On May 11, 3:24 pm, Kris Tilford <ktilfo...@cox.net> wrote: > On May 11, 2011, at 10:54 AM, t...@io.com wrote: > > > 1) Does anyone know what the Wifi slot is? > > It's proprietary. The kit is expensive and rare. The part you need is > Apple part # M9870Z/A. It's 802.11g. I'd skip this and use a USB 2.0 > 802.11n adapter, any Broadcom USB adapter will work as "Airport" as > long as the correct VID & PID are in the info.plist of the Broadcom > plug kext of the IO80211Family.kext.
Thank you for the information on the kit. I don't need it for Wifi. My house is wired. But I do need it to have any chance of tracing a pinout for the slot into which it plugs. However, I don't need a *working* one in order to trace the connections. > > I'm half-heartedly looking for a way to get SCSI > > on the thing, so it can also run my household backup system as well. > > Don't think this is going to happen unless you've got some serious > hardware skills. I have the skills and know where to find the resources (can lay out the circuit boards, know where to get them fabbed), but it is probably not worth the time and money. Or, put another way, by the time I would get around to building anything, my current backup system will probably have been replaced, obviating the need for a SCSI solution. :-) If I had the connections traced in the Wifi/Bluetooth expansion slot, presumably I would find a set of PCI signals in there. Then I would identify the connector (brand/part#) that mates with the logic board connector and buy one of those. Then I'd get something like an Acard 6712TUM SCSI card which uses a QFP chip instead of a BGA chip because I can desolder and resolder a QFP chip, but not the BGA chips found on most other SCSI cards. There are only two major components on the 6712, plus a handful of things like an oscillator and power management. Trace out a netlist for the 6712TUM and then lay out a board that puts the 6712 components next to the connector used by the Mini with all the PCI connections hooked up properly. Desolder the components from the 6712, solder them to my board, and voila, SCSI in the G4 Mini. I'm not quite sure how to give the SCSI bus an exit from the case though. I wonder how many wires one could fit through the hole that the phone jack currently fills. > > 2) I opened it up last night. I thought that tiny hole on the lower > > right was a port for a manual eject pin to the optical drive, but it > > looks like there's an IR receiver behind it. Does the G4 Mini have > > an IR receiver? I researched this a while back and thought that only > > later Minis could use an IR remote. > > Isn't the the Power-On LED? Yes. Thank you. > > 4) Everything I've read says the maximum RAM is 1 GB. > > Anyone ever successfully install more RAM? > > This is a good question? The G4 Mini requires "low density" RAM. I > noticed that Kingston once made a 2GB non-ECC PC3200 DDR DIMM, but it > was really rare and expensive, and I doubt it would work? I believe > 1GB is the max for all practical purposes. I've since found that Micron makes a 64M X 4bit X 4bank memory chip. A DIMM made with sixteen of those chips should, in theory, work in the G4 mini and provide 2 GB of RAM. I haven't found anyone who sells such a DIMM though. And if available, it might be too expensive to be practical. 1GB is plenty for my purposes, it's just in my nature to want to max. things out. For those who care: Math behind 64M X 4bit X 4bank memory chips DIMMs are 64 bits wide, so 16 X 4bits = 64 bits. Therefore sixteen chips are required. Each chip has 64M X 4 X 4 = 1 Gbit of capacity. So sixteen chips => 16 X 1Gb = 16Gbits = 2Gbytes. The G4 mini has address lines A0 - A12 => thirteen address lines, which are used twice in an address cycle. So 26 address bits are provided. 2^26 = 64M addresses. So the address lines are capable of addressing the 64M addresses on the chips. The G4 mini has bank lines BA0 - BA1 => two address lines. 2^2 = 4 bank addresses. So four banks are supported by the G4 mini. Jeff Walther -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
