Here we go again.... after my project Evergreen, I realized that the case was just too large, so I decided to try a dual mainboard system in a mid-size case. Thus, the idea for project Blue Dreamer was born.
This crams two mainboards, both upgraded to g4 processors, into one case. Wait a minute... G4 processors? Yes, this uses one Apple mainboard and a Apple clone mainboard, and both run Mac OS X (and can run 9 or earlier).
Now these are not small mainboards. In fact, one of them is 12 inches by 13 inches, yes kiddies, that is an Extended-ATX mainboard, and it has six, yes six PCI slots. So where does one find a case that fits one of those? Well, some large server cases will work, however I did not want a large case. So I took a standard case and took out one of the hard drive supports to allow the mainboard to fit along side of the hard drives. Yes, things are tight.
So how did I fit two mainboards in? Well, with the other mainboard flipped over, its PCI slots are above the first mainboard's non-PCI slot area, creating a very tight sandwich. So where the fans should go above the I.O panel, there is the PCI slots for the other mainboard.
What about heat, you ask? Well that is a challenge. Because there is just about no room for fans, lower-speed G4 processors were used, both running at just under one gigahertz. One of them has a very high-speed fan on top of it that actually blows air over the second processor's heat-sink. And on top, there is a blower forcing the hot air upward and out of the case. So aside from the two power supply fans, there is only one 80mm CPU fan and one 80mm blower, and that is it!
How did I mount the other mainboard? Well, I removed the Plexiglas window and drilled holes in it, then mounted spacers. So the one of the mainboards is on the window itself, providing a nice view of the bottom of it.
What else is there to do? Actually, lots. The second mainboard is going to be powered by a mini power supply running off the first power supply, which is 650 watts. Also, while one side has one gigabyte of RAM already, the other side needs to be upgraded to that. Also, the old ATi 3D Pro video card has to go, and it will be replaced by a 9200. And maybe a third hard drive will be installed.
Okay, what about pictures? Well, here you go....
![June19-01.jpg]()
![June19-02.jpg]()
![June19-03.jpg]()
Want some tech specs so far? Well, here they are....
Xlr8 Processor Upgrade Daughter Card (times two, one for each mainboard)
PowerPC 7410 (G4) Nitro, including the AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processor, in a ZIF socket. Hardware-selected bus ratios for different speed processors. Processor speed of just under one GHz, backside speed of half that. 64 kb level one cache, one megabyte backside level 2 cache, 64-bit data path.
Power Computing Power Tower Pro Tsunami Mainboard
Processor in daughter card for upgradeability, 50 MHz mainboard/lookaside bus, with a 64-bit data path. Four-megabit bootstrap/firmware ROM size. Eight 168-pin FPM DIMM 5 volt memory shots supporting 70ns ram modules for one-gigabyte total ram, one gigabyte installed. Uses the HammerHead IC memory controller, which enables memory interleaving. Six PCI expansion slots for superior expandability. Dual on-board SCSI-II channels, one at 10 Mbps, the other at 5 Mbps, both 50-pin, plus an external 25-pin SCSI port on channel 2. Includes two serial ports with RS-422 GeoPort mini Din-8 connectors, and onboard 10-Base-T RJ-45 and AAUI Ethernet for networking. 20-pin auto-eject floppy drive connector onboard.
Apple PowerMac B&W Yosemite Mainboard
Processor in daughter card for upgradeability, 100 MHz mainboard/lookaside bus speed with a 64-bit data path. Uses Grackle MPC 106 memory controller and PCI bus interface and Paddington I/O device controller and interrupt handler. One-megabit bootstrap/firmware NewWorld design ROM plus 3mb toolbox instructions loated into RAM. Four SDRAM memory slots supporting 168-pin 8ns 100MHz 3.3 volt PC100 ram modules for a total of one gigabyte of ram. Three 64-bit PCI slots and one 32-bit 66 MHz PCI video slot. Dual IDE channels, one Ultra ATA-33. Onboard 100-Base-T RJ-45 Ethernet port. Bootable USB with two separate USB 12 Mbps controllers to better balance the throughput requirements of the individual USB devices on the bus. FireWire board expansion module with two FW400 ports, modem card port built-in.
PCI Cards Installed
Tempo Trio adaptor combo card. Dual ATA-133 channels, with two drives per channel (support for drives over 137 gb), dual USB 2.0 ports, and dual FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394) ports.
Adaptec PowerDomain 3940UW fast and wide UltraSCSI controller. Dual 16-bit channels allowing for 15 devices per channel. Internal and external 68-pin connectors for both channels. Maximum of 30 devices. Up to 40 mb per second synchronous rate, and up to 133 mb per second burst rate. Bus master DMA interface protocol.
OrangePC 660 Windows compatibility card. 12 full-length card. Supports Socket 7 processors including: AMD K6-II and K6-III running up to 450 MHz, Intel MMX up to 233 MHz and Cyrix 6x86. 100 MHz accelerated board and bus speed. Two 3.3 volt PC100 168-pin SDRAM slots, up to 128mb modules for a total of 256mb RAM possible. 512kb 5ns synchronous pipelined burst level 2 cache greatly enhances processing speed. High Performance nVidia RIVA 128 2D/3D graphics video accelerator including 4mb SDRAM with a 128-bit, 100 MHz memory interface, maximum resolution 32-bit color up to 1152 x 864 DirectX 3D video support, maximum resolution 16-bit color up to 1600 x1200 DirectX 3D video support
Sound Blaster Live! 32-bit audio card. EMU10K1 DSP Supports EAX and OpenAL, reverb capability, latency of 23ms. Midi input and output.
ATi Radeon 9200 PCI video card. 250 MHz core engine speed.128 mb DDR memory, 128 bit memory interface, 200 MHz memory speed. True-color 32-bit 2D or 3D graphics up to 2048 x 1536, 4-pixel pipeline architecture. Hardware accelerated vertex and pixel shaders. hardware accelerated Transform and Lighting, and 62.5 million triangles per second transform rate. VGA 15-pin, DVD-I, and S-Video (NTSC & PAL) outputs.
Orange Grappler Plus PCI card. Single-channel SCSI-II, 50-pin internal, 25-pin external, 10 Mbps transfer speed, supports seven devices, allows for bootable SCSI drives. Two serial ports with RS-422 GeoPort mini Din-8 connectors.
Yamaha CDRW4416S-NB Compact Disk burner. Writes at quad speed, rewrites (overwrite) at quad speed, and reads at 16x speed, SCSI-II 50-pin interface, 2mb buffer size, 11 watts power consumption.
Seagate Scorpion STD224000N DAT Tape Drive. Up to 24GB capacity per tape with hardware data compression, 12 gb native capacity. DDS-3 format. SCSI-2 interface. Fast transfer rate (up to 132-MB/min.) backup speed. 2mb buffer memory size. 10 watts power consumption.
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1200JB harddrive. 120.0 GB storage space, 7,200 RPM, 8mb buffer, ATA-100 interface. 8.9ms average seek time.
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP harddrive. 123.50 GB storage space, 7,200 RPM, 2mb data buffer, ATA-100 interface, 6.2 watts at idle. 8.5ms average seek time.
This crams two mainboards, both upgraded to g4 processors, into one case. Wait a minute... G4 processors? Yes, this uses one Apple mainboard and a Apple clone mainboard, and both run Mac OS X (and can run 9 or earlier).
Now these are not small mainboards. In fact, one of them is 12 inches by 13 inches, yes kiddies, that is an Extended-ATX mainboard, and it has six, yes six PCI slots. So where does one find a case that fits one of those? Well, some large server cases will work, however I did not want a large case. So I took a standard case and took out one of the hard drive supports to allow the mainboard to fit along side of the hard drives. Yes, things are tight.
So how did I fit two mainboards in? Well, with the other mainboard flipped over, its PCI slots are above the first mainboard's non-PCI slot area, creating a very tight sandwich. So where the fans should go above the I.O panel, there is the PCI slots for the other mainboard.
What about heat, you ask? Well that is a challenge. Because there is just about no room for fans, lower-speed G4 processors were used, both running at just under one gigahertz. One of them has a very high-speed fan on top of it that actually blows air over the second processor's heat-sink. And on top, there is a blower forcing the hot air upward and out of the case. So aside from the two power supply fans, there is only one 80mm CPU fan and one 80mm blower, and that is it!
How did I mount the other mainboard? Well, I removed the Plexiglas window and drilled holes in it, then mounted spacers. So the one of the mainboards is on the window itself, providing a nice view of the bottom of it.
What else is there to do? Actually, lots. The second mainboard is going to be powered by a mini power supply running off the first power supply, which is 650 watts. Also, while one side has one gigabyte of RAM already, the other side needs to be upgraded to that. Also, the old ATi 3D Pro video card has to go, and it will be replaced by a 9200. And maybe a third hard drive will be installed.
Okay, what about pictures? Well, here you go....
Want some tech specs so far? Well, here they are....
Xlr8 Processor Upgrade Daughter Card (times two, one for each mainboard)
PowerPC 7410 (G4) Nitro, including the AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processor, in a ZIF socket. Hardware-selected bus ratios for different speed processors. Processor speed of just under one GHz, backside speed of half that. 64 kb level one cache, one megabyte backside level 2 cache, 64-bit data path.
Power Computing Power Tower Pro Tsunami Mainboard
Processor in daughter card for upgradeability, 50 MHz mainboard/lookaside bus, with a 64-bit data path. Four-megabit bootstrap/firmware ROM size. Eight 168-pin FPM DIMM 5 volt memory shots supporting 70ns ram modules for one-gigabyte total ram, one gigabyte installed. Uses the HammerHead IC memory controller, which enables memory interleaving. Six PCI expansion slots for superior expandability. Dual on-board SCSI-II channels, one at 10 Mbps, the other at 5 Mbps, both 50-pin, plus an external 25-pin SCSI port on channel 2. Includes two serial ports with RS-422 GeoPort mini Din-8 connectors, and onboard 10-Base-T RJ-45 and AAUI Ethernet for networking. 20-pin auto-eject floppy drive connector onboard.
Apple PowerMac B&W Yosemite Mainboard
Processor in daughter card for upgradeability, 100 MHz mainboard/lookaside bus speed with a 64-bit data path. Uses Grackle MPC 106 memory controller and PCI bus interface and Paddington I/O device controller and interrupt handler. One-megabit bootstrap/firmware NewWorld design ROM plus 3mb toolbox instructions loated into RAM. Four SDRAM memory slots supporting 168-pin 8ns 100MHz 3.3 volt PC100 ram modules for a total of one gigabyte of ram. Three 64-bit PCI slots and one 32-bit 66 MHz PCI video slot. Dual IDE channels, one Ultra ATA-33. Onboard 100-Base-T RJ-45 Ethernet port. Bootable USB with two separate USB 12 Mbps controllers to better balance the throughput requirements of the individual USB devices on the bus. FireWire board expansion module with two FW400 ports, modem card port built-in.
PCI Cards Installed
Tempo Trio adaptor combo card. Dual ATA-133 channels, with two drives per channel (support for drives over 137 gb), dual USB 2.0 ports, and dual FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394) ports.
Adaptec PowerDomain 3940UW fast and wide UltraSCSI controller. Dual 16-bit channels allowing for 15 devices per channel. Internal and external 68-pin connectors for both channels. Maximum of 30 devices. Up to 40 mb per second synchronous rate, and up to 133 mb per second burst rate. Bus master DMA interface protocol.
OrangePC 660 Windows compatibility card. 12 full-length card. Supports Socket 7 processors including: AMD K6-II and K6-III running up to 450 MHz, Intel MMX up to 233 MHz and Cyrix 6x86. 100 MHz accelerated board and bus speed. Two 3.3 volt PC100 168-pin SDRAM slots, up to 128mb modules for a total of 256mb RAM possible. 512kb 5ns synchronous pipelined burst level 2 cache greatly enhances processing speed. High Performance nVidia RIVA 128 2D/3D graphics video accelerator including 4mb SDRAM with a 128-bit, 100 MHz memory interface, maximum resolution 32-bit color up to 1152 x 864 DirectX 3D video support, maximum resolution 16-bit color up to 1600 x1200 DirectX 3D video support
Sound Blaster Live! 32-bit audio card. EMU10K1 DSP Supports EAX and OpenAL, reverb capability, latency of 23ms. Midi input and output.
ATi Radeon 9200 PCI video card. 250 MHz core engine speed.128 mb DDR memory, 128 bit memory interface, 200 MHz memory speed. True-color 32-bit 2D or 3D graphics up to 2048 x 1536, 4-pixel pipeline architecture. Hardware accelerated vertex and pixel shaders. hardware accelerated Transform and Lighting, and 62.5 million triangles per second transform rate. VGA 15-pin, DVD-I, and S-Video (NTSC & PAL) outputs.
Orange Grappler Plus PCI card. Single-channel SCSI-II, 50-pin internal, 25-pin external, 10 Mbps transfer speed, supports seven devices, allows for bootable SCSI drives. Two serial ports with RS-422 GeoPort mini Din-8 connectors.
Yamaha CDRW4416S-NB Compact Disk burner. Writes at quad speed, rewrites (overwrite) at quad speed, and reads at 16x speed, SCSI-II 50-pin interface, 2mb buffer size, 11 watts power consumption.
Seagate Scorpion STD224000N DAT Tape Drive. Up to 24GB capacity per tape with hardware data compression, 12 gb native capacity. DDS-3 format. SCSI-2 interface. Fast transfer rate (up to 132-MB/min.) backup speed. 2mb buffer memory size. 10 watts power consumption.
Western Digital Caviar SE WD1200JB harddrive. 120.0 GB storage space, 7,200 RPM, 8mb buffer, ATA-100 interface. 8.9ms average seek time.
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP harddrive. 123.50 GB storage space, 7,200 RPM, 2mb data buffer, ATA-100 interface, 6.2 watts at idle. 8.5ms average seek time.
