Second Cube added to my collection.

[ctmpkmlec4]

A few days ago, I received a Cube that was essentially given to me along with some purchased items. The previous owner gave me the impression that this Cube was no longer operational simply because he was including the core with the acrylic case.

I decided I would disassemble the core to see if there were any salvageable parts. To my surprise, I found that it had a Panaflo case fan, a Powerlogix CPU upgrade (1.5 GHz), and a Superdrive. Seeing that the video card was a Geforce2 MX and realizing it wasn't Cube specific, I had a hunch that the card was bad and replaced it with a Rage 128 Pro. I reassembled the Cube, adding only a hard drive and RAM, plugged it in to power, and fired it up. Hey! It booted up, albeit to a flashing folder icon. So, I formatted the HDD and installed Tiger.

It ran fine for about a day, after which I installed three 512MB sticks of RAM. After 15 minutes of use, the infamous Kernel Panic message displayed itself on the screen. Thinking the RAM was bad, I reinstalled the original RAM and rebooted. It worked fine for about another 30 minutes when it kernel panicked again. After a bit of troubleshooting, I think the optical drive and the 512MB sticks of RAM were responsible (kinda strange?).

So now I have my second Cube, with upgrades, for one helluva price. Here is where I turn to you guys and gals for some advice. Firstly, would an optical drive cause a kernel panic? The one I removed appeared as a Matsushita (sp?) in System Profiler, but there is no Apple logo on the drive itself. Lastly, does anyone know if the Superdrives from a PowerBook or iMac are compatible with the Cube? I'm hoping one of you has a Cube that has been hacked and/or upgraded and can give some insight into compatible hardware and how to troubleshoot/prevent kernel panics.

 

[redhatcode29]

Congrats on ur find.... I found mine and still yet to have the time to meddle with it !

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

Congrats on ur find.... I found mine and still yet to have the time to meddle with it !

At first, I was intimidated at the thought of taking the core apart. I've found that it isn't too bad as long as you're patient. I'm trying to decide if I need to get rid of the stock 450 MHz Cube I have to gain some extra Christmas cash. It's always nice to have spare parts, though.

 

[Hrududu]

Kernal panics aren't going to come from a superdrive. First villain for a kernal panic is the OS. After that, look for bad RAM, HDD, or CPU. I'd make sure the fan is properly cooling that 1.5GHz CPU and double check the RAM. Since it started the panic after installing the RAM, I bet thats your problem right there.

 

[redhatcode29]

At first, I was intimidated at the thought of taking the core apart. I've found that it isn't too bad as long as you're patient. I'm trying to decide if I need to get rid of the stock 450 MHz Cube I have to gain some extra Christmas cash. It's always nice to have spare parts, though.

If i was living around in your part of the world...i'd give u the xtra cash for Christmas and take the cube...! For parts... But if u get a good deal...it would be worth, looking at the helluva price u got it for!

 

[Altemose]

Kernal panics aren't going to come from a superdrive. First villain for a kernal panic is the OS. After that, look for bad RAM, HDD, or CPU. I'd make sure the fan is properly cooling that 1.5GHz CPU and double check the RAM. Since it started the panic after installing the RAM, I bet thats your problem right there.

I have had kernel panics due to a bad optical drive. It normally goes wonky after the SuperDrive stops being recognized in System Profiler properly.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

If i was living around in your part of the world...i'd give u the xtra cash for Christmas and take the cube...! For parts... But if u get a good deal...it would be worth, looking at the helluva price u got it for!

The stock 450 MHz Cube is fully operational. I wouldn't want to cannibalize it. I have kept it a strictly OS 9 machine. The "new" Cube, however, is perfectly suited for OS X except for the stock video card. I ordered a Radeon 7500 card from eBay in hopes that I can swap the bracket and use it instead.

I always suspect the RAM first when troubleshooting a kernel panic. Not sure why, maybe I just think it's the most likely cause. I wasn't sure about the optical drive, but I noticed I could not eject a disc from OF, nor was it recognized in System Profiler after a period of time. I suspected a bad IDE ribbon cable or bad logic board, but a Apple DVD-ROM works just fine. I should note that after replacing the RAM with known good, the kernel panics still happened, just not a frequently. After replacing the optical drive with an Apple DVD-ROM (from G3 iMac), System Profiler recognizes the drive and the kernel panics seem to have disappeared.

Lastly, the fan runs fine, and I can feel sufficient air movement coming from the top of the Cube. There isn't a ton of force behind it, just enough to push hot air out of the top. Regarding temperature, the air isn't really hot. Wouldn't the Cube turn itself off if the operating temp got too high?

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Kernal panics aren't going to come from a superdrive. First villain for a kernal panic is the OS. After that, look for bad RAM, HDD, or CPU. I'd make sure the fan is properly cooling that 1.5GHz CPU and double check the RAM. Since it started the panic after installing the RAM, I bet thats your problem right there.

Thanks for the advice! I believe you were right, but I still suspect issues with the Superdrive. It's hard to say whether or not it played any part in the kernel panic; I was of the impression that anything hardware related could cause one.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

I installed a Radeon 7500 and a new optical drive into the Cube today. I connected all the peripherals and power supply, hit the power button, the light came on and went out, and then I smelled burning. The VRM fried. WTF? What are the odds that it took out other components? Does anyone have a spare they could sell?

 

[Intell]

You can replace those components on the VRM board. Those boards are designed to die without causing harm to the rest of the machine.

 

[Gav2k]

Love the cube. Wish I'd kept mine and done the mini mod to it. Oh well

 

[havokalien]

Vrm

The upgrade in it probably called for an aftermarket VRM and It was not installed.

Probably bought off the bay and stuffed in there I would guess.

Look for a vrm that was made to upgrade the cube.

 

[Intell]

Powerlogix only sold two 1.5Ghz model G4 CPUs for Cubes. Both of them have an included VRM bypass on the daughtercard that does not require an aftermarket VRM board. It is very, very unlikely that the previous owner put a non-Cube G4 in that machine. Even then, the models sold by Powerlogix that were above 1.3Ghz all had internal power circuitry that would bypass a Cube's VRM board.