Hey everyone,
So after about a year, I came back here to once again greet my fellow forum members and reach out to you all in order to get some advice on my recent iSight iMac G5 (20") project.
I ended up settling with an Intel 320 series SATA II SSD (160GB), which some of you kindly verified was the right product to get (thanks!). I received the drive and immediately went to disassemble the iMac.
It's a rather daunting task taking apart any iMac made after 2004, but I was excited to finally breathe life into the machine that I still use to this day, in spite of the fact that I took a bit of a break from messing with PowerPC Mac components. I had to do some irreversible things to this iMac in order to access the HDD (as required), but everything went smoothly and all surprisingly fit back together fine. I had to remove the front bezel and remove the entire LCD assembly - then I had access to the HDD bay. I also kinda had to take an air compressor to this Mac, since the entire inside was caked with finely-packed dust and lint.
I plopped the bare SSD into the HDD are and secured it with a these special velcro strips that are made for hanging pictures on the wall, and then - for good measure - put two strips of duct tape over it... better safe than sorry. I then put the iMac back together, and everything seemed fine. Luckily, my optical drive (albeit wonky) was able to boot the machine from the Leopard disk - and after about 3-5 nervous minutes. If it hadn't worked, I would have had to take apart the iMac again and format the disk, as a secondary Mac with TDM was not able to recognize the blank SSD.
I then had almost everything working perfectly. In spite of the fact that SSDs usually don't boost boot times for PowerPC Macs, I actually saw my boot times get cut in half or so. (iMac G5s boot incredibly slowly to begin with.) The problem I ran into, though, is that I had issues with my fans blasting when I would try and put the machine to sleep. I thought that it was maybe a fan control issue due to the HDD thermal sensor acting up, but I realized that doing a PMU (or was it SMC?) reset fixed it right up.
To perform such a reset on an iSight iMac G5 (or possibly on other models as well):
1. Shut down the Mac and unplug the cord from the machine itself.
2. Let it rest for about 30 seconds. In the meantime, you can try just pressing the power button a few times to drain anything excess.
3. After waiting about 30 seconds, press and hold the power button with one hand; then, while holding the power button down, plug the power cord back in with your other hand.
4. Let go of the power button (after the plug is securely in) and then press it once more to boot the iMac back up.
You should see instant results. After doing so, I could put the iMac to sleep just fine. Any fan issues I was having prior (such as blasting when trying to go to sleep or when going into Target Disk Mode) were gone.
Finally, I did updates and began to configure the system to my liking. (To keep things speedy for now, I decided not to transfer my user back over from the HDD.) So far, I can see that normal UI operation is a bit smoother and snappier. Sure, there's a bit of a bottleneck here (and it's also not a SATA III SSD), but it's an SSD and is therefore, by nature, reading data at a faster rate than my platter drive did. I can also see that .zip files and such are quicker to unpack, etc. Lastly, my temps have gone down slightly, and the machine is now quieter since it has no spinning disk. It also goes to sleep faster and doesn't need to pause to think while it's waking up. So far so good! This was my first experience putting an SSD into a PPC Mac, and I can say that it's well worth it IF you are regularly going to use the machine.
Anyway, that's it for the iMac G5. The only thing I'm looking to do is find out how to edit the fan kexts and bring the HDD fan under its usual 1400 RPM minimum, since that's overkill for an SSD. I'd be happy with 1000 or so - 1400 is a bit loud still. Thank you for your guys' help with this project of mine, and thanks for welcoming me back with open arms! Unfortunately, I cannot stay for good - I was merely visiting; but it was great to get a chance to talk to you all again. Maybe I'll come and visit again later on. I may respond to any posts on this thread of mine for the time being, but I will mark it as 'Resolved' to show that I have signed off.
-MDD
So after about a year, I came back here to once again greet my fellow forum members and reach out to you all in order to get some advice on my recent iSight iMac G5 (20") project.
I ended up settling with an Intel 320 series SATA II SSD (160GB), which some of you kindly verified was the right product to get (thanks!). I received the drive and immediately went to disassemble the iMac.
It's a rather daunting task taking apart any iMac made after 2004, but I was excited to finally breathe life into the machine that I still use to this day, in spite of the fact that I took a bit of a break from messing with PowerPC Mac components. I had to do some irreversible things to this iMac in order to access the HDD (as required), but everything went smoothly and all surprisingly fit back together fine. I had to remove the front bezel and remove the entire LCD assembly - then I had access to the HDD bay. I also kinda had to take an air compressor to this Mac, since the entire inside was caked with finely-packed dust and lint.
I plopped the bare SSD into the HDD are and secured it with a these special velcro strips that are made for hanging pictures on the wall, and then - for good measure - put two strips of duct tape over it... better safe than sorry. I then put the iMac back together, and everything seemed fine. Luckily, my optical drive (albeit wonky) was able to boot the machine from the Leopard disk - and after about 3-5 nervous minutes. If it hadn't worked, I would have had to take apart the iMac again and format the disk, as a secondary Mac with TDM was not able to recognize the blank SSD.
I then had almost everything working perfectly. In spite of the fact that SSDs usually don't boost boot times for PowerPC Macs, I actually saw my boot times get cut in half or so. (iMac G5s boot incredibly slowly to begin with.) The problem I ran into, though, is that I had issues with my fans blasting when I would try and put the machine to sleep. I thought that it was maybe a fan control issue due to the HDD thermal sensor acting up, but I realized that doing a PMU (or was it SMC?) reset fixed it right up.
To perform such a reset on an iSight iMac G5 (or possibly on other models as well):
1. Shut down the Mac and unplug the cord from the machine itself.
2. Let it rest for about 30 seconds. In the meantime, you can try just pressing the power button a few times to drain anything excess.
3. After waiting about 30 seconds, press and hold the power button with one hand; then, while holding the power button down, plug the power cord back in with your other hand.
4. Let go of the power button (after the plug is securely in) and then press it once more to boot the iMac back up.
You should see instant results. After doing so, I could put the iMac to sleep just fine. Any fan issues I was having prior (such as blasting when trying to go to sleep or when going into Target Disk Mode) were gone.
Finally, I did updates and began to configure the system to my liking. (To keep things speedy for now, I decided not to transfer my user back over from the HDD.) So far, I can see that normal UI operation is a bit smoother and snappier. Sure, there's a bit of a bottleneck here (and it's also not a SATA III SSD), but it's an SSD and is therefore, by nature, reading data at a faster rate than my platter drive did. I can also see that .zip files and such are quicker to unpack, etc. Lastly, my temps have gone down slightly, and the machine is now quieter since it has no spinning disk. It also goes to sleep faster and doesn't need to pause to think while it's waking up. So far so good! This was my first experience putting an SSD into a PPC Mac, and I can say that it's well worth it IF you are regularly going to use the machine.
Anyway, that's it for the iMac G5. The only thing I'm looking to do is find out how to edit the fan kexts and bring the HDD fan under its usual 1400 RPM minimum, since that's overkill for an SSD. I'd be happy with 1000 or so - 1400 is a bit loud still. Thank you for your guys' help with this project of mine, and thanks for welcoming me back with open arms! Unfortunately, I cannot stay for good - I was merely visiting; but it was great to get a chance to talk to you all again. Maybe I'll come and visit again later on. I may respond to any posts on this thread of mine for the time being, but I will mark it as 'Resolved' to show that I have signed off.
-MDD
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