akira9000 - Mac hacks, mods and news

Pepe Deluxé

admin9000 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:36:00 +0000

This little beauty found its way to my inbox today.

Sir Edward – Keep On Moving On

admin9000 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:33:32 +0000

Hands up who needs more of this in their life.
Sir Edward (Harold Vick) – The Power Of Feeling (1973)

Fraykers Revenge – Openings Street Shots

admin9000 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:58:23 +0000

Well look what was in my inbox this morning. For the inner PIYUMP in all of us. Fraykers Revenge – Openings Street Shots

Powermac G5 Hackintosh Case Mod

admin9000 — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:05:49 +0000

Another one from the archives – stumbled across these images from way back in January 2010. You can get the idea of how everything pieces together. Think I only kept the more pristine looking images after all the main cuts were done and I could tidy the shell up. Reading this is getting me in the mood for something new…. Intel i3 / Mac Classic case media server perhaps?…..

Hackintosh Hardware -

Dual 2Ghz PPC Powermac – DOA so gutted for the pristine case. Got lucky with this one for £30 on ebay
Retail OSX Snow Leo
Intel Core i5 750 cpu
Gigabyte P55M-UD2 ( p55 chipset – no headaches )
Corsair HX series modular PSU
4 x 2Gb Crucial i5 1333mhz DDR3
2 x Samsung 1Tb F3 Hdds
1 x Pioneer SATA DVD rewriter ( had it in the spares draw but up to date spec )
Palit 9500 GT Silent VGA/DVI/HDMI
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 rev2 PWM fan/heatsink
1 x LIAN LI aluminium HDD drive cage
1 x Coolermaster Wavemaster motherboard tray direct from Coolermaster NL ( many thanks to their superb customer service & warehouse team, they went digging through the warehouse to find me what was probably the last one in Europe and DHL’d next day. And a shout again to Aquamac for pointing me in the right direction ).

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So this was a pretty charmed mod. The finished machine had everything 100% operational, rock solid Snow Leopard install, original G5 front panel was wired in, sleep working just like a real Mac and it was very fast indeed. Hardware was pretty easy to chop up, maybe practice on a spare case first though and not attempt this as a first project. It would have killed me to wreck that pristine G5 case just through lack of experience.

G4 Powermac Quicksilver Hackintosh Case Mod

admin9000 — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:35:21 +0000

Had to dig this one out the hackintosh archives so apologies for the lack of detail. Way back in December 2009 I had a few bits lying around the studio and most importantly some free time – which is a rare thing. Decided to have a go at building some kind of Hack Pro variant. Adapted a dead G4 Quicksilver that will only take a mATX board so good for a first time mod and cheap too. All in all a great little project that will teach you a bit about Unix commands and a whole lot about how OS X works. Used a custom Boot-132 disc and then altered some kexts that the particular ASUS mobo needed.

Have lost the build jpegs but here are some of the finished piece. Inspired by the Aquamac blog.

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Lo Fidelity All Stars – Battleflag

admin9000 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:56:33 +0000

Stumbled across this track this morning and had forgotten just how good the 90s could be. Takes me right back. According to the Wiki the track must have been a dream ticket for the record label’s licensing company – featured in a season six episode of NBC’s prime-time ER ( which is in the bit where Lucy “exits” the show ), season three episode eleven of Showtime’s drama Queer as Folk US, as well as a season one episode of The WB’s Smallville and a season one episode of HBO’s The Sopranos. Also featured in the films Coyote Ugly, Mean Machine and Very Bad Things, and the trailers for Charlie’s Angels and Duke Nukem Forever. The song was also used on the 2000 WWF (now WWE) video tape Eve of Destruction. Additionally, it has been included on countless music compilations.

Powermac G5 Shelf removal

admin9000 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:04:03 +0000

Finally managed to get this uploaded. Probably the most asked hardware query for working an Apple Powermac G5 case into something PC friendly. If you’ve never stripped out a Mac it can be strange and unfamiliar territory. As beautiful as the hardware is, it is nearly all proprietary assembly inside and out. There are a few exceptions with the odd bit of cabling, connector or hard drive but they have never ever been designed to house standard PC parts. If you decide to mod a Powermac for perhaps a hackintosh project you will very soon be asking yourself -

…”How the hell do I get the upper shelf out to make the most of that space?”….

It’s really not that hard and the beauty is once the shelf is removed a standard ATX PSU can slot in there perfectly. This makes the whole system a little top heavy but you can counterbalance by fixing up some kind of drive cage near the base of your case. I found the weight of 2 x 3.5″ drives balanced out fine. The photos are from an old dead dual 2Ghz machine but the process works on all G5 cases.

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Dracula 1972 AD

admin9000 — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:07:30 +0000

Movie promo posters do not get much better – all the way back from 1972.

Site is live

admin9000 — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:08:04 +0000

At long last the Akira9000 website has had a complete overhaul. Please come back soon for Mac hacks, mods and other tech industry content. The bots are just putting some finishing touches to the site but shouldn’t take too long. In the meantime you can always follow akira9000 on Twitter – Perfect for coders, geeks, freakers and fanbois of all descriptions.