On my 6th Power Mac G5... this one is neat though!

[gavinstubbs09]

Yes, my sixth Power Mac G5. I like this one! My bosses grandson bought this G5 a few years back at an auction and he could never get it to turn on. We both like tech so I talked to him in the past and he brought up that he had a dead G5. Today I actually bought it from him for $20. My last G5 I traded for a 120GB
SSD and 8GB of DDR3 was my DC 2GHz G5 a few weeks back.

Anyway, I gutted a dual 2.3 for a hackintosh case but still have all the parts left over. This will soon be a 2.3 however keeping the original 2003 G5 covers on each processor. I have a project for me tonight!

So the cool thing. This was actually used by a company called Sainte Partners which actually has owned some TV stations from Sacramento, CA to a few other stations north from there. It has 2x SATA cards and a MOTU PCI-424 card which has 4xFW400 ports and what looks to be a serial port. So my best guess is that it was used for music and video editing for the TV stations. One odd thing is that on each SATA card the PCI cover is cut with tape wrapped around. My best guess is that they had external SATA drives but needed them to be plugged in through SATA on the G5.

Neat find. Tonight it is getting torn apart and made into a working 2.3!

 

[Altemose]

That is quite neat that you can run a SATA drive without needing a USB interface or installing in the internal bays!

 

[mikiotty]

You're so lucky to own TWO of those Firmtek SATA cards... I'd buy one from you if it wasn't that expensive to ship items to Italy from where you are...
Very nice find on the G5 why doesn't it turn on?

 

[LightBulbFun]

hate to rain on some ones parade here but being a 7,2 early G5 I doubt the Bus can/will up clock to 1.15GHz plus the original G5 used 970 CPUs the 2.3Ghz CPUs are Most likely 970FXs so theres that incompatibility... but feel free to try if you want maybe it will work. (those sata cards are nice heh they will work in a wide range of macs and even work in OS9 and in theory all the way back to system 7 but im not sure there)
(EDIT: my bad i see your compleatly gutting it and putting in a new everything LOL this is what happens when you make forum posts just after waking up LOL)

 

[Mnowell69]

It's a shame computers don't have a traceable history of owners, you never know who might have had your prized possession before you. (you might not want to know either )

 

[MagicBoy]

hate to rain on some ones parade here but being a 7,2 early G5 I doubt the Bus can/will up clock to 1.15GHz plus the original G5 used 970 CPUs the 2.3Ghz CPUs are Most likely 970FXs so theres that incompatibility... but feel free to try if you want maybe it will work. (those sata cards are nice heh they will work in a wide range of macs and even work in OS9 and in theory all the way back to system 7 but im not sure there)

Yeah, the 2.3DP was the later PowerMac7,3 with the die shrunk 970fx, the 2.0DP is a 7,2 with the original 970.

From what I can work out you can't easily upgrade CPUs between boards on the same generation, let alone drop in the later 970fx. CPU daughtercard speeds appear to be paired with the logic board.

 

[LightBulbFun]

interestingly when i was running ASD on my 2.0 G5 i was looking at the device info page and it said Max Bus speed 1250Mhz it makes me think i could fit 2.5Ghz CPUs if i wanted too heh

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Yeah, I gutted an Early 2005 2.3 to the case and had all the parts left over. I swapped the Logic Board as well

You're so lucky to own TWO of those Firmtek SATA cards... I'd buy one from you if it wasn't that expensive to ship items to Italy from where you are...
Very nice find on the G5 why doesn't it turn on?

The power supply was probaby dead. Could have been something else but I was swapping everything else in so I didn't care I've taken enough G5s apart I had this one all swapped within an hour. Turned on and booted! No issues and no need to run ASD for the Thermal Calibration!

 

[gavinstubbs09]

And here it is all running! The front headphone port doesn't work well so I'll need to fix it somehow!

 

[MacCubed]

Those front panel boards are really cheap, fixing headphone jacks are always annoying. I just got OS 9 on my Lombard with a download from @LightBulbFun really fun to use, typing from it now! The battery kickstarts in OS 9 for some reason, even on the installer

 

[Altemose]

And here it is all running! The front headphone port doesn't work well so I'll need to fix it somehow!

View attachment 577625 View attachment 577626

How hot does it run? Also, you do not seem to have good luck with headphone ports on G5s!

 

[mikiotty]

And here it is all running! The front headphone port doesn't work well so I'll need to fix it somehow!

View attachment 577625 View attachment 577626

Excellent setup my G5 died last year and I'm constantly looking on ebay for another one at a reasonable price...

 

[happyfrappy]

That is quite neat that you can run a SATA drive without needing a USB interface or installing in the internal bays!

You still need external power.
Plenty of people in the music/film industry did this before eSATA/Firewire, all you need is a multi-bay SFF/mATX PC case and rig the power supply connector with a paperclip to simulate a motherboard... front PC power switches are then usable with a proper ITX adapter or DIY wiring. Keep in mind having this type of setup requires locking SATA cables as HDD vibration/earthquake can loosen a normal plug-in cable.

I used to build rack mount stuff from surplus modified PC cases. In a typical bare tower case you can cram 8-10 HDDs so if the host PC has used two internal PATA/SATA ports, that'll leave 2-4 motherboard SATA ports open and using PCI/PCIe SATA cards can boost your maximum storage. Depending upon PC case modding(2U) you can cut a PC case halfway then use a steel/aluminum bending press and do a quick weld job to create mounting brackets similar to early prototype Backblaze/Facebook "DIY" servers... if a HDD fails, unplug it, slide it out of the rubber vibration mount and insert another drive.