I have been floating ideas on possible mods for my All-In-One G3 (The Tooth/Molar). I was installing a USB 2.0 PCI upagrde on it last night when my friend "asked why don't you turn it into a pc?"

So I look at it. Ingeniously removable mobo tray with room for floppy, zip, cdrom, and hard drive & a built in monitor. It seems like a really good answer to my question.

Now I run into problem #1. The Monitor interfaces with a "personality card" using a 10 pin ISA cable (I could be way off base here) and receives power from there as well.

If I install a Mini ATX board and standard graphics card how can I get it to work with the stock monitor?

Any help would be appreciated...I will post pics tonight.

Post edited by: krusher117, at: 2004/11/22 21:53

Hmmm...it's been over a year since I used an AIO. I could have sworn it had a custom video card, so that maybe tricky. I bet if you rewire the cable and have it go into a VGA adapter for Mac displays, you could get it to work through the onboard VGA on a mini ATX board.

At the moment, I'm at work, so I'm unable to verify this.

yes the "personality card" handles the video and audio. Another one of Apples interesting ideas.

I think any mac thats a G3 or up is still a very valid machine and shouldn't have the guts ripped out of it to turn it into a pc. thats simply what I think but its not my puter.

well, I say, rip the guts out and put them in a new box for a carputer and use the case for something else. It is definitely the ugliest computer that "I" have ever seen. But that is just "my" opinion.

I dug out my G3 Tower logic board and looked at the card. You should not have too much trouble matching the which cable goes to what pin from what I can tell. In fact, before I typed anything else up, I did some searching and found some kind gent put together a site which may help you out with your mod.

http://www.shanecurd.com/qube2/aio.htm

dont gut it. this AIO mac can be upgraded to a g4 with a sonnettech card. upgrade the procsesor hardrive and ram instead. a usb 2.0 card would work.. but a fire wire/usb 2.0 card would be most cost effective.. sonttech offers this as well.

you are right, it can be upgraded and I have been considering that as well. To be honest, the Tooth mod is a two-part mod looking well into the future. The ToothPC would funtion as a desktop system for about 8 months before I remove it and implant it into my car as a car-puter. The drawer system on the tooth makes it very easy to itegrate it under the overhang in the trunk. I am also considering a custom acrylic case instead so maybe the tooth will be spares :dry: . I do love the tooth tho, but its primarily the exterior beauty/ugliness that appeals to me. MacOS 9 feels too outdated to use and a G4 upgrade is a bit costly for me.