Options for a "PRO" iMac G4 Mod

When I began this project, my motivation wasn't just to retain the concept of the iMac G4, but to find a way to reuse the LCD screen.  I felt the same way about the iMac G5, and although their Power PC processors had become largely obsolete, the displays were more than adequate.

The 20" LCD was almost identical to the one found in the iMac G5 and in the aluminum 20" Apple Cinema Display (these are all TMDS and swappable).  The expansive 20.1" display had a 1680x1050 resolution as a result of a 16:10 aspect ratio.  The iMac G4 contained one of the first flat screen LCDs on an all-in-one computer at the 20" for the first for that size.  Then a funny thing happened, LCD monitors seemed to stagnate in many respects.  LCDs were remarkably sharp compared to CRT Televisions and as computers used small screens compared to TVs, I suppose many felt the resolution to be adequate.  Innovation continued in the form of LED backlighting and increasing screen sizes, but in some ways, resolution seemed to go backwards.

Courtesy of extreme.pcgames

I loved the 16:10 aspect ratio, you were able to see more of the page without having to scroll.  Having the extra vertical room was better for me in almost everything except for one thing - watching movies, an activity I rarely did on my computer monitor.  The extra horizontal space, look up more room on the desktop and went largely unused for me.  For many sizes there was a decrease in the area as well as a lower resolution.  The less pixels required for the same size made this especially appealing to manufacturers and for the most part 16:9 has become dominant.  For 20" the pixel loss was very significant, the 20.1" 16:10 1680x1050 as compared to the 20" 1600:900.  The result is that I have not seen any modern 16:10 20" LCDs at all, though 22" are common.

Higher contrast ratios, IPS screens, LED backlighting can not be found in a screen that fits within the existing housing of the 20" monitor.  What is more concerning is that tablets and smartphones, in particular the retina display of the iPhone and especially the iPad, have changed the way people view LCDs and pixel density is increasing in desktop displays once again.  Although Apple has generally been ahead of the curve with higher resolutions (began in 2009) on their displays, this is now becoming industry standard.

A good example is the evolution of the "smaller" sized iMac.  The 20" iMac G4 was released in 2003 and it was the largest size available and continued to be so into the iMac G5s and into the intel era right until the end of the white polycarbonite iMacs, where the 24" size appeared making the 20" the middle size.  The aluminum iMacs kept the 20"16:10 size with the larger 24".  With the appearance of the unibody aluminum iMacs apple went to the 16:9 aspect ratio.  However, they did not stick with the 20" size in 16:9 and the 1600x900 resolution.  Nor did they upgrade to the 22" 16:10 size and its resolution 1680x1050 (identical to the 20.1" iMac's resolution - thus actually less dense).  They went to a 21.5" 16:9 LCD that is true high resolution: 1920x1080 (1080p = HD).  There is now even talk of High DPI LCD Screens that go beyond HD.

The iMac G4 has 2 features that make great to use - its ergonomic arm and its LCD.  The ergonomic arm is especially useful with a touchscreen.  In my touchscreen variations, I have loved using this design and incorporating a touch screen remains my highest priority no matter which direction I go in.  However, as the LCD becomes more dated, I'm considering trying a radical redesign for my "Pro" Mod.  As of now these are the possibilities as I see them:

1) The 20" iMac G4 mod with some improvements:
- A better cooling system and processor/RAM upgrade
- Native PSU
- Touchscreen
- Possible iSight Cam

Four Possible Touchscreens

I discussed this in my Touchscreen post and I have obtained a 3M 16:10 20" capacitive screen that seems to work with OS X.  It has a significant thickness to it and can not fit inside the housing as is.
The easiest solution is to place it in front of the display or cut the front bezel (the bezel is about the same thickness as the capacitive touch overlay).  This should work and if done properly may not look bad.  I am worried about the weight and ruining the elegant look with a touchscreen jutting out somewhat.  Also,  placement of the controller and wiring down the neck would have to be worked out.

2) LED backlighting
I am currently working on this method and will discuss it in my next post.  But, the general idea is to upgrade the lcd with led backlighting which will allow me to use a thinner diffuser.  This may allow me to fit the touchscreen inside the LCD housing and will help alleviate the additional weight.

The iMac's Diffuser

Unfortunately 16:10 20" LED monitors do not exist, thus, I will have to alter a larger diffuser and backlight in order to fit in the housing.  I can't just add LEDs because the entire purpose is to use a thinner diffuser allowing for the touchscreen to fit.  In theory this method would allow the 20" iMac to have a touchscreen added without any notable external change.

3) New, Larger LCD with Custom Housing
- Adding a 21.5" screen would be ideal, high resolution screens with LED backlighting and IPS would truly be an upgrade.  Also, 21.5" LCDs with optical touch screens do exist and some of these can be multitouch OSX compatible.  But this wouldn't fit in the current LCD housing.  While it may be possible to enlarge the front housing, the back would have to be done custom.  While 3D printing and prototyping services are available, there are certain drawbacks to using the original design.
- The weight would be very different.  Also, the screen would likely use LVDS, so fitting the controller board so that DVI/HDMI would go through the existing TMDS wires in the neck would be advantageous.  Thus, the existing shape may not be ideal.
-  As the 21.5" screen is notably wider, it may start to look awkward.  Elimination of the surrounding clear plastic and wide bezel would help the proportions.
-  This would be very expensive and difficult to reproduce.

4) Redesign using a different LCD Housing:
- I have secured a different housing to the iMac before and made it into a successful mod.  So it can be done even with non VESA complaint monitors.

Apple Cinema Display Mod Housing Secured

- Obviously keeping the dome is critical.  It is what gives the iMac G4 its identity and allows the LCD to be pulled forward and rotated in a way that a base alone would not allow.
- The LCD housing would have to look modern, have an apple style, be able to fit a 21.5" LCD and have a weight and width similar to the original G4's housing.  While I know nothing about the weight issue, the obvious candidate is the housing from the 21.5" iMac.

- There are many technical details that would make this impossible.  But here is a very quick mock-up:

As I have the 20" touchscreen and have already begun, I am going to pursue the original design and housing with the touchscreen and LED backlight, but I may pursue the 21.5" based iMac in the future.  I would love to get opinions and suggestions, so please comment below.  Thank for reading.

20" iMac G4 Pro - Touchscreens

After a break, I am back and have several projects which I am starting to organize for.

1.  The 17" TMDS to DVI, including Video Tutorial has been completed.

2.  For the 17", I am thinking about finishing this up in some fashion.  This would not be an all in one, but instead may use wireless DVI and function as a second monitor.

3.  Apple Cube mod.  After searching I have seen some amazing cube mods including newer ones which use the existing heatsink.  This makes me somewhat less enthusiastic, as it has been done already, but it is still something that I would like to do using my core 2 duo ECX board.

4.  The 20" iMac G4 Pro Mod.  As I talked about in an earlier post the features that I would add to this pro mod would include, in order of importance:

A) Touchscreen: Something I have tried to incorporate since my first iMac G4 Mods

- The problems that I've had relate mostly to the fact that 20" 16:10 is no longer a common size.

- Touchscreens often add extra weight and thickness and thus complicate the designs

- Available Touchscreens are often of poor quality and use resistive technology that is not multitouch compatible and often detracts from the image by adding a reflective glare.

B) LED Backlighting: This conserves power and can allow for a much thinner LCD enclosure.

- Similar to the Touchscreen this is complicated by the odd 20" 16:10 aspect ratio.  No commercially available LED LCDs are available in this format.

- This may also allow for brightness control with a PWM control.

C) Upgraded Processor, RAM, and improved cooling: You can't have the first two without the third.

- I tried to make my previous mod as close to the original as possible, with the optical drive, space is somewhat limited and to ensure stability with the existing heatsink I went dual core i5

- To use a quad core, I will have to upgrade the cooling in place of the optical drive.

D) The native PSU: Resourceful readers have incorporated the native PSU.  

- Unfortunately, the native PSU did not fit my previous mod.  Without the optical drive and with improved cooling, I should be able to use the native PSU.

E) An iSight/Mic: Although the mic exists the rotating, tilting LCD makes the G4 ideal for an iSight.

- I do not yet know if a newer iSight will work better than the one from the iMac G5.  I already know how to turn the iSight from the G5 into a USB compatible camera, but I don't know if it will fit.

F) Aesthetic Changes: While rigs with neon lights all over were never my taste, I wouldn't mind some LED lights to differentiate this mod.

To start with, the most important thing I would like to incorporate is a Touchscreen.  Several of my iMac G4 mods have incorporated touchscreens.  I do agree that desktop touchscreens are not ideal, but in certain situations they can be quite useful.  A prerequisite is that the must be able to tilt backwards - newer touchscreen all in ones are doing this and apple's own patent shows that they have considered this approach in a design that is very reminiscent of the iMac G4 (mixed with the current iMac design).

Courtesy of patentlyapple.com

Rear View

Unfortunately, the extra girth and weight of the 20" touchscreens required significant compromise in the design.  I used a shell from an aluminum 20" cinema display and the front bezel of the G4.

At the time I hadn't yet figured out how to use the native inverter, so using the ACD solved both of these problems.  Once I figured out how to use the native inverter, I was able to use the complete original G4 shell and came to prefer the native appearance over my design despite the touchscreen.

Part of this had to do with the 5 wire resistive touchscreen which I found myself having to recalibrate frequently and had an annoying reflective glare.

However, with newer operating systems favoring touch/tablet interfaces over traditional Mouse/Keyboard, having a rotating. bending, tilting, floating touchscreen seems like the best possible type of desktop to try this on.  Lion (and even more so Mountain Lion) is actually touch friendly especially from the Launchpad interface.  Windows 8 Consumer Preview is even more touch friendly in that not using a touchscreen seems wrong.

I have an image of a broken 20" iMac G4 that will serve as the skeleton of this project.  The previous owner tore the front bezel off.  What you will notice is that the LCD comes right to the front of the enclosure.  Sure, you could put a touchscreen in front and secure it with double sided tape and the tape on the front bezel, but there would be a visible space from the side.  Plus, as you'll be moving and touching this, I worry about keeping it secure.  But, you can see that as is, adding anything in front of the LCD is difficult.

I have gone to great lengths to consider various touch options that are available, even inquired about custom touch screens.  The 20" 16:10 continues to be a difficult size to find.  There is a 20" 16:10 Surface acoustic Wave Touchscreen that I used in the past, but it requires a border that goes beyond the dimensions of the enclosure.  So that leaves these four:

Top Left is a broken 21.5" 16:9 optical touch monitor (LCD is broken by the touch aspect works).  This uses optical sensors in the corners and does require a "gap" in front of the LCD.  Can I adjust this to 20" 16:10?

Bottom Left is a 5 wire resistive touchscreen.  This is the same company that manufactured the screen for my old mod, but they have added an anti-reflective coat.  Its fairly light and thin and the correct size and ratio, but I still have reservations regarding resistive technology in general.

Top Right is an IR 19" 16: 10 touch panel.  The IR sensors are corrected in the corners and it may be possible to extend this connection.  Again, this requires a "gap" and I will likely loose touch sensing in the 4 corners.

Bottom Right is a 20" (approx 16:10) capacitive panel that I obtained from 3M.  Its an older cap active technology, but I have been playing with it on Lion and have been impressed by it so far.  While it is heavy and fairly thick, its active area fits the entire screen and as it is capacitive, multitouch drivers are available for windows (therefore should be possible for OS X).  This seems like the best solution and I feel lucky that I even found it, to be honest.

LCD enclosure

To fit it, however, I have to make the LCD enclosure itself smaller.

Show here is the LCDs enclosure.  There is a front and a back.  The LCD panel itself is quite thin and its control board actually extends outside the main enclosure.  Where it can interface with a JAE cable.

Side profile of LCD panel

Oblique Angle

 Most of the space is actually taken up by the backlight mechanism.
To be continued....

Anniversaries and an iMac G4 "Sandy Bridge Mod" Pro Version?

I hadn't even realized that I failed to acknowledge an important anniversary.  The iMac G4 was introduced on January 7th, 2002 by Steve Jobs at the San Francisco Macworld.  The 20" was released later in November 18, 2003.  Then only 2 and a half years later (August 31, 2004) the iMac G4, with its sunflower inspired horizontal design, was discontinued in favor of the iMac G5's vertically oriented all-in-one.

Many reasons have been suggested to why this was done.  The cost of the neck, the difficulty in supporting increasing LCD sizes, and the cooling needs of the notoriously hot G5 processor.  I have been using one version of this as an external monitor hooked up to a mac mini and now a second version as a modernized all-in-one and it remains one of the most enjoyable desktop user experiences I have know, even 10 years later.

With my sandy bridge "genuine" mod my goal was to be as true to the original as possible, but I have been thinking about doing a version that has some extra features not found in the original.  Some of these may be possible, some of them are not.  To make extra room in the base, the optical drive will be removed.  So, I am contemplating doing a "PRO" version of the iMac G4 mod.  I have enough spare parts and I think this may be a fun alternative.  I will likely use the TMDS to DVI method and not the apple cinema display controller method.  The overall look of the iMac G4 will be changed (something I wanted to avoid in the previous mod).  Things I may add:

3M Touchscreen

• A Touchscreen: One of my favorite mods used a resistive touchscreen and it fits this form factor quite well.  However, I did not like the glare, resolution, or touch accuracy of the resistive touchscreen.  I have however located a capacitive touchscreen that should fit in this mod.  Its flaw is that it is somewhat thick and heavy.  An alternative may be incorporating optical sensors in the bezel.
• LED backlighting: This would be necessary to fit the touchscreen, but something that has been done in similar projects by JL7, and adds improved backlighting and power efficiency.
• Quad Core Processor: I changed from a mobile core i7 quad core to a dual core i5 as a result of both heat production and power consumption in my latest mod.  However, a quad core i7 machine is still something I would love to do.  As well as maxing out the RAM to 8GB.
• Native Power: Increased power needs would require a big power supply and the only one that could fit is the native supply which other modders have used.
• Better Cooling: Use of the native PSU would require shifting of the mobo downwards.  This as well as heat generated by the quad core processor and the PSU itself would require a much more powerful cooling solution.  At the very least a large active heatsink on the CPU and a 92mm case fan.  However, an intake fan at the bottom may be needed as well.  This will use of the space that was previously used by the optical drive.
• iSight Cam: in my G4/G5 setup, I use the iSight cam on the G5, but I have been wishing that there was one on the G4's LCD as it would be much easier to manipulate.  The microphone is already there, modifying the LCD enclosure to support an iSight may be possible.

iMac G4 iSight Mock-up

• Apple Modification: Just to visually delineate this, I was considering altering the apple on the base.  A light up apple or IR sensor are possibilities
• ???Improved Graphics: This one is difficult, although its something I would like to add, most of these small boards do not have PCI-Ex16 slots.  Even conversion of mini pcie is usually only to x1, and this makes it difficult to get much improvement over on chip sandy bridge graphics.  Fitting and powering a full size card would also be difficult.  I will continue to give this thought, but its probably unlikely.  Even if you wedge a mini itx in, you would have difficulty fitting even a low profile card in to the dome.  

Although this mod would involve tradeoffs including louder fans, loss of the optical drive, and loss of the exact iMac G4 appearance, there are clearly advantages as well.  The iSight, LED backlights, and touchscreen in particular are things I would love to add.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Afterthoughts and Future Plans

20" iMac G4 and 20" iMac G5 (Apple Cinema Display LCD Controller Hack)
Connected  to External Mac Mini

Genuine 20" iMac G4 All-In-One Sandy Bridge Hackintosh

Above you see my two favorite 20" mods.  The one on top uses an LCD controller from an Apple Cinema Display for both the iMac G4 (though the iMac G4 uses its native inverter) and the iMac G5.  These are connected to an external Mac Mini.  Although somewhat more complex, the great thing about this method is its stability.  It is really an apple cinema display in the form of an iMac G4 and G5.  The extra room in the in the iMacs is not put to waste.  The iMac G4 houses a USB optical drive (replacing the missing one on the Mac Mini.  The iMac G5's iSight and Mic are converted to USB.  This has become one of my most frequently used computers.

The second picture is my latest All-In-One Sandy Bridge Hackinosh using an ECX board to run Mac OS Lion.  This is very much native and did not require any alteration to the neck or lcd.  The computer, DVD burner, SSD (running lion) and onboard Compact Flash (running Windows 8 Developer Preview) are all internal.  This was a tremendous amount of fun and will make a great all-in-one computer.

Obviously both these methods are viable and both have their advantages.  From the outside, they are indistinguishable from each other or a native iMac G4.  Of course, which ever method you use for the LCD is independent of what you connect it to.

iMac neck connected to Apple Cinema Display

My slightly older 3rd method, used the actual housing from an apple cinema display.  The few extra millimeters this gave allowed the use of the cinema displays inverter (I had previously not been able to get the 20" iMac's native inverter to work).  This method also allowed for the addition of a 20" touch screen.  However, I have retired this mod for a couple reasons.  First, while I thought this was an acceptable work around at the time, I much prefer the look of the true LCD housing.  Second, while the touch screen was great with the iMac's design, I did not love the only touch screen I was able to find in the now rare 20" 16:10 size.  This resistive touch screen was fairly accurate, but its surface was uncomfortable to touch and its glossy plastic surface detracted from the resolution of the LCD.  Third, as a resistive screen single touch was all it could do.

While I now have a functional upgraded replica, I still like the idea of adding additional functionality to the iMac G4 with a touch screen.  There are a couple options that are now available.  Some capacitive screens have become much more reasonably priced.  Although they were originally designed as single touch, new software may be able to make them function with gestures and at multitouch.  Another possibility is optical or IR touch.  Although the available optionals do not come in 20" 16:10, they possibly can be tweaked.

The downside is that the 20" capacitive screen will add too much weight and the optical touch will require extra room between the LCD and the bezel.  One thing that may make this possible is to use LED backlighting which would be much thinner.  A fellow modder JP7 has done a fe amazing mods of apple cinema displays using LED backlights.

In terms of the base, I have no use for either a desktop monitor or an all-in-one.  But, a larger screen for a notebook computer has always been something I have considered for the iMac G4.  Using either wired technology (A thunderbolt dock? - If they eventually come in at a reasonable price) or wireless technology (Wireless DVI and USB adapter?) is something I can definitely see being useful.

Wireless DVI - Courtesy of Amazon.com

After I use my current G4 and G5 spare parts, I will probably move on from this.  And I still have a Cube which has been sitting waiting to be modded.

iMac G4/Cinema Display Mod - Improvements

So far this mod is as close to perfect as I have gotten, but there are a few things that I felt could be improved.  For one - with the touchscreen and iMac bezel in place there is a one area where I was getting "monitor drift" that is the neck would slip down an extra inch or two when positioned in a certain way.  Secondly I did not love that the touchscreen is located in front of the cinema displays bezel or that it was held on by mounting tape.  Thirdly, despite doing a better job hiding the touchscreen wire, I still found it somewhat unsightly.

My initial intention was to make the touchscreen easily removable, but having used this mod with the touchscreen, I would never remove it.  So I decided to integrate it into the display.  However, the 5wire resistive touchscreen although only a few mm thick will not fit under the bezel.

I looked for film to film touchscreens but could only find them in 18.5" or 21.5".  Plus chances are its not a 5wire.  I know everyone wants capacitive, but 5wire resistive is very durable and for the price, very reasonable.  For those interested the screen I use:

http://cgi.ebay.com/20-1-5-Wire-Resistive-Touch-Screen-Panel-Kit-USB-16-10-/270694746748?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f06aa0a7c#ht_6098wt_1235

The company ships fast and it packages it very safely in a plexiglass lined box.  So here is how to integrate the touchscreen.  Again this is only for people that are using this particular touchscreen.

To start I wanted to decrease the weight a little bit to compensate for the touch screen.  I decided to remove the top portion of the bracket.  Although this gives less surface area for the glue to hold.  The weight is actually supported by the aluminum frame itself - so this part protects from rotation more than anything.  I used cold weld epoxy and am confident that even without the top of the bracket its not going anywhere.  But I still had to figure a way to mount the touchscreen flush against the lcd.

So to solve this I actually cut out part of the front bezel of the apple cinema display.  I positioned the touchscreen in the center, traced around the screen and dremeled that area out.  This allowed me to put the touchscreen flush against the lcd screen and the monitor is still securely held by the remaining bezel.  The touchscreen is also firmly held in place by the square cut for it.

Previous Method

New Method

To the left you can see the difference.   The new bezel is pictured on the bottom.  You can see the front is much thinner as well as having the smaller bracket.

The original method is on top.  Again, unless you are planning on using a touchscreen and it is similar to this one, I would recommend using the original method.

One complication of this is that the Cinema Displays LED indicator gets cut off.  This gave me the opportunity, however, to use the native iMac G4s LED.  As they use different 2 pin connectors of opposite sex, I had to create a hybrid using the LED wires.  I can then plug the LED wires coming from the Apple Cinema Display's Control Board into the ribbon LED from the native iMac G4.  The ribbon cable easily fits between the touchscreen and the bezel.

Hybrid LED cable

iMac G4 Bezel with LED

I then used tape for two reasons.  One, I wanted to make sure the touchscreen doesn't fall forwards (even though its wedged in there very snugly).  And secondly, I wanted to give an area where I could put an epoxy to adhere to the iMac G4s front bezel (without gluing directly to the touch screen), which becomes the new front, replacing the Apple Cinema Displays front which was largely dremeled out.

Touch Screen flush with bezel

The touchscreen ribbon cable now goes internally and thus no cables are visible.  It connects to its 5 pin adapter and goes down the neck to meet the controller in the base. Its difficult to see in this picture, but the touchscreen is now flush with the remaining part of the Apple Cinema Displays front bezel.  Using epoxy the iMacs bezel was attached, sealing off our now heavily modified hybrid case.  The case still opens and closes like the original Apple Cinema Display, but now the touchscreen and iMac bezel are fully integrated.

The best way to see the difference is from the side.  Previously you had Apple Cinema Display with a few mm of touchscreen visible in front then the iMac bezel.  Now the new bezel interacts directly with the original case.  Plus, there is now no visible wire anywhere as everything is internal.

In addition, there is no "monitor drift" - NONE!! Not in any position.  If this is the effect of some weight removal or simply moving the touchscreen inwards a few millimeters - I can't be sure.   But, either way it worked.

As an added benefit the iMac G4s native LED looks great.  Sometimes the little things really do go a long way.

The only negative is that the touch screen is no longer "easily removable".  I decided that really the only use I have for a 20.1" 16:10 touch screen is for this mod.  Plus, after a few days it became clear that this mod is even better with the touch screen (in my opinion) and that I wasn't going to opt to remove it.  I will be posting a full parts list and step by step for this mod.  I will do my best to separate it into with and without touchscreen.

As a side note, you may notice some of these pictures use the apple cinema display that I had painted white.  After looking at the white version, I decided to stick with the original silver of the apple cinema display.  For one, I am not the best painter and it had already chipped in places.  Secondly, the silver really goes and it matches well with apples keyboard/mouse and even the mac mini.  Although using the original display would be ideal, I feel this has some advantages.  The presence of USB (and firewire if you wanted to hook it up), on/off switch, brightness control, more mod friendly (room for longer cables etc.).  As always, questions, critiques etc are welcomed.

Pressing the Cinema Display's Power Button

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

20" Apple Cinema Display/iMac G4 Mod to Date

 This is without the front bezel of the iMac G4 on top of the apple cinema display.  The bottom is also not on as I am now working with the components in the base.

The touch screen does not fit inside the monitor housing.  Because, I want to make the touch screen removable, I originally had the controller inside the casing and sacrificed a USB port internally.  However, the touchscreen could not be removed without taking the entire monitor apart.  So instead I bonded it to the iMac's Front bezel to make sort of a USB Touch Screen Overlay.

With the touch screen and bezel in place













Unfortunately, the VESA mount method does not work with the cinema display.  Although the weight is identical to the native iMacG4's monitor, the VESA mount displaces the monitor forward about an inch.  This puts too much pressure on the neck and the monitor will not stay up.  By putting the neck directly into the back this problem is eliminated and it moves exactly like the native monitor.  To finish it off I sealed the holes using gray styrene

 This shows the temporary housing for the touch controller.  The white strip is a protector for from the touch screen.  I'm still not sure how to handle the touch controller.  I do want to make it easily removable (It does add a lot of glare to the monitor and I'm not 100% I am going to keep it for this mod).

I came very close to painting the back white.  I do think doing that would make it nearly indistinguishable from the native iMac G4s monitor.  But, for now I held off.

Obviously, this isn't the native iMac, but it is pretty damn close.  Unlike the TMDS to DVI 17" mod, I don't have to deal with screen corruption during sleep.  To use the original 20" inverter I would have needed a 24v, 12v, and 3.3v power source - for the monitor alone.  The backlights would have been turned on independently - which is somewhat inconvenient.  I still do need the power brick, however, which I may not be able to fit in the base.

I am very curious to hear opinions and suggestions regarding how to improve this mod.  When I am finished I can post a parts list, step by step guide if anyone is interested.

Next step: I am going to complete the alternate neck wiring method I described in my previous post.  I may paint the housing white.  I also need to decide how I'm going to handle the touch controller, make it look clean, but keep it very easy to remove.

In terms of the base, while the ECX board can boot off the compact flash, its onboard graphics is unable to drive the 20" monitor.  As a result, I will need a dedicated graphics card.  Because it has only a PCI x 4 slot, I have decided on the Zotac Ion PCI x1 card.  With a pci riser it should still fit, but its starting to get very crowded.

20" iMac G4 Mod - BACK SHELF METHOD

NOTE (11/5/11): This was one of my first (somewhat) successful iMac Mods.  While the Surface Acoustic Wave Touchscreen is one of the best I have used, overall this method is neither elegant nor stable and is not recommended anymore.  The wires coming out the "shelf" on the back are not just ugly, but they make this mod very fragile.  This lasted only 2 months when I started noticing flickering video.  The video cable occasionally got caught and when you moved the monitor, it would pull on the controller board.  Eventually it went altogether.  See my "Summary" post for better alternatives.



Like many people I have always thought that the iMac G4 was one of the most attractive computers out there. The computers aging processors based on PowerPC architecture make them difficult to upgrade without re[placing. Because the monitor connects to its controller through a proprietary connector its difficult to use with upgraded equipment. My solution was to put a shelf on the back for the connectors. I then upgraded it with a surface acoustic wave touch screen, its high resolution does not distort the image at all.

For the base, I initially wanted to make it a Core 2 Duo all in one. Unfortunately, there is a lot less space in there than you think. Its very impressive how Apple constructed it. because it was convection cooled, the parts literally stacked on top of each other. They fit together like a puzzle. The disk drive alone probably takes up 70% of the volume in the base. Many people have thought about putting a mac mini in the base, even that won't fit without heavy modification. A mini itx board won't fit either. A nano or a pico board with an atom processor may work, but that is not really an upgrade from the G4 processor. So, I decided to keep the computer separate. I instead put a blu-ray drive in its base to make it an external blu-ray drive.

I added the original speakers connected to a Griffin Power Wave Adapter and now I finally have an updated iMac G4 on my desk. It's connected to a dual booting Windows 7 / Mac OSX Dual Core machine.

You Tube Video

Story on Hacked Gadgets

Wall-E Mod

Obviously not an iMac, but one of my first projects and in some ways another Steve Jobs creation.

This is a plexiglass custom case built to look like Wall-e. He features Intel's Atom 330 processor on a mini- ITX board. He has bluetooth, wireless-N, a 250GB hard drive, web cam in his left eye, 7 inch touch screen, logitech usb speakers as his arms, an itech laser keyboard, and a bluetooth microphone for use with speech recognition.

Story on gizmodo

You Tube Videos:
Intro
Touchscreen
Webcam
Voice Recognition