that would never happen again. And I had a FireWire camera that I never felt comfortable using from my desktop computer, but which I thought might make a nice security camera if I could find a subtle place for it.

When the MII was complete, the biggest surprise for me was that video chatting was suddenly easy and comfortable when it was taken away from my desk and into my living room. The MII is also surprisingly quiet in its little cubbyhole, even with the extra fans -- and although it is tucked snugly away on a shelf behind a glass door, it runs about 5-degrees cooler than the original Clear G3.

Apple announced the Mini right after I finished the shell of the MII and it's pretty clear that a Mini would easily fill this niche, but then where would all the fun be if I simply bought something so new and so... plain-looking?