The Future Is Here - KEEX 6100

This just arrived.  For those that don't follow my blog, this the Quanmax KEEX-6100.  It is an ECX board, an Intel created standard.  It is the exact size of a 3.5" drive.  While it may not look like much, after much research and personal experience with Quanmax boards, I believe this is the BEST size-to-power ratio motherboard that is commercially available.  This is not an atom board, does not use a ULV chip, or a 600mhz VIA processor.  This is a Socket G2 - Sandy Bridge Core i3/i5/i7 motherboard.  It does use a the mobile version (traditionally used in notebooks), but that is the only compromise you will have to make.  This is the same processor found in the new mac mini the (i5 or i7).


Board features:
Compact Flash Slot (Bootable)
SATA x 2
Mini PCIe
LVDS x2 (with backlight power)
VGA, HDMI, Display Port

But the real advantage is size.  In comparison to a 5.25" optical drive - this is miniscule.  This board will fit easily at the top of the dome in essentially otherwise unusable space.  This helps with heat issues.  In addition, this allows you to have the entire rest of the dome to use in any way you see fit.

I am not sure which design I am personally going to integrate this into, but I will discuss hooking up to an ECX board in my tutorial - which I assure you I have been working on.

ECX vs Mini-itx

For those interested in starting soon and utilizing this board.  By far the easiest way to obtain this board is from a company called Sliger.  They are a Quanmax distributor and were extremely helpful.  They can provide not only the board but DC power recommendations, accessory cables (some of which are required).  Not only do they have this board but all the other Quanmax ECX boards.  Everything from atoms to core 2 duos to amds to the sandy bridge 6100.  One of the owner's emailed me back within an hour after I sent an inquiry and answered all my questions.  I highly recommend Sliger if you are going to go the ECX route.

Website: http://www.sliger.com
Email: sales@sliger.com

Stay tuned - I promise you the 17" tutorial is on the way with the 20" to follow.

Mini-itx Problems, SBCs and Embedded Boards

Base with Drive

When making an all-in-one you have to realize the base of the G4 is very small - Much smaller than you think.  The faraday cage inside provides all the real "support" of the base.  Unfortunately 4 steel "legs" make it even tighter.  Below the drive pictured here there is only about 1/2" inch.  The iMac was convection cooled so everything just stacked on top of each other leaving no room for airflow.  Below is how an atom mini itx board with standard fan and heatsink looks interns of thickness next to the original iMac G4's motherboard.  Remember the drive sits right on top of the motherboard - there is no wiggle room.

This standard size fan takes up much of the room that the drive occupied as well.  Even above the drive there is minimal room (enough for a 3.5" hard drive and then a fan.  The power supply was actually split in two and placed on opposite sides of the hard drive.

Without having to grind down the faraday cage even fitting in a mini itx is difficult.  You have to put it in at an angle, accessing the ports can be difficult.

Even when using just a mini itx board, no optical drive, no graphics card, just a small hard drive, there are two problems with creating a "powerful" system: Power and Heat.

By power I am referring to where the power source goes.  No atx power supply can fit in any way.  The existing power supply is not compatible with atx and regardless the 17" is only 160watts.  Pico power supplies are really the only option and these are limited to about 150 - 175 watts.  Remember, some of this has to go to power the display, support USBs etc.

By heat I am referring to the very poor air flow of the steel faraday cage.  The only air entry points are some slits at the bottom and holes at the top.  You would never, ever choose this as a computer case.  The mini itx has to sit at the very bottom (its the only place it fits).  So anything else you want to put in the case - wires, wifi, optical drives, ssds, whatever, has to go on top of the board.  This further blocks air flow.  Trust me, even with pristine wire management anything other than a very low power system is going to have problems.  So you are VERY limit din what can go on top of the motherboard.  If you are building a system just to show that it can power on, a "proof of concept" then you don't have to worry.  But, if you want a stable, reliable system that you can use daily, there is a better way.  There are actually two options:

1) Go Big: You want the system you want.  Dedicated graphics, optical drive, big power supply.  Then go external.  This is the way I went with my mac mini setup and I couldn't be happier with it.  I went dual monitors and was then able to use the base to house the optical drive and 20" monitor power supply.  Keep in mind the iMac is a desktop, you aren't carrying it room to room.  This makes upgrades a breeze and you are no longer limited by size, heat, or power.

2) Go Small: What if you could fit a motherboard at the top of the dome.  The CPU sitting right under the ventilation holes would allow for some airflow.  What's more, this would allow you to use the space below however you see fit.  In my all in one I went with a bluray optical drive.  There are compact options beyond mini-itx.  These are usually referred to as either Single Board Computers or embedded systems.  Although most of these systems are not available from usual vendors such as amazon, newegg etc, they are still easily to obtain commercially.  I have dealt with many sales reps from the companies I am going to discuss and they have almost universally been very helpful.  These boards are sometimes more expensive then their commercial atx counterparts, sometimes less.  They tend to use laptop parts (which tend to be lower power and generate less heat).  They usually have on board power options.  Their expansion options are usually very limited (but there is really isn't any room in the dome for expansion).  They are usually associated with low power platforms but are NOT limited to these.  Many form factors are available, but I am going to focus on those that have I/O that is familiar and compatible with commercial products.  So lets see what's available.

Zbox Nano

1) The ITX's

- A) Mini-itx (170mm x 170mm) (6.7" x 6.7") - discussed above

- B) Nano-itx (120mm x 120mm) (4.7" x 4.7") - These are sometimes available from standard vendors.

     - I for one am very excited about AMD's fusion platform.  

       The Zbox Nano relies on a Zacate E-350 APU which yields on board AMD HD 6310 graphics.  This is available as a barebones system and although it comes with the zotac case, it can be removed.  If a hackintosh is your goal, this won't suit your needs.  But if you want low power, but some graphics power consider this option.

- C) Pico-itx (100mm x 72mm) (3.9" x 2.8").  You may not believe it, but this is a legitimate option.

Pico-itx

      - While not my favorite platform, Intel's Atom, is certainly capable of being a machine capable of everyday, routine tasks.  And is available on most PicoITX bards.

Epic SBC

2) Industrial Computers 

- A) EPIC - Embedded Platform Industrial Computers (165mm x 115mm) (6.5" x 4.5").  These can blur the line between mainstream and industrial systems, but many have nothing but standard I/O and are have identical chipsets and features to the larger mini-itx boards.

      

3) Drive Sized Platforms

- A) 5.25" Embedded - (203mm x 146mm) (8" x 5.75") - designed to be the same size as a 5.25" drive.  Although longer then mini itx, its narrower shape is better for the iMac.  If you don't use an optical drive these may be considered (although they are on the larger size).  Available in everything from Atom, to Intel Core 2 Duo, to 1st and 2nd generation Core i processors.

KEEX-4030

- B) 3.5" Embedded/ECX - (146mm x 105mm) (5.75" x 4") - similarly designed to be the same size as a 3.5" drive.  ECX is an intel developed standard, meant to give the performance of mini-itx in a smaller form factor.  Similarly available in many varieties.  Global American again has a wide selection from Atom up to 1st generation Core i processors.  Two popular makers of these systems are Quanmax and Portwell.  Online distributors such as logicsupply.com offer these boards.  For my All-in-one I used the Keex-4030, a Quanmax Core 2 Duo Mobile Processor Board.  I found it easy to use and it delivered solid performance.  A second generation core i/sandy bridge mobo has been announced by Quanmax, but I have not found it available yet.

I would probably recommend either Nano-ITX or 3.5" ECX as they offer the best availability, standardization, and size to performance ratio.  Just remember that a non-standard board may have some quirks (proprietary connectors, limited expansion).  Do your homework first, before buying.  But there are plenty of options for small motherboards beyond mini-itx.

Update - The Native Inverter and LCD Glass

First let me start off by saying that I did something very stupid despite me writing not to do this time and time again.  I soldered the DVI connector on without putting it through the hole in the dome.  So I had to cut and resolder and for those of you that have never seen the components of the black wire of the imac neck, I can tell you it as an absolute nightmare.  They are composed of 4 wires in which are 3 wires; a red (+), a green (-), and a ground.  The red and green wires have a small plastic coat surrounding a single wire that is the size of a hair. When I set up this initially I had the bottom pins on and was able to use a tiny dab of solder, having to resolder these tiny wires, wire to wire has caused signal problems.  Keep in mind even one failed connection will give you no image whatsoever, so a multimeter is very helpful.  But poor connections or poorly shielded connections will result in color distortion.

That said there is some very GOOD news.  The native LCD for the Apple cinema display (LM201W03) needs to be modified to fit and although it fits, I decided to try the native iMac G4's (IDTech 20.1") lcd glass and it also appeared to work (though until I have a perfect image I can not confirm this 100%).  So it is possible that the only thing you may need is the LCD controller board from the apple cinema display and the cable to get this mod to work as the native G4 inverter has been confirmed to work and the native LCD glass appears to work.  This would be quite helpful as you can use a broken cinema display with a cracked screen.

 To the right you see the mod to date.  The top monitor housing closes as easily as the original as it uses the native inverter and the native glass.  Because I wanted this mod to be as close to the original as possible - I actually purchased a new monitor housing and base cover from ebay as most of the broken used iMacs I have acquired tend to be yellowed or scratched.

You can see the monitor from the front, side and back.  To the right of that is the lcd controller and ECX motherboard.  The ECX boots from a compact flash card located on the underside of the board.

The ECX board is the size of a 3.5" drive.  My plan is to mount the ECX board on top of a blu ray drive in the native drive caddy.  (essentially taking the place of the native hard drive).  As the CPU fan will be sitting at the top of the dome, I will not need a fan, so I should be able to fit Wifi and Bluetooth at the top of the dome with the vent holes.  As I will not be using the native power supply I should have room around the ECX board to fit connectors.  The lcd controller board will replace the native iMac G4's motherboard at the bottom of the dome below the drive.  As its smaller than the native motherboard I'm hoping to have room to wire up some rear I/O ports.  The only downside is that this leaves no room from the power supplies for both the monitor and ECX board.  They would fit in the drive caddy and using a splitter a simple AC plug could be placed in the back, but then obviously there would be no drive.  I have thought about using the native iMac's power supply, but I really need the room and in a similar experiment I fried a different ECX board in the past.

So, I'm going to keep them external.  For one the power supplies are small and this is a desktop computer, it won't be moved that much.  Plus, I have always loved the drive and by using blu-ray it can be useful.  Also, its gonna be tight in there and there is really no cooling system in place - so keeping hot power sources external is probably for the best.

I do think the system is likely to be hackintoshable - the chipset has been hackintoshed before (this is the Quanmax KEEX-4030 ECX board for those interested).  The thing that I have never heard about is booting snow leopard from a compact flash card - a 2.5" or even 1.8" SSD may have to be shoehorned in somewhere if hackintosh is your goal.

Here is the system booting (again notice the small resolution during the boot that I previously discussed).

This is where the frustration set in - with windows booting.  While I previously had a pristine image, after the resolder, the colors are unfortunately off.  A multimeter revealed all intact connections but I was getting some week noise at the wrong pins - so I suspect some interference or crosstalk.  I'm going to remove all the solder joints for the black wires and try redoing them with fresh connections and extra shielding.

To do this mod, I actually used cables from the necks of different iMacs.  There are the black and grey cables that carry the DVI signal, however the apple cinema display has "extra wires".  Some of these probably aren't necessary, but some of them are.  As a result, I had to add an extra grey wire from a different iMac.  I replaced the native LED/Microphone cable with this wire.  The wiring is somewhat difficult to explain.  If I continue to have difficulty with the black wire of the native iMac, I will likely change it to a different wire.  Likely either the equivalent wires from the apple cinema display or another grey wire.  Both of these choices would be MUCH easier to work with.  Either way when I do finalize how I wire the neck, I will post specific instructions.

While I am quite proud of some of the previous mods - this mod is actually much simpler and besides having to push some wires through the neck, a lot less labor intensive than previous mods.  In addition, if it does turn out, as it seems, that either LCD panel can be used, combinations of discarded iMac G4's and apple cinema displays can be used.  I would NEVER tear apart a working iMac G4 and couldn't bring myself to tear open my mac mini to try to fit it in the base.  I even hated even using a working apple cinema display in my previous mod.  Its always great to re-purpose otherwise useless parts.  But whats great about this mod is that there are so many different ways, but this one feels the closest to the native 20" iMac G4 that I've come so far.

Keep in mind that the KEEX-4030 uses the same Socket P Penryn Core 2 Duo chip thats in the previous and current generations of minis.  This ECX board is no slouch.  That said, if there was a problem with it, I think this is the mod that I would open up a mac mini for and try to put it in the base.

I'm hoping to figure out the wiring, clean up the image and start putting the base together this weekend.  But, as always all comments and suggestions are appreciated, but please no comments about seeing windows on the iMac G4 - Its the only operating system I currently have on a compact flash card.  Also feel free to ask any questions.

Completed Mod - The 20" iMac G4 / Apple Cinema Display Touch Screen Mod

I am thrilled with how this mod came out.  Not only does it look great, but I really believe that it will stand the test of time.  It is rock solid stable and an absolute pleasure to use.  And to be honest, relatively speaking, the mod was not that difficult.  It can be done in a few days.  For those interested, I can give very detailed instructions.

OK, I wanted to make it this all-in-one BADLY! But, after almost shorting out my itx mobo, I was in no mood to open the mac mini up and put it inside.  That said, the older generation mac mini would likely be superior to the mini itx in terms of fit.  However, the new mac mini is a no-go without serious modification to the internal faraday cage.  For now I am going to keep the mac mini external.  I may revisit this in the future, but for now, I put the power adapter, touch controller, and usb hub into the base.  I was also going to add the griffin powerwave adapter, but am considering trying to track down an iFire adapter (if the price isn't astronomical).  They both power the Apple Pro Speakers. but the iFire doesn't require external power.

Here are several additional pictures:
    The ports on the back are simply a USB (to connect the USB hub), an AC cord (the cinema display power adapter is at the top of the dome), and a DVI.


The 5 wire touch screen cable is still a little but of a work in progress.  I'm confident that Ill be able to hide it under the front bezel, but I am likely going to have to cut into the ribbon cable.  Because I do not want to damage the 20" touch screen, I have purchased, a much smaller 7" 5 wire resistive touch screen to experiment with.  But for now, this works fine.

This mod has really been my favorite so far.  It feels exactly like the original iMac to me, plus the touch screen.  This was certainly not the direction I expected to go when I restarted this project, but am very happy where I wound up.  Again any comments or even constructive criticism would be appreciated.  Thanks again and happy modding!!!

Update: Touch Panel wires hidden under bezel

Apple Cinema Display / iMac Mod - The Base

OK - I thought it would be the answer to all the problems of this mod.  But, the ECX for factor has been nothing but a disappointment.  As it is the size of a 3.5 inch drive, contains a core 2 duo processor, and is able to boot from an onboard compact flash drive, i thought this would easily replace the existing hard drive in the iMac G4s current design and thus, I would be able to keep the dvd drive and have the entire bottom of the base to wire up ports.  Unfortunately the onboard intel "HD graphics" may be HD, but only display at minuscule resolutions.  So, it does have a PCI express x 4 slot, however x1 and x4 cards tend to be overly expensive for what you get.  The biggest problem is that a graphics card, even low profile with a riser makes the setup almost as big as a Mini ITX rig - but much less powerful.  So after advice from posters (thanks Tobi) - I have decided to go the mini itx route instead.

So here is the Zotac Mini itx LGA 1156 board with the Core i3 Processor.  As I have mentioned before, I am very concerned about heat and stability issues - this hasn't changed.  What has changed is the price.  The core i3 offers decent performance for the price as does the itx board itself.  So, if something does "go wrong", it wouldn't be as devastating as it would have been several months ago.  In addition, I have heard favorable reviews from heat/power as well as performance regarding the i3 on-chip graphics.  I am hopeful with good wire management, the on board graphics, a pico itx power supply (200W pictured), keeping all power bricks outside, and a solid state drive, I can minimize heat and keep this board ticking for a while.  The board fits at the right angle, however, the DVI plug can not fit, so I had to use a DVI to HDMI and STILL had to use a right angle HDMI connector to fit.  Likewise USB plugs are a tight fit and small connectors are preferable.  As a result of the taper of the dome as well as the "nooks" of the metal faraday cage - there is substantially less room inside the dome than there appears to be.  Fitting in a full size drive is impossible, a slot load may be possible, but doesn't work with the drive door.  Also, do not discount the room that connectors and wires take up.  I have also replaced the existing fan with an atx compatible one.

I have spent the past day or two trying to develop a mechanism to use the drive door.  I have several touch latches that I've been trying to work with, such that you push on the drive door and it pops out a little allowing you to pull it down and expose a card reader.  While I did get it to work, the mechanism required the drive to be "pushed out" a little at baseline and took up a lot of room.  In the end, I decided it was simply not worth it.  I want to give as much room to air flow as possible and keep the base simple.  An SD card reader can be placed at the back.  Instead I secured the 60GB solid state 2.5" inch drive just inside the drive door.  This will allow me to take a flat screw driver to pry the door open to have easy access to the drive for easy swapping. I am trying to remember my own advice that less is more.  Everything that takes up room, impedes air flow and is something that could potentially go wrong requiring having to reopen everything.  As a result of the faraday cage the itx board has to be put in at an angle - so none of the existing screw holes line up with anything.  So, I'm finding myself using a lot of twist ties, velcro, and electrical tape - I'm hoping to replace some of these with brackets when possible, but nothing is fitting easily.

I replaced the neck with my new hybrid neck (see wiring the neck post for details).  I hear none of the "grinding" that worried me about the last neck.  I placed the screen in and because I used shorter wires - it fit perfectly and closed easily without any force.  The small wires you see coming out of the first firewire port are actually for the touch screen.  Because I had extra wires using the "hybrid" method, I was able to place the touch screen controller in the base.  This won't use up a USB and now I don't have to put the controller on the back of the monitor, but I did need a place for the connector to go.  As, I'm not using the firewire ports, I dremeled one off to allow me room to fit the wires out.  I'm going to place a female connector there.  Then fashion a short 5 wire male to male cord to connect the touchscreen.  I'm hoping to keep as much as possible on the bottom edge of the monitor, but either way I feel this is a more elegant solution than a clunky controller on the back, but still allows me to make the touch screen easily removable.

This was supposed to be the first sealed test of this mod.  Unfortunately, I closed it up, confidently pressed the power button, but nothing happened.  I had to open it up where I found that I had mistakenly put the power switch on the power led pins.  So, as it was getting late, I left it open and performed the inaugural boot - which was successful.

Left to do:
I have purchased a few types of modeling clay which I plan to use to make/secure the rear ports.  On the back I plan on having, a Bluetooth, the zotac's wifi bracket and antenna, 3 - 4 usb ports using internal wifi headers and usb male to female, a usb to sd card reader , the dc power for the mobo, ethernet, microphone and audio out (via either internal header or male to female rear plugs).  I have already physically secured the power button to the existing imacs button.  Right now I have the monitor power cord simply coming out the back (pictured on right).  Ultimately, I would love to find some type extension so that I can have a female plug on the back to plug the power cord into.  However, I have not been able to find a female version of this cord.  This is the same one on the Mac Mini, does anyone know if something like this exists?

Also, how badly do I want the native speakers - the Griffin power wave adapter pictured above may be able to fit at the very bottom.  The question is, do I need it internally? Are the native speakers something I am going to want to stick with?

Then, mount the front bezel and touch screen and finish the touch screen connector.  It's really coming together and this is my favorite mod so far.  Ironically, the very first thing I tried was the VESA mount mod on this very apple cinema display.  I only even went the itx route on advice from a reader of my blog, so I'm looking forward to advice, comments and questions.  Thanks!!

17" iMac G4 LVDS Conversion - Video

Video of 17" iMac Mod

Here is a video of the mod in action.  I have connected it to a small mini itx computer running Windows 7.  As I said before, I do plan on getting a mac mini for this mod eventually.  I wanted to get a general sense with how the leopard user interface would work with a touchscreen, so I skinned the computer to look like leopard (using Rocketdock and Apple Icons).  The user interface works great.  Having the dock makes selecting programs easy.  With this networked computer I am only a few touches away from my entire home movie, picture, and music collection.  In addition, using Webtaps for firefox allows me to rapidly select videos from internet sites such as hulu.

To complete the look I am using the iMac G4's original keyboard (I like using the wired keyboard because I plan on concealing the actual computer, this gives me two easily accessible USB ports).  I have also added the magic mouse and the USB griffin powerwave adapter which allows me to use the iMac's original Orb speakers.

I hope that this blog has and will help with similar projects.  For myself, I have decided to next work on an ATOM/ION G4 Cube mod.  Similar mods to this have been done, but I think having a slot loading bluray home theater pc (capable of HD output) in the shape of an apple cube would look great in the family room.  Also, I hope to get back to a multitouch table that I had been doing some work on.  So one mod done and on to the next......