And so I started my project. Armed with a can of “dust-off” I bounced into the case of the 9650. My plan was to strip everything but the logic board and the power supply. Once inside I realized that I had stripped most of the parts that needed to be pulled, 2 years ago. Kewl… Step One was easy.

Step Two - My first thought was to get a working OS Hard Drive into the mix, grab every available DIMM stick and fire it up. I had quite a collection of lose sticks (here and there and every stick from the 9600) and after cramming every one I had (did I say 12 RAM Slots!) I put a new initio Miles U2W Ultra2 SCSI PCI card into slot A1.

 
At this point my “soon to be beast” smiled at me, with “Waylon” an external Seagate drive (OS 9.1). After a few TechTool Pro Tests (A-OK) I shut the puppy down and bounced to step 3. With step 3 in mind, I ordered an ATI Radeon 7000 32MB - Video Card, as the default Twin Turbo 128 had no place in the mix. At this point I decided that my plans included a Phase 2 (G4 upgrade).

So, all of the RAM was pulled. I decided to use only the 128MB matched pair DIMMs that I had bought from MacGurus. Why? Well adding a G4 to the mix puts a strain on the RAM. Even with 5v EDO 64-bit, 4K refresh - 2K per side, 60ns DIMMs, there is a chance of failure. I found 5 pairs in my 3 9600s. So I pulled 8 (4 pairs - this would leave me with 4 extra slots) leaving 2 in RockHopper, and I found a great deal on matched pairs of 64MG DIMMS (eBay) to replace the 128MBs I raided from the 3 9600s. And I pulled the internal zip drive.

The 9650s logic board included 6 PCI slots, and the Macintosh G3 Beige (next generation) came with 3. You might conclude that 6 was more than enough, it is not. It would be nice to have 8. So I had to decide what 6 to use. I already had put a Miles U2W in slot A1 and as I there is not a budget for Phase 2, a Miles Bluenote took over A2 for an external CD burner. Phase 2 will include a firewire card and a firewire internal CD burner. The rest of the cards are documented on the Tech Specs page.

Soooo, I thought this would be a 2 page deal, but after a bit of thought, I have decided to include how I tweaked the Kansas plates to fit the Ultimate 5.25 Hard Drive Coolers to my Seagates and the blow-by thought. Drill/file Stuff. Plus a few extra Mods. To be continued.

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