Hacking A Video Card into a Molar Mac
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- Опубліковано 10 гру 2022
- Thanks PCBWay.com - The G3 All in One "Molar" Mac was never intended to have upgraded video. In fact, the video signals are split between two different connectors on a weird, proprietary "personality" card.
So, let's hack it up and upgrade the video anyway! And maybe even play Minecraft!
VIDEO LINKS:
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🍎 PowerPC Minecraft: macintoshgarden.org/games/min...
🍎 How to upgrade Molar Mac Video: www.ppcmla.com/downloads/PCI_...
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💾 For more vintage Apple stuff, please subscribe: ua-cam.com/users/ActionRetro?s...
💾 Support these retro computing shenanigans on Patreon! / actionretro
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Check out my Amazon page with links to my tools, adapters, soldering equipment, camera gear and more: www.amazon.com/shop/actionretro
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#PowerPC #Macintosh #Minecraft - Наука та технологія
This series of videos should be renamed “The Cursed Mac Chronicles”
Paint it black and blue and call it cursed Mac 2 lol
Mysterious Mac Mayhem
Hosted by Stewart Cheifet. Sorry, I couldn't resist! 🤣
@@JaredConnell 1.) What do you call a Macintosh with a black eye?
2.) What do you call a Macintosh with 2 black eyes?
1:39 Haha i saw that poor PowerMac G3 Tower on eBay a few months ago with the professional cut outs for the jazz and zip drives, i was amazed to see it got sold, it all makes perfect sense now
It really spoke to me 😂
Bringing 90s computers to the modern world. I love it!
Dragging 90's computers kicking and screaming into the modern world!
There are versions of the Radeon 9200 that have the VGA connected with a ribbon cable off a pin header on a smaller board, so you could keep all the cabling internal. Though "less jank" does not seem to be a design priority here...
That's what I was thinking, didn't some really old compaqs have an internal monitor port on their cards?
You sir are the monarch of Mac jankery.
You know, for $20 at DigiKey, you could get a HDB-15 jack, a 40-pin header, and a 10 pin header. Source a short VGA jumper, and have ... I dunno ... some random PCB manufacturing house (ahem...) crank out a board, and this could be a slot-in adapter card right next to the video and personality cards. I think DigiKey still has pre-fabbed PCI slot brackets with DB-9 style cutouts, too.
My computer labs at school in the late 90s early 2000s had like over 60+ of these things. Seeing one again brings back memories of dancing baby screensavers and toasters. I love all these Frankenstein mods! keep up the good work
I envy you. We had Gateway 2000's at mine :(
I remember the flying toasters!
Haha we had a bizarre mix of gateways, a few of these and the old classic black and white mac's at my school, also I SEEM to remember a commodore PET at my mothers old school but in hindsight it was probably a teacher's PET machine (my mom was an elementary school teacher but did NOT teach at the school where I attended to put this into perspective)
@@samuelcolvin4994which one did the students want to use the most?
Damn that thing looks so much nicer since you've cleaned it up.
i think you can disable the onboard video output by removing the components that give power to the internal gpu. in alot of devices just cutting off power wil make the hardware disappear from the device's bios too (which might work for macs too then)
Very good. I'm genuinely surprised Apple didn't deliberately screw with something to ensure an upgrade like this would be impossible. I can only assume they never considered it.
The silly thing about the Molar Mac is it didn't have to be so hideously disturbing. Indeed it could have been 'better' if Apple had taken a more low effort approach... Imagine an upscaled Mac SE case to fit the components - job done and much, much nicer.
80s and 90s Apple had a very different approach to upgradability and repairability than the past 20 years.
They still had more Woz than Jobs in their hardware design philosophy.
I’m imagining you mean a SE looking case because this thing cannot be shoehorned into a big SE case. The monitor was not an independent component on the SE it was integrated completely with rest of the computer. When apple did that again it became the iMac.
The Molar Mac took one look at all the mods and upgrades you wanted to do and said, "Are you f%^&ing kidding me? What kind of sadistic fiend have I ended up with?"
I’m really enjoying your Dr Frankenstein shenanigans on this Molar Mac. 20 years ago I was messing with mine and now I wish I still had it. (I still have the zif card processor though haha). Fun vid, sir.
1994 punk in drublic is one of NOFX best album \m/ rock on dude! great video!
If you do put in an M1 Mac Mini, you should go the extra mile of putting both computers in. Put a switch on the back that lets you change whether the M1 Mac or the G4 is being used!
I had the exact same thought haha
@@ActionRetro oh please do this, what a fun idea! I bet you'd run into some tangles with that 🤣
@@ActionRetro maybe squeeze an Raspberry Pi or similar with Android on it in there as well, just for the hell of it.
You do every upgrade I always dreamed about as a high schooler. I’m so glad someone else has this max out every Mac gene, love these videos!
That cable splice is some of the best shit on tech UA-cam
dude, i always look forward to your videos. Wish I had a Mac/Linux buddy like you around!
This channel is the very definition of "... for science".
Great video! I love watching you do mods and the H word on old computers and Macs.
This jank is so lovely well done.
Love the shirt. Computers and punk rock, these are a few of my favorite things ;)
Wow! Tons of respect to you, Sean!!!
Wow a fresh video! Lovely :D
Molar mac: I'm so going gonna end your sanatiy...
Great graphics upgrade Sean with that G4 upgrade that is A beast of Molar Mac
Neat job! Thanks for the show!
If you wanted to do it a bit cleaner. I'd open one of the IDE? ribbon connectors. You'll need bit of force to make new connection into the ribbon, a few light taps of a hammer does or some pinching tool. but that would allow you to shrink the length to something more manageable. And if you open the side away from the personality card. You could have the v and h sync cables go past or long. (making sure to cut them going to the personality card. So those two wire would exist the opposite end of the connector. Or you could pull them use personality side and have them not go to the connector. But I'd crimp the intact ribbon wire then take apart the connector and then split off the two wires and re-assemble. Since it will be hard to align everything for crimping with two missing wires.
There might be a way to move the PCI card with an extension or something and be completely stealth
1:28 aaaaah yourself!
(a big wave of molar macs suddenly appear)
I'm surprised that cable worked so well.
Classic Mac OS is so easy to emulate that I feel like doing case mods and motherboard swaps on these old Macs is something we all can get behind. I don't think an M1 swap is right, but an Intel swap running High Sierra would be perfect. You have plenty of power to emulate classic Mac OS and with High Sierra, you can still run 32 bit apps. I don't know if it's possible to do so, but maybe you can dual boot Leopard and High Sierra so you also can run PowerPC apps. Or try running Leopard in a virtual machine. And with Intel Macs, you can run any version of Linux and Windows too.
I *believe* you can disable PCI devices in OpenFirmware, but it might not remember it after a reboot.
I look forward to your insanity every week Sean. You are truly a crazy beautiful man. Now play some Escape Velocity danmit!
I have a blast watching you and Mac-84! And occasional videos from Luke Miami when he shows old Apple Tech like today with an Apple iPhone 3!
"The Hackiest Mod I've Ever Done" - in this channel that's definitely says a lot
insane retro mac lol
An M1 Mac Mini board with internal USB Zip and BlueRay tray-loading drives (I guess you could gut those from external USB units and stick them in there with room to spare), plus a card reader where the floppy drive is, would make for a perfect sleeper system… 😂
Add Basilisk II to the mix, and you can still boot Mac OS 9 on it, faster than ever 🙃
I love how action wiggles and jiggles around in the videos ❤
Nice shirt. I've owned 4 x G3s , 2 beige, 2 blue/white, and a few different G4s. Great for old TDM pro tools rigs
That square man on the table, he looks mighty angry.
Cool soldering of wires. Awesome.
nice t-shirt lol
nice to see my music interests and my computer interests colide with at least one channel lol
Craziest video yet.
Thank you for providing my weekly dose of Cursed Computing™
the most beautiful ac ever! :)
haha you are finally givng into the m1 suggestions.
You earned my sub.
I don’t have an old Mac to test things like this but from looking at it from the BSD side of things it would be possible to disable the onboard graphics by editing the rc.conf and/or the loader.conf files. Prob not super easy but def do-able
15:01 was both extremely infuriating and hilarious at the same time
Call me crazy but I genuinely, unironically like the molar's design. I don't think it's hideous at all - on the contrary, I think it's pretty nice-looking and actually holds up a lot better than similar all-in-ones from the time. Honestly I like how it looks more than the original iMac. By a lot.
But, yes, it does look like a giant tooth.
I’m only here for the googly eyes! 😂🤣
HELL YEAH MOLAR MAC! Love your videos man! Plus your graphic tee game is sharp af, I've loved seeing them in your videos lately!
Love the shirt!!!! 👍
Maybe you need the patched Merlin drivers on the OS9 side. The ones you need on the unsupported 1.25ghz eMac and his 9200 32mo AGP, I don't really know.
This sure gives a different meaning to the term “hackintosh!”
:)
"the dark ages of the Internet - 2006!" I had a website ten years before that and ran it for eight years. I suppose that makes me part of the Internet's ancient history.
I like how the fans are so dominant in the background on this episode
As always, sick shirt
Diggin the nofx shirt
This was a really dope video, thanks, you could have also used a GPU with an FPC VGA output to keep the whole thing internal, I wonder if the CRT can do 15Khz, if so would make it pretty nice for running 240p games. Maybe install a MiSter or RPi.
Love this❗❤
Lol professional soldering "this is janks AF"
Came for extreme jank. Was not disappointed.
Love the NOFX t-shirt my man
You can also solder your jank cable to the vga pins on the card to make it internal.
A fun project and well rigged!
PCBWAY IS THE WAY
What a monster beast! Do a 4400/200 next.
If you wanted to do this with less jank, you could run a PCB to stick in an expansion slot so that the only jank needed was a VGA extension cable. Stick two IDE connectors inside, run the relevant VGA connections to the "crt side" IDE connector, and you're done. If you wanted to be fancy, you could even add a switch and a second VGA port onto the back to control an analogue video switcher, that way you'd still have access to the internal video at the same time. All with no need to splice cables.
Too many Chris's. ;-) But seriously thanks for all the great videos!
Bravo!
Nice NOFX shirt sean
I would love to see leopard running on this thing
Great video, and congrats on getting it all working. Are we seeing Win 10 on this Mac via Microsoft RDP into a Win box? With MacOS Tiger one should be able to use an older version of the RDP app and remote login into a PC over ethernet.
I think it's just the internal display connected via this hacky VGA input into another machine. The Mac had to chime only to power on the monitor.
It's a CRT, you can adjust the yoke to at least center the screen. There's usually like 3 or 4 rubber wedges between the CRT and yoke which are likely glued in but easy enough to break loose and adjust.
Your mileage may vary on the color purity, but usually tweaking the yoke angle doesn't tend to interfere much with color purity.
But even if it does, the two rings closest to the connector end of the CRT neck adjust the color purity.
The rings forward of that adjust convergence.
Edited for corrections.
On a monitor I looked at recently the rubber wedges were used to adjust dynamic convergence.
@@eDoc2020 It's a bit of both the yoke and the rings really.
The position of the yoke forward and backwards, plus the 2 magnetic rings closest to the board mainly adjust color purity.
Adjusting the yoke up/down/left/right, and the rings further up the tube mainly adjust convergence. All other things being equal, assuming a decently centered input signal, you'd usually start by centering the raster roughly with the yoke, then dial in the convergence and purity with the rings.
That raytraced mac wallpaper on windows is *disgusting*. Well done.
I am relieved you didn't cut up the original internal cables!
I would love to see how you got Windows on that thing!
molar mac actually know what should be the default display that's impressive.
sean...
you gotta have some links to that desktop background man, every-time i catch your content...
i wants it...
A wise man once said "because it's science, that's why!"
Seems like pcbway could've assisted in making a breakout board for that extension haha. very cool in it's jankness tho
You use the other desktop by (the one to the right) using something like Anydesk to connect to the computer, and select the second Display. If you can get it on the Internet, that is. Another option is NoMachine as that is local networking, to connect to the display. Note, this will cause some lag, but it will give you access to the virtual desktop that you have.
I wonder if you could fit a more modern graphics card! Like a 1660super with a pci to pcie adapter
You missed the opportunity to integrate the sponsor! You could have designed a card with a VGA connector on the outside and the internal connections that match the personality card. Then you’d just need a short VGA jumper. :-D
ahahaha when he said "something ridiculous" i already knew he was gonna say minecraft xD hell yeah
What might be fun is to use the personality card for an external monitor, and play “A-10 attack” with it. This was a Mac only flight simulator from 1995 that for some reason had multiple monitor support 🤷♀️.
Also, about the phantom monitor. That might be a driver error. I have a g3 iBook snow that used to have that problem. (Also it was stuck at 640 by 480j It turns out that even though they only sold that type of iBook for about a year there were about twenty different models, and some of the later models used a different graphics chipset than the original which is what the internet archive restore disks were for. Apparently mine used the same chipset as an eMac, and once I used those restore cds I was able to get the laptop to stop that.
I think the software is working as intended. The display being internal, probably doesn't have any presence/identification signals, and if it does, he didn't mess with those signals at all, as he only intercepted the R, G, B, Hsync and Vsync signals, nothing else. So electrically, the machine still "thinks" that there is a display connected to the personality card and there is probably no easy way around it.
Some people hack modern MacBooks into the PC-in-keyboard form factor (so basically just remove the display) and that also causes a similar "phantom display" issue. It's much less of a problem, though, since both displays being on the same adapter means that there's basically no performance penalty to mirroring - but it can still be a mess when trying to access e.g. recovery options.
@@kFY514 That is also a possibility. I’m curious why one would try for the keyboard only form factor. Why pay for the built in monitor when you could just get a mini? Or is this a holdover from the intel days? The M1 mini, air, iMac and MacBook Pro are all literally the same computer. The ones with fewer graphics cores are just units with a manufacturing flaw that has the bad core disabled.
@@SciFlyGal I _think_ it's just hardcore minimalism - a Mini is still a box you need to put somewhere, while a screenless MacBook gives you the perfect minimal desk setup - the keyboard, the screen, and that's it. Some people are after that kind of aesthetic.
I don't quite understand that as well, but I'm a "why would you ever _want_ less functionality under _any_ circumstances" kind of guy, so I don't understand defending Apple's "no touchscreens on Macs" stance either, for example.
Could you use the personality card from the G3 desktop in it? since you are bypassing the internal; video anyway.
We live for the jank
I wonder if you could desolder the old video chip without any ill effects. thatll disable it for sure.
"beep beep mode" 🤣
Love the NOFX shirt, this isn’t the first I’ve seen in the channel IIRC. Sad they are retiring in 2024…
OMG awesome drunk in publi.....Punk in Drublic shirt !
Looking forward to the M1 Molar Mac, or the M1MM for short.
I remember my emac had geometry adjustments in osx
It alllll makes sense with the nofx shirt. F#$& the system, but applied to vintage computers 😂
All I want for Christmas is a g4 iMac with an M1 inside. That is my dream mod.
Me too
I had a mac molar manny moons ago what a heavy beast.. like 60 Lbs.. where did you find that wall paper ,that was from a mac II ad from apple..Matt
Did they ever make vga cards with a port on them for an internal monitor? I'm sure I've seen some EGA and CGA cards that had an internal monitor port on them but they were pretty old.
12:01 System Profiler in OS X sees the machine model as Gossamer! ❤
It's really fun to see a monitor VGA mod used for the machine/purpose it was built for, rather than hacking something else entirely in there. That's fun too, but this mod is wrong in all the right ways!
The guy who designed the shell of this thing was probably just back from dental surgery and still a bit under the effect of the sedation 😁