Dremel Junkie: tutorial

Sorry about the delay but...

After completing my latest mod, I promised a guide. Due to personal reasons, I have not had a chance to work on this. As time goes by and it is less fresh in my mind, it becomes somewhat more difficult to compile. While all the information to do this mod is within this blog, it is not very well organized. The Monitor to DVI instructions are contained within the 20" Sandy Bridge Guide. While I talk about the native power source in this tutorial, I use a PICO power supply in this actual mod. The native PSU is really discussed in a different post. Likewise, wiring up the new NUC board is in a different post altogether.

I had initially constructed this site to be a "Tech Journal/Diary" where the most recent updates would be chronologically first and older entries could contain outdated or incorrect information. As I became more involved in the iMac G4 project, this site became more of a guide/tutorial site. While this isn't a bad thing, its just not exactly how it was designed to be.

As I've been putting together the tutorial for the 20" Ivy Bridge NUC Mod (in the form of audio over pictures), I've realized that this may be the opportunity for a "redesign". I would like to keep this site as my tech journal site. Even the failed mods and the process behind them is something I would like to "preserve". I have secured "imacmods.com" and I am hoping to eventually link between these two sites for a more cohesive and straight forward experience. Someone wanting to know how to connect the native PSU can click on it and either go to a written tutorial, video guide, or original dremel junkie post.

It is certainly not lost on me how confusing it is to google "iMac G4 Update" and think you've found the answer only to find several posts detailing somewhat related (but not the same mod). Also, from my end, I have step by step photographed, documented, and wired up two different 17" necks (one on video) and a 20", and am now going to repeat it again for the 20". This will allow me to have a "modular" approach where 'for instance' STEP B: Conversion to DVI remains the same regardless of which computer you use in the base.

I would greatly appreciate any advice from those more skilled than me at web site creation. I would like it to be simple and easy to follow, but am a novice at this. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

The 20" NUC Tutorial

I want to assure you that this will not interfere with the 20" NUC tutorial. The biggest hold up has been the fact that I am not 100% happy with the amount of pictures and detail that I captured. My goal was to complete the mod and I was not as thorough with photographing and documenting the steps along the way. Although I do not have a problem opening up my mod. There is no doubt that I will have to do a decent amount of disassembly to get the pictures I would like. If I am going to disassemble my mod, I would love to upgrade it in the process if possible. Luckily, it does appear upgrades are not far off courtesy of Intel and Gigabyte:

From Gigabyte - The Brix:

Courtesy of Computerbase.de

This NUC based system is smaller, lighter, has more I/O options and will have i5 and i7 options. While initially Ivy Bridge based, Haswell is likely not far behind.

And Intel:

Rend Lake will be i5 and USB 3.0 capable based of Ivy Bridge Architecture.

In retrospect the use of Thunderbolt was a waste on the initial NUC. Initially I thought it would be "future proofing", but its been months later and the only intriguing peripheral is Belkin's (finally being released) $300 Thunderbolt dock. Of course, its the USB 3.0 that makes this dock interesting.

Thus, this NUC should be far more versatile (at least I hope).

I am unsure of the variation in the "Horse Canyon" Core i5, it doesn't appear to use a Haswell Chip, though I can not be sure.

"Skull Canyon" is the Core i7 Variant, and the one for which I am most excited.

Of course, updates are always going to happen, and while these are only incremental upgrades, I have been looking for an opportunity to add USB 3.0 in particular (and get rid of the thunderbolt). As these seem like they are "around the corner", I am asking for patience in terms of the guide. Replacing the board is not difficult, but it would make more sense to only disassemble and reassemble this mod once.

So please stay tuned and hopefully the tutorial will be done shortly, with an even more powerful NUC serving as the computer.

EDID and HDCP

Some of you may have noticed an"incompatibility" with certain sources. Sometimes this is due to playing digital protected content "HDCP" or even using certain motherboards. For myself, the EPI-QS77 and I am told the Raspberry Pi as well, seem to cause incompatibility issues. In some cases, changing from DVI to HDMI and back can remedy the problem, other times, artifacts persist in the monitor. My guess is that some boards may have an incompatibility with the "EDID", the identifier of this LCD. While there is no direct way around this, there is an "indirect way".

The White Polycarbonite Family

As I have mentioned before, prior to figuring out direct wiring of the existing LCD, I had found a work around. This "work around" is used in the iMac G4 (pictured above) and although its just serving as a monitor (with a modded iMac G5), I have now been using it daily for over 2 years without any problems whatsoever. This work around keeps the native inverter and can keep the LCD or use an LCD from an aluminum Apple Cinema Display or iMac G5. The most important thing is that this uses the controller board from an apple cinema display. While this does involve opening and rewiring the neck, it does give the LCD a true EDID and HDCP compatibility. There are certain other advantages as well, but it is more technically challenging and will require some parts from a cinema display.

I mention this only to gauge interest. Are there people who have experienced this problem? Are people interested in this particular method?

Thank you all again for your patience and thank you for taking the time to read this.

What you see here can be applied to the other iMac G4's, just use the correct pinout. This is the first time I have ever done a mod in front of the camera and this was more difficult than I anticipated. This was done live in real time (for the most part). I sped through the portions that were simply repetition (such as stripping a wire or pushing out every last pin) and did cut very small portions (mostly because I felt I said or did something confusing). I do apologize for frequently pulling out of the shot, its hard to work on a small item with a camera in-between you and the project itself. I still believe this is useful to people who are better at visualizing than pinouts or snapshots. Also, you can get a sense for the time this takes. While soldering and stripping can take days, without the camera and explanation, I could have finished this in an hour.

There are a few highlights:

- To make the extra wires I used the iMac's own ground pins. This worked great and saves you having to buy an extra neck. This is certainly the way I would recommend proceeding at this point.

- Frustratingly, I have purchased a refurbished 17" 1ghz neck to use in this demonstration (as I did not have any more completely intact ones). It did have some variation in that in the black lcd cable, one of the four wires in the black cable, the Red Wire was replaced with a Gray/Off White wire. In addition all the the positive TMDS wires that emerge from the four wires that are usually Red, were also Gray/Off-White. I have seem a random color variation in refurbished necks before, however, it was frustrating that for my demo, this one had more variation than I have seen before. So just remember, for the black LCD cable Gray = Red. And also be aware that this variation does exist.

- The final part that involves connecting the Red Inverter Wire to the VEDID/Pin 14 is very important because of the way we have it setup. The inverter will not turn on appropriately unless this step is done.

- When making the extra cables from the 3 ground wires with pins in the iMac's Gray Cable, I add one extra wire (a black wire I took and stripped from the iMac's fan cable). The wire is not really necessary, you can hook the resistor directly to the other wires, but I feel that one extra wire not only makes it more secure, but also gives an extra area when we split again by adding the Red Invereter Cable. Remember this actually becomes a 3 - way split with 1 split going to the LCD via the iMac's own Red/Hot Pink wire, 1 split going to a resistor then back to the DVI via Pin 16, the hot plug detect, and the final split going to the Red inverter wire. So the extra wire allows us to kind of split once, then split again, as opposed to a direct 3 way split.

This has also been integrated into the blog, but here are all 9 parts together:

Part 1: Introduction and Parts List