Okay I lied. I do have something going.

I can't just put my mind on pause while working on fixing my body. I have to learn something new and do something cool. So what am I doing?

I'm turning a gutted iMac G4 into a setup reminiscent of an old IBM Aptiva 2159 system. For those who are unfamiliar with such old technology, the Aptiva 2159 was unique in that it had an external console inside which the floppy disk drive and optical drive were installed. This box sat underneath the display and was on a long cable to the tower. You could have the tower stored out of sight, much more quiet because of it, and still use your drives.

I'm sure some Apple purists out there are going to be pissed, but there will be little to bitch about since the same method can be applied to shoehorning a Mac Mini inside the iMac G4. At least that's the case when the panels use TMDS as opposed to LVDS. I don't know if all iMacs are TMDS.

My iMac G4 is a 20" model with a bad logic board. Bad because the G4 CPU die has a chipped corner, but it would seem I was hasty taking it out as it has the signs of a PMU crash. Regardless, I want to put it to use and I have no use for a Mac outside of my Powerbook G4.

The display is why I want to use it. It's a S-IPS panel from IDTech and it looks awesome. I have a 20" LCD at home, but 20" in widescreen is actually a lot more useful to me than 20" in 4:3 aspect despite being less real-estate.

20.1" widescreen: 17.06" wide by 10.67" high - area: 182.03" sq
20.1" Standard 4:3: 16.08" wide by 12.06" high - area: 192"sq

The slightly larger pixels are helpful, too. But there's a lot more to it than that.

The best feature of the iMac G4, to me, is the fact that the display is on its own swing-arm. Unlike the 20" panel I have at home, which is fixed to the stand, I can easily bring it closer without interfering with my desk arrangement and I can move it out of the way when I'm not using it without picking the whole thing up and having to worry about cable flex and cable slack requirements.

With the drive cage inside the system, adding USB peripherals will be dead simple. I can have a USB optical drive and a fairly large hard disk mounted and well-cooled in the case. I need to have something in there since the bottom isn't heavy enough without it. Also, while the optical drive will need an eject button and it's hard to add one without screwing up the look of the system, there sure isn't much holding that Apple logo on the front of the system above the drive slot.

As I said, the panel in my G4 uses TMDS signalling. The TI TFP403 TMDS receiver inside the panel module is DVI-compliant to the 1.0 standard. I just need to hook it up and make sure I'm sending it the right signals to run the panel. For extra credit, I can run wires from the panel's EDID pins to give the panel plug and play capability.

But I still need a backlight and that's where it gets a bit difficult.

I don't have a datasheet for the brain of the inverter and there are three pins that haven't been completely identified. While I could buy a generic inverter and use that, I'd much rather use the stock one so that's what I'm going for. I just need to figure out what those remaining pins are for and what signals belong on them. I have the tools to do it, including an X-ray machine.

The iMac G4 will become a fixed-resolution DVI monitor with drives and who knows what else inside. The heart of the system will sit out of sight and will be many times more powerful than the iMac ever was.

This weekend, I start the sniffing of traces.