Cube

I've salvaged a PowerMac Cube from trash sometime ago. The acrylic case is scratched and marked, but the computer works. I've increased the memory and changed the hard drive. Still, it does a hissing that make me almost crazy. The previous owner have added a fan inside the case (the Cube was suppose to be totally quiet). The hissing came from the IDE drive. I've tried different hard drive w/o success and the one in it is suppose to be new.

I would like to put Darwin and GNU/OpenStep on it. Mac OS X Tiger is a little bit slow and I would like to re-create something like a NeXTcube. After all, the web was created on this computer. But the PowerMac G4 Cube looks nicer than the NeXTcube and it's more powerful (well, it was made ten years later). I think it could be still useful with a good (adapted) OS/GUI and some basic tools (web server [Apache], web browser [?], editor [vim]).

I first tried OpenBSD. The basic installation takes a few minutes and I've got all the source code + many ports. OpenBSD offer a port of GNU/OpenStep. But the X server keep crashing all the time with a core dump. Unfortunately, don't have time/patience to debug it right now. For now, Yellow Dog Linux works fine. But it use Enlightenment and RPMs, which is not what I want. Enlightenment is pretty good (especially when you look the source code) but RPMs sucks. Moreover, YDL is based on Red Hat and I don't have all the source code.

Anyway, will do a follow up on the Apple PowerMac G4 Cube later. For now, here a photo of the outside acryclic case after some cleaning :

From PowerMac Cube