Thread
Cube for $20!
I posted on my local craigslist looking for old macs. While no freebies have come up yet, I have gotten quite a few odd emails. 1 wouldn't take a fair amount for 2 Core Duo Mac Minis for my entertainment room, one said they had an older Mac Mini, but in the second email said his house was broken into a while ago and it was stolen along with some other things and didn't realize it until now. Then I get an email from this lady saying she has 6 older Macs for sale and if I was interested to call and she sent a phone number. She sent me pictures of the computers which were 5 iMac G3 (1 Bondi with tray loading drive), 2 blue PowerMac G3's, and an old CRT Studio Display. I would have boughten the Bondi iMac, but I have no room at the time. So I went to call her back asking if there was anything else. She said she almost forgot about her Cube. When I asked her how much, she responded "$10". My immediate thought was "SCORE!". She said she had the speakers but nothing else for it, and I told her I would come and pick it up the next day. I went down to pick it up, and the Cube was still in a pile of junk in her extra room. I had to dig to get it. Coming out of the mess, I see a flat-screen Studio Display and told her that it would have been the period correct monitor, and she said I could have it for an extra $10. So I bought the Cube, original Studio Display, and broken speakers for $20. Not a bad deal. The Cube even has an AirPort Card in it, so if it doesn't work, I can transplant the card into my eMac.
The bad part is that there is rust looking spots on the top of the Cube on the metal inside the acrylic casing that she said was mold and that it was a common problem. I'm trying to take it apart, but haven't had any luck. No power supply, so I can't test it. Reeks of cigarette smoke. And the main Cube won't stay suspended in the enclosure anymore. I will take some pictures and post them later when I get a chance. For right now I'm just going to sit here drooling over it.
The bad part is that there is rust looking spots on the top of the Cube on the metal inside the acrylic casing that she said was mold and that it was a common problem. I'm trying to take it apart, but haven't had any luck. No power supply, so I can't test it. Reeks of cigarette smoke. And the main Cube won't stay suspended in the enclosure anymore. I will take some pictures and post them later when I get a chance. For right now I'm just going to sit here drooling over it.
Forgot to mention, she said her brother worked for Apple as a Senior Engineer for about 10 years and thats how she got the Cube.
UPDATE #1: Was able to remove the "mold" from the Cube's outer shell. Gave everything a good cleaning, but it still smells like smoke. The entire machine cleaned up very well! Minus the scratches on the acrylic, it looks amazing! Going to screw the top back together, and let it dry over night and hopefully get the smell of smoke out of the internals of the machine. Going to take some pictures now to post. BTW: spec tag from the factory reads: 450MHz/1MB Cache/64 MB SD RAM/20 GB HD/DVD ROM/Radeon CRD 10-100T/MDM/Airport Card/Mac OS/KYBD. From this I'm getting a 450 MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 1 MB L2 Cache, 64MB of SD RAM, 20 GB Internal HDD, Radeon Graphics card, AirPort Card, has Mac OS (doesn't say OS X), and original came with a Keyboard.
Nice nab! [
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UPDATE #2. Done for the night. Wish I would have gotten pictures of the Cube before I cleaned it, and the pile of stuff I had to move around to get to it, the Studio Display, and broken speakers. Yes, I have tested the speakers and they are officially dead. I'm sad about that. My MBP will recognize them and try to play music thru it, but nothing come out of the speakers.
More pictures will be posted later, but I need to find a quicker way to upload them to a photo sharing website. This photo I uploaded to TinyPic and it only lets me do 1 at a time and I have 9 pictures
More pictures will be posted later, but I need to find a quicker way to upload them to a photo sharing website. This photo I uploaded to TinyPic and it only lets me do 1 at a time and I have 9 pictures
Thanks! The woman had no idea what she had. If I had the space, I would have picked up a few iMacs. In the same room as the Cube I saw 2 G3s on the ground. One in Ruby and one in Indigo.
Ruby . My second favorite behind Sage.
Ok, here are the rest of the pictures (I decided to try Flickr):
Front of Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Front of the Machine
Top After Cleaning by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Top of the Machine After "Mold" clean up
PowerMac G4 Cube by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Machine Logos
Worst Scuffs on the Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Worst of the Scuffs
Front of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Front of the Display
Studio Display Logo by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Studio Display logo
Back of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Back of the display after cleaning
Display Plug by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Display Adapter
Broken Speakers by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Broken Speakers
Front of Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Front of the Machine
Top After Cleaning by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Top of the Machine After "Mold" clean up
PowerMac G4 Cube by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Machine Logos
Worst Scuffs on the Machine by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Worst of the Scuffs
Front of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Front of the Display
Studio Display Logo by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Studio Display logo
Back of the Display by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Back of the display after cleaning
Display Plug by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Display Adapter
Broken Speakers by 68k TheMacGuy, on Flickr
Broken Speakers
UPDATE #3: Just ordered a genuine PowerMac Cube power adapter and a standard desktop power supply power cable for about $45. Total investment so far: $65. I'm also going to have to buy an older AirPort base station (pre-Extreme) M5757 to get it up on Wi-Fi along with my eMac. Cords should be here any day. Will update when the cables come in.
I use car wax on the Cube plastics to get them looking great. Gets rid of the small scratches!
There were small Acrylic Polishing kits available at sign supply stores and acrylic fab shops back in the day. With the correct polishing compounds it should be possible to get rid of fairly bad scratches on the AcryliCubicle.
Pledge. Works on motorcycle ABS also.
I'll try the car wax and the Pludge ideas. I know have some somewhere in my house. Question is, are they still good? Guess we wil find out!
I believe those speakers only work on G4 powermacs so don't toss them yet. Wait until you have been able to test them with the cube or another powermac g4
Don't see why they wouldn't work with other computers. They are just USB Speakers that came with the G4 iMac/PowerMacs. The MBP recognizes them, and will push the audio thru the USB port, but no sound comes out of the speakers. Should I try them on my eMac? I know its the Cube or iMac G4, but its a G4 from about the same time period and has both 10.2.8 and 9.2.2 installed.
Don't toss the speakers!!!.
I believe that the somewhere in the early releases of 10.6 Cube speakers (probably the USB adapter) stop working. Either try them on a 10.5 system, or earlier, but definitely keep them until you can try them on the Cube.
If they don't work at all, may I ask for first salvage rights for the speakers and USB adapter for spare parts for my Cube.
I believe that the somewhere in the early releases of 10.6 Cube speakers (probably the USB adapter) stop working. Either try them on a 10.5 system, or earlier, but definitely keep them until you can try them on the Cube.
If they don't work at all, may I ask for first salvage rights for the speakers and USB adapter for spare parts for my Cube.
All right. Going to try it on my eMac running Jaguar (10.2. 8) . Hope it works!
HOLY! THEY WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!! And sounded pretty good too!! Question is, how can I replace the rubber on the outside of the speaker?
HOLY! THEY WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!! And sounded pretty good too!! Question is, how can I replace the rubber on the outside of the speaker?
Hurrah!
Did some looking. Looks like Cube USB speakers worked up to 10.6.3. With the 10.6.4 update and they are recognised, but don't do what speakers are supposed to do.
Did some looking. Looks like Cube USB speakers worked up to 10.6.3. With the 10.6.4 update and they are recognised, but don't do what speakers are supposed to do.
These are different than the other kind that plug in to Power Macs with a special jack, right? I thought it would be neat to use these things on a more modern computer (for instance, an Intel Mac Mini), but it requires either cutting out the junction box, splicing the resulting bunch of cables together, or buying a somewhat expensive adapter that has the special jack.
I don't want to do anything destructive, so the adapter would be the way to go, except I don't want to spend that much money on something I probably won't use very much (but who knows?)
Maybe I can keep an eye out for the USB variant. One caveat, however:
Could that be due to a missing/crippled driver? Perhaps finding the relevant driver file in 10.6.3 and transferring it to a 10.6.4+ install would allow the speakers to work as they should.
c
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Yes, speakers for the Cube have a USB amp/adapter as the Cube did not have any audio-out jack. The other type are the PowerMac speakers that use a micro jack, and are relatively cheap to pick up on eBay.
If you want to, have a look at http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/223749-g4-speakers-adapter.html#post1346059 if you want to convert from the micro jack to a standard 3.5mm
Yes, speakers for the Cube have a USB amp/adapter as the Cube did not have any audio-out jack. The other type are the PowerMac speakers that use a micro jack, and are relatively cheap to pick up on eBay.
If you want to, have a look at http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/223749-g4-speakers-adapter.html#post1346059 if you want to convert from the micro jack to a standard 3.5mm
Hmm. That looks interesting! I didn't realize it was quite that simple.
I have two pairs, the first I'd like to keep as is, because I am currently using them on a Power Mac with the relevant plug, so there's no need to mess with them. The other set's cord is way too short, so this would be an opportunity to lengthen it a bit.
Even more non-destructive would be to figure out some sort of adapter to which one can plug the speakers, and the other end is a standard 3.5mm plug, without any cutting done to the speaker's cord, keeping them completely stock.
I have a dead QuickSilver logic board, so maybe I can figure out how that jack works and use it to make this hypothetical adapter?
c
The pair with the short cable would've come from an iMac, and the longer cable from a PowerMac. The iMac version's short cable keeps the desktop uncluttered by "excess" cable, but makes it painful for use on a PowerMac.
Finding a commercially available extension cable is going to be difficult, as they weren't easy to find when Apple was selling the ProSpeaker. Best bet is to do a DIY hack to 3.5mm on a spare set of speakers. 2.5mm micro jack extensions are available, but they won't fit the Apple "designed" plug. Hackery is going to be involved somewhere, might as well just go the 3.5mm route.
I figured as much when I got them, although I speculated that the pair with the short cord came from a cube, but that uses special USB ones. Whatever...
I am definitely going to try making my own.
Right. I was going to take the 2.5mm jack from my dead QS board and use that to attach a longer cord with a 3.5mm plug at the other end, without doing any cutting of the speaker's cable, making it completely reversible.
c
p.s. I'm sorry if I've hijacked this thread.
I like the QS salvage for the socket, and some heat shrink and Sugru would finish it of nicely.
Exactly!
What is "Sugru"?
c
Ok, I'm still trying to find away to replace the the rubber around the speaker without having to remove the actual speakers. Main part of the power cord will be here on Wednesday and the 2nd should be here by the beginning for next week (1st being the plug from the computer and the 205W box, Part 2 being the part that looks like a standard desktop power cord that runs from the box to the wall). Guess I'm going to have use some donor parts from my old HP. I could find the original Apple cable, but when I saw an unboxing on YouTube, the cord looked almost like the cord that went the G3 iMac. Either which way, I will be happy (or mad) once I get to chance to test this bad boy. Updates to follow!
UPDATE #4: Mail came and the only part in it was the 2nd part of the power cord from the 205W box to the wall. Looks like standard desktop tower power cable. I re-read the auction details on the main part of the power cord and it sounds like it comes with the original Apple cord from the converter box to the wall. We will see. It should be here tomorrow. If not, there is something wrong at the post office.
Wait - did it say "power cord" or "power supply"? The "power cord" would be white with a clear plug. The "power supply" will be the big brick with cheese grater holes in it.
Power supply will be here tomorrow, the 3rd party power cord came today. But after reading the eBay auction for the power supply, it sounds like the original power cord maybe included too.