Jan 06, 2021 Last Updated on Wed, 06 Jan 2021 Apple Power Mac G4 Cube The PMU (Power Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip that controls all power functions for this computer. The PMU is a computer within a computer. New and used spare parts, service spares and accessories for the Apple PowerMac G4 (Cube) M7886 M7642LL. This web site uses cookies to provide functionality and record analytics data used solely by The Bookyard Ltd.

This litte thingy goes with the beautifully designed but outdated PowerMac G4 Cube from Apple. Together with some additional components it will actively cool the graphics card. You'll also need. Take a test run and see what your Power Mac G4 can do. For more information about a specific feature, see Chapter 3, “Using Your Computer,” on page 35, and the online explanations in Mac Help (see page 34). Note: Pictures showing the latest software features may appear slightly different on your screen. The Cube boasted a 450MHz or 500Mhz G4 CPU, wich was faster than entry-level PowerMac G4s of the same year. While this clock rate is significantly lower than the competing intel chipsets of the time (1.3 Ghz Pentium 4 at the high end), the Cube's G4 featured an AltiVec module and a more efficient architecture (RISC vs CISC), making the PowerPC.

I have a G4 Cube, a beautiful, upgraded and fully functional G4 Cube. Unfortunately I had to leave it behind when I moved and thus haven’t seen it in 8 years. I used it sporadically but mostly I had it just to look at it once in a while and think “Damn, that’s a sexy Mac”. Here’s a few photos from 2008.

I miss having my sexy Mac to oogle so I’ve been on the lookout for a cheap Cube I could fix up and put up for display in my office. Last week (Mid February 2018) I finally found one. Listed as “for parts / untested” and with not-so-great quality pictures, I took a risk and got it. Cheap means I won’t find a working Cube in good shape so I knew I’d had to settle for a clunker, this one fit the bill. Here are the images from the eBay listing.

At the time of looking at this eBay listing it was 11PM, I had barely slept in 4 days because my son was sick and I was not paying that much attention. I did notice this was a liquid spill Mac as it’s clearly visible on the graphics card heatsink but did not examine the other images carefully. So I bought it, because I still wanted a Cube and a fun restoration project. I don’t like to simply buy a Mac and be done, I want to clean, restore, tinker and upgrade. I got what I wanted. I already saw what I missed in the eBay photos as soon as I pulled it out of the box, this thing got soaked.

It didn’t just get a full cup of coffee poured over and in to it, the previous owner didn’t even bother to take it apart and clean it or bring it to a store where they could. The result is a rusted and corroded mess. Every component except the modem got a dose of caffeine (decaf wasn’t a thing 17 years ago like it is now). Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining. I got exactly what I wanted; a restoration project!

This project will probably take a few years to complete. I’ll work on it when I have nothing else to do (which is not often) and fix it up as I go. I don’t have a power supply for a Cube so I can’t even test the thing when I’m done. I hope that by careful cleaning and soldering I can salvage most of these components, the challenge is to buy a little parts as possible and work with what I got. I’ll update this post as I go so if this interests you, check back once or twice a year to see what’s new 🙂 Let’s begin!

2018 – February 26
I received the Cube, unpacked it and after taking a few photos started pulling it apart. I have not taken a Cube apart completely in over 10 years so this took me a while as I carefully labeled screws and took pictures of the process. Still, putting this back together will probably be a disaster. But we’ll worry about that a few years from now. The first order of business was to get rid of rust and corrosion where it was present, so pretty much everywhere. This basically consisted of tossing everything in a few big tubs with soapy water and letting it soak overnight. Not just the metal parts but plastics and electronics as well.

After some brushing, this took care of most of the rust and corrosion. There was a lot of staining and pitting on the metal but a dremel made short work of that.

With some spots hard or impossible to reach with the dremel some questionable spots remained inside the enclosure. As I live in Florida and am always dealing with humidity, I do not want to give any rust that remains a fighting chance so decided to give it all a coat of paint. Cutting off the humidity and oxygen won’t give any rust a fighting chance.

The same paint was applied to the other rusted internals. As cool as I like the black look, none of this will be visible by the time the Cube is reassembled. Not sure yet what to do with the bottom of the enclosure, some rust remains and I can’t reach it properly with the dremel. Cleaning that up by hand is going to take a lot more time than I want to invest and simply painting it will clog some of the smaller holes down by the ports and mess up the mesh pad that’s barely hanging on as it is. Will have to think about this one…

To be continued…

Power Mac G4 Cube For Sale

PowerPC G-Series
Post-NeXT and the Second Jobs Dynasty

iMac – 1998

Whimsical and relatively cheap ($1299), the original iMac marked Apple’s new design direction and return to profitability in the Second Jobs Dynasty. Gone were “boring beige boxes” and legacy technologies like the floppy disk, ADB and SCSI; the iMac was a “New World” G3-based system and introduced USB to the Mac faithful. The iMac captured the spirit of the original compact Mac, was easy to use and distinctly different from anything else on the market – a once and soon-to-be-again Apple trait. The iMac’s importance to Apple earns this model an honorable inclusion in the VMM in spite of that unfortunate bondi blue color and the “puck mouse” debacle.
VMM TV :Say Hello to iMac

PowerMac G4 “Graphite” (AGP) – 1999

Combining iterations made since the beige G3 series, Apple finally hit a design and stylistic home run with the PowerMac G4 AGP-Graphics series. These “Graphite” models inherited the highly serviceable fold-down side design of the earlier G3 and G4 towers, had faster system and graphics buses, fit 4 internal hard drives, and sported a very elegant color scheme suitable for professional environments. The AGP line existed for several years in many different model configurations, eventually evolving into the QuickSilver case (but losing the CD eject button… sigh). Aftermarket G4 upgrade cards kept these models productive well past their normal retirement ages. VMM TV:PowerMac G4 “Weapon”

PowerMac G4 Cube – 2000

Powermac G4 Cube Upgrade

Steve Jobs loves cube shaped computers. He first designed one for NeXT, which was an aesthetic success but a commercial failure. His second attempt for Apple fared similarly, but has obtained collector status due to the beauty and novelty of the design. The Cube is 8″ tall and passively cooled for silent operation (fans are a longstanding peeve of Steve). However, its limited expansion capability and premium price led to slow sales as users felt bang for the buck was lacking. Apple finally got the small headless Mac tradeoff right a few years later with the mini, itself a third the size of the Cube with more power at a lower cost.

The VMM G4 Cube runs Mac OS X 10.4.11 and serves as the central file server for Oakbog and the Museum. Tiger is a good choice for this function since it’s version of AppleShare IP can communicate with all versions of Mac OS from System 7.5.3 through to the latest OS X release.
VMM Blog:Vintage Mac Museum Workhorse – PowerMac G4 Cube

iMac DV and the OS X Evolution

Power Mac G4 Cube Manual Quotes Digital Download

New products often take a generaton or two to work out the bugs, and the iMac was no exception. With the introduction of the DV series of slot loading iMacs (G3 400MHz and faster) Apple finally offered useable processing power at a low price – down to $799 at one point. It also came in a mature and refined case with much less garish colors – Flower Power & Dalmation notwithstanding. FireWire ports for DV video production, DVD/CD-RW drives, and the same fanless design as the G4 Cube rounded out the experience. The iMac DV is an excellent Mac OS 9 machine, and with some extra added RAM makes an adequate (if pokey) Mac OS X system.

iMac DV systems play a special role in the Museum showcasing the evolution of Mac OS X: Sage, Ruby and Indigo units are loaded with Mac OS X 10.0.4 (Cheetah), 10.1.5 (Puma) and 10.2.8 (Jaguar) respectively.

iMac G4 – 2002

Flat Out Cool! That’s how Time magazine described the iMac G4 when it was introduced. A radical departure from previous designs, Apple (and specifically designer John Ive) were hitting on all cylinders. The R2-D2’esque “iLamp” had FireWire, USB, and a 15″, 17″ or 20″ screen that floated lightly on a lamp-like swing arm for easy positioning. The design did have some limitations – its difficult to open for servicing and the eyeball speakers add an extra item to your desktop – but in this writer’s opinion it’s one of Apple’s most elegant designs ever.

At the VMM a 17″ iMac G4 runs Tiger with Mac OS 9 in “Classic” mode, to allow Filemaker Pro v4 software to print to an old CD printer via a USB-to-Serial-Port adapter. Who says 10 year old peripherals can’t still be useful?
VMM TV :iMac G4 “Window”

PowerMac G4 MDD “Wind Tunnel” – 2002

An evolutionary model, the PowerMac G4 MDD (Mirrored Drive Doors) featured dual processors in a sturdy redesigned tower that now offered two 5.25″ front drive bays, 3 IDE buses and and 4 internal hard disks. The excellent fold-down side design was retained, and even the notoriously sluggish Mac OS X felt snappy on these systems. Cooling was beginning to become an issue with faster CPU speeds, and some configurations had problems with very loud fans. The press quickly adopted the moniker “wind tunnel” and the nickname stuck. Fixes in subsequent OS releases largely resolved the problem. This is the last series of PowerMacs which can be dual-booted into Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X; newer models are OS X only.
VMM Blog:Reinstalling Mac OS 9 on a PowerMac G4 MDD

iMac G5 – 2004

Sensing a slowdown in iMac G4 sales, and addressing some of that model’s design flaws, the iMac G5 came in 17″ and 20″ models with very good cost/performance ratios. Apple trumpeted the easy to service features for adding RAM and swapping hard drives, and many people just looked at the screen and asked where’s the computer? Oddly, the second iteration of the iMac G5 was less user-serviceable than the first; in hindsight it’s likely they were prepping the case for the upcoming (but as-yet-unannounced) Intel CPU change. Front Row media center software debuted on this model, complete with an IR remote control reminiscent of the MacTV.

Unfortunately as they age the iMac G5 has had problems with overheating and bad capacitors, and this model has not weathered the test of time well. Still, if Apple had made this iMac in black I would have purchased one immediately…

Mac mini G4 – 2005

Finally achieving commercial success with a cube-like system on the third attempt, the Mac mini was Apple’s minimalist answer to everybody who always pestered them for a $500 Mac. Sold CPU only (bring-your-own keyboard, mouse and monitor), the mini’s small size and decent performance made it a practical desktop system, living room media center or a cheap headless server. It was also popular among car stereo designers – the case fits nicely into a car radio dashboard slot!

Despite an unnecessarily hard to open case the mini was quite popular, and the form factor has survived the transition into the Intel CPU lineup. The VMM mini runs Leopard, the final release of Mac OS X that supports PowerPC Macs.VMM TV:Switch (Ellen Feis)

Apple Powermac G4 Cube

Xserve G4/G5, Mac OS X Server – 2002

Power Mac G4

Apple had offered server configurations of their systems in the past, but they were basically souped-up versions of existing towers with AppleShare Server and additional software installed. The Xserve represented a completely new form factor designed specifically to be a rack-mount unit and work well in corporate server environments. The stylish enclosure supported up to 4 internal drives (G4 models), dual ethernet connectors, remotely controllable status lights (on the front and back panels) and 64-bit multiprocessor support (G5 models). They retained compatibility for existing 32-bit Mac software, had external Apple hardware RAID expansion options, and came in primary server and cluster node configurations. Mac OS X Server software supported many functions for email, FTP, web hosting and mixed Mac-Windows file sharing environments.

The G5 Xserve was replaced by the Intel-based Xeon model in 2006, using the same form factor. Definitely a well-thought out and sturdy design. VMM Blog: The PowerPC Bows Out