Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Cable management

1042686

1042686

Cancelled
Original poster
Sep 3, 2016
1,575
2,326
I Didn't find a CM thread so I thought I'd start one. I admit this isn't PPC but I'm actually in the middle of my PPC set up, however I did finish my gaming PC which was a hot rats nest and was bugging the heck outta me
A96E5B51-BE52-4EC6-85A0-3DE1784144A7.jpg

Anyhow, with about 8 bucks of protective wire wrap from Harbor freight and a lot of sore finger tip action & all is once again contained. Pretty happy with how it turned out. The cablegroupings are something I can take apart & reuse so I won't have to do this again. Unfortunately, thePPC set up is not turning out to be as straight forward with a screen kvm box etc. Still, it'll get done too eventually. Any of you guys have your cables under wraps? :D
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, AmazingHenry, circatee and 1 other person
I have a couple where various cables split out at different spots, so those are zip tied to prevent them from moving. I got a grip of those black clips from my Dad years ago, so that's what I use to hold any loose cables, charger ends, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AmazingHenry and eyoungren
Yeah, I had a huge mess in the back and it pissed me off every time I looked at it lol, so I did something about it. I get a little OCD when it comes to cables I guess. For my efforts though, I got a dose of good Karma. I found a like-new condition LG external superdrive for $1.07 including tax at a Savers thrift store. These retail on Amazon for $99.00. It didn't have a cable, but I had one that worked like a charm, so that was cool. Managed to impress my wife with my thrifty score until she saw my dismantled 24" white imac on the guest bedroom bed. Oops. :p
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: AmazingHenry and circatee
Cables also drive me nuts … I try to hide most of them in boxes and beneath the desk, but my solution is far from perfect compared to yours.
I like to keep everything movable, so no fix installation yet - there's one white 24" iMac stationary on my desk. Plus USB-hub/cords etc in a tiny box and access to 3 additional different power cables for Clamshell, Ti/Power/iBook and MacBook2008.
For external drives there's my 'portable USB-drive-rack' for 4 USB-drives with only one power cord and one USB-cord to connect to any computer anywhere in the house.

When working with Book and iMac use Teleport for my PPC to share the G4-Book's keyboard and mouse for steering the iMac. For the intel MacBook2008 I use Synergy instead.
Both Teleport and Synergy lets you drag&drop files from one screen/mac to the other.

The iMac is nice for listening to music and watch TV or read documents on the big screen.
When using the MacBook Airfoil Speakers make the iMac a perfect Airplay-speaker enhancing the higher pitched sound of the MacBook's speakers with additional speakers and a good bass.
It's also possible to stream iPhone audio to the iMac via Airfoil Speaker, so Apple Music is available on the iMac without authorizing the machine (I use it the same way at the office, where i run a similar iMac with Airfoil-speakers). There's another App from 'Rogue Amoeba" called LineIn, that allows playing any device via audio-cable, the iMacs LineIn-socket and the inbuilt speakers.

With Avatron AirDisplay the iMac may also serve as a second screen for the MacBook. Performance is a bit slow - nothing for video, but if I need another screen to view a document or a spreadsheet or even a dia-show it comes in really handy.

Teleport.JPG Cables.JPG
MobileVideoRack.JPG Boxes.JPG
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, 1042686 and AmazingHenry
My cables are still all over the place. When I first set up my PPC Macs I never really needed a way to organize my cables because I only had 2 Macs (Intel iMac and iBook G4). But now I'm up to 5, and I hope to have a G4 Cube soon, so it's definitely time to do something...:eek: I hope to get to it next weekend. Or better yet, get some Bluetooth keyboards and mice, upgrade Macs without Bluetooth, and have only one cord per Mac (Ok, it's actually 2 for the G5 because of the screen). But that's unlikely to happen. :D
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1042686
HFTaylor12 said:
My cables are still all over the place. When I first set up my PPC Macs I never really needed a way to organize my cables because I only had 2 Macs (Intel iMac and iBook G4). But now I'm up to 5, and I hope to have a G4 Cube soon, so it's definitely time to do something...:eek: I hope to get to it next weekend. Or better yet, get some Bluetooth keyboards and mice, upgrade Macs without Bluetooth, and have only one cord per Mac (Ok, it's actually 2 for the G5 because of the screen). But that's unlikely to happen. :D
Click to expand...
Ah, so you basicly started with the same setting like on my desk... :) That combination doesn't really have a lot of clutter with BT mouse and KB and this Teleport-option I startet to use recently.
I also have a Cube an I think it definitely needs a separate place just for it's own. I used to run it in my office as a Terminal-Client. It looks gorgeous. Only three silver cables connected to the cube: Power, ADP-display-cable and USB-sound out. Acrylic black/transparent KB and and Mouse attached to the display. Even the cables are part of the overall great aspect.
The idea of one cable for display, power and USB is both great and limiting and when it comes to attach an APB-display to a display-mini-port it will end with a lot of clutter to be hidden and well organized behind the stage, like RyanB showed in his pictures. My solution for that would be a sturdy shoe-box with holes cut out for cables etc. and all the stuff would be crammed into that box as much as possible and in addition everything is also hidden from dust and stays movable.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1042686 and AmazingHenry
I actually really like the idea of a "cable box" to hide stuff. For a while I used milk crates (with a rug over the top to hide stuff) that housed all of my external drives, power supplies etc. but it got really dusty after a while and was impossible to keep clean, so I tore that down a few months back and lazed around until I came up with what I have above. I like it's accessibility. I can easily attach/detach any plugs/cables I need.

I also like the basket you have under your desk. That's a cool feature I don't see on many desks. My desks unfortunately do not have space for one but I saw somewhere on the interwebs where a guy had a long Ikea desk with an open back where he very cleanly attached literally everything on the back underside of his desk from cables, to hubs, to externals, power supplies - modem even. It was a really clean and seamless look and was invisible from the adult-eye level.

I have been trying to figure out how I could use BT to connect my magic mouse and a BT keyboard to both my G5 and G4 powermacs. I have a BT4 dongle that works great on my G4 but it does weird stuff to the G5 so I haven't bought a 2nd. I really dont want to have to buy the apple BT/antenna kit for the G5 but I'm thinking it is the only solid solution for the above scenario - just sucks that they are 30+ bucks where the BT4.0 dongle was like 5 bucks shipped.

If I can find a reasonable 7300GT GPU and get my white 2006 24" imac running, I'd love to try out that Synergy app between the Imac & my 2008 unibody macbook. Actually, I miss the 24 white imac. I really enjoyed it for the 9 years I had it before the GPU died on it and with its built in BT, the only cables I had were the power cable & any peripherals ie: ext hdds, USB/FW audio interfaces etc. It did make for a pretty clean work space.

Bobesch, what's that white plugged box with all the green LEDs down the middle?
 
Last edited:
Milk crates - that another good idea. Well, my portable USB-drive rack also collects dust like hell, but it's the best solution I've found yet and I like to keep all drives in one place with only one USB-cable to plug in (there's a 4-port USB-hub and all cables hidden below the power-sockets.)
That wooden rack and the basket below the desk are also from ikea but I guess they just copied the idea and those items can be found anywhere else.
My desk is just a 1.8m long 0.6m deep wooden kitchen worktop with movable containers beneath. One side of the desk is laid up a board in my bookshelf and gives me easy access to stuff sitting in the shelve, like my old PPC-Books :)
One option to avoid clutter on the desk is a wireless keyboard with embedded touchpad, like the 'Logitech Wireless Touch K400', but typing is not as convenient as the PBG4 keyboard/touchpad, that I use to control the the iMac with the help of Teleport.
It's definitely worse to try to get your white intel iMac running again. Very nice machine and a good sound. With LineIn one could also attach a Cube with USB-Soundcard to the iMac: that's maybe a nice configuration: white iMac/Cube/acrylic-Cinema-display in a row.
The white plugged box with the green LED is Dr.Bott 7-port USB-Hub. It's used for a Robotics Modem, an eyeTV two channel DVBT decoder (which will be outdated soon, since DVBT-standards will change), Elgato Turbo.264 hardware for converting video and two y-cables for external drives or whatever) - all together crammed into that little brown box.
Book-shelve.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1 and 1042686
management.
I head down to Walmart and pick up these. They're much easier to remove that rubber bands
I also use them for wrapping up the tie down straps for the truck, rope, light weight extension cords, closing up Latrell bags.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0015.JPG
    IMG_0015.JPG
    661.2 KB · Views: 110
  • Like
Reactions: 1042686
Well, it's time to reorganize my cables. My PPC room also needs a but cleaning up, I'd better do that too. Basically, I'll be redoing my whole setup. And while I'm at it, I think my G5 needs Leopard reinstalled, all of the modifications I've been doing are making it pretty buggy. Possibly my iBook G4, too. And I'd like OS 9 on my iMac G4. It's going to be a long day...
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1042686
Have fun. When it's all done it will look good and you will feel great.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: AmazingHenry
Here is the right side of my desk. I kinda mimicked the Ikea desk CM I saw online but have a bit more play and some loose USB extensions for any mobile or temporary peripherals. I connected floppy & Zip disk peripherals I use with my PMG4QS as well (wanted to get them out of my desk drawers). It was difficult to photograph this side as the desk is 100% metal(very very stupid heavy lol) and the space is up against a large Peavey 4x12 speaker cabinet but I was able to squeeze a decent shot. Still, - I'm pretty happy with the layout. Everything is within a hands reach but is also tied back to where you don't see it from the room entrance.
FullSizeRender.jpg


Holy shazbot, I just noticed my dust bunny collection back in that corner. Vacuum time lol :D
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1, AmazingHenry and circatee
RhianB said:
I have been trying to figure out how I could use BT to connect my magic mouse and a BT keyboard to both my G5 and G4 powermacs. I have a BT4 dongle that works great on my G4 but it does weird stuff to the G5 so I haven't bought a 2nd. I really dont want to have to buy the apple BT/antenna kit for the G5 but I'm thinking it is the only solid solution for the above scenario - just sucks that they are 30+ bucks where the BT4.0 dongle was like 5 bucks shipped.
Click to expand...
I'm quoting this part because my Quicksilver has Bluetooth 2.0.

Belkin makes two adapters that are seriously good. There is no setup and they appear as the normal BT icon in the menubar. I have a MagicMouse attached to my Quicksilver.

The link below is a post I made on this in another thread. It has two links to eBay auctions for the adapters (they are still valid links).

Depending on which one you want the most expensive is less than $15.

G5 Quad Usb Bluetooth recommendations?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back