With the untimely demise of my beloved MDD, partway through my updrades, I am planning to reboot my project using a RasPi 4 as the main computer, housing withing the confines of the MDD case.
I am starting a new thread to layout my plans and help me keep track of what I plan to do. I also welcome inputs and suggestions as I go through it.
Primary purpose: Build a server inside of an MDD case, utilizing as much available hardware as possible and ultimately providng file and media server acapabilities on my home network. This server will include an instance of Plex Media Server and a yet-to-be-determined file server application.
Assets:
1. Good consition MDD case . PSU should be good but Mobo is deemed to have failed. If Mobo is infact okay, then the PSU is inthe process of failing. System powers on, fans spin full speed, system fails to get past black screen of nothingness.
2. Twin 20" Cinema Displays. One has an Apple DVI-ADC adapter.
3. Good ATI Radeon 9000 Pro card in the AGP slot. Using some HDMI-DVI dongles may make this moot as long as I can support dual HDMI output from the Pi.
4. Two 64bit PCI Sonnet SATA cards. These drive my external media boxes, capable of housing up to 16 drives.
5. 2x good, near identical IDE hard drives.
6. 1x good DVD +/-RW IDE drive.
Main Computer: Raspberry Pi 4 (specifics not determined yet but will opt for the "best" one I can get)
Video Monitor(s): 2x 20" Cinema Displays, connectd via a an adpater sequence:
mini HDMI to HDMI dongle => HDMI to DVI (24+5) adapter => DVI to ADC adapter
External Ports:
USB, Firewire, Ethernet, Audio, and Speakers can be connected up via a really cool looking OWC dock solution. The S/PDIF output will likely be hooked up to the defunct modem plug hole.
SATA Controller(s):
Already having the Sonnet Cards (a SoNNeT PCI-X SATA Adapter Model Tempo-X SATA 4+4, and a Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 8 Port), I will see about using a riser to hook them up. The one I found only supports 2 cards and is 32 bit.
The two Sonnet SATA cards I have work perfectly. I hate to part with them, but if I can find a USB c/USB 3 to SATA solution that makes sense, I will be happy to re-home these to someone who can put the to better use than I.
I keep seeing some PCI-E solutions but I do not think I can work that into my RasPi without some intermediary step...
I could use a Hat extender and a few SATA hats to do the trick...
Given the total cost of my project was projecting to over $700 USD, I have opted to do a modified ATX hack on the PSU while I sort out the particulars of the raspi approach versus my budget.
This is an interim solution but if it becomes permanent (meanin I was successful in doing what I wanted...) I will continue this project under a new banner but with the same end goal.
Anyways...
I have started things off by salvaging one of the earlier PSUs I have and cutting the wiring harness off. I will then attache a female ATX connector to the original Mac cable. This will allow me to feed any ATX PSU into the original wire assembly. I will also stub off the 25V line since I have 2x Cinema displays and I need to keep those usable. I have sourced a 25V laptop PSU that I will tap into the assembly as well.
Parts are arriving at my home in the next several days and I will work on this later in January as time permits. I still need to look at the impacts of tying the two PSU's ground outputs together versus not doing so. I will test continuity on the circuits at the ADC port to see if the grounds do connect on the mobo or if they are isolated from the other ground lines. The issue being that one PSU's ground may not be antoher PSU's ground despite logic saying they should be the "same".
I really wish I had not loaned my electronics books to my cousin...
Currently setting up a RasPi 5 for this. I have a 20" Cinema Display hooked up and it works fine. Using the MDD keyboard right now and no issues (chose keyboard type as "Macintosh" and "English (US)").
Currently setting base configuration and network stuff.
Currently running 2024-03-15 arm64 full image. Hard-wired ethernet and will update to latest OS packages today.
Ran onto too many problems gettingthis image to update. Switched to the more recent image 2024-07-04-raspios-bookworm-arm64-full.img
Based on my internet seaches, the very slow boot times and general slow poerformance/freezing are likely caused by the memory card. In spite of its labeling, it is not suitable for this application. I will source a different one and retry. I will also go for a lower capacity - I had a 128GB on hand of what I thought was suitable specs. Its 64GB brother is in my Pi4 and runs great.
Got a second adapter for my other Cunema Display. Hooked it up and it worked perfectly - no config or setting to be set. Waiting on memory card with better specs to arrive (tomorrow?).
So I finally got the Raspberry-branded microSD cards in the mail. I went with the 32GB pre-loaded ones and this solved my serious performance issues. I wasted sooooo much time not going this route in the beginning.
Anyways, I now have the raspi OS up and running. I have gotten RealVNC linked into said account (now I can work on this while not bing in fron of it...), and I have both screens going nicely.
Right now, I am trying to get SheepShaver up and running. I will also take a crack at PearPC (which might be the better route to go since I could leterally implent the OS X instance from the defunct system I am replacing. I also need to get Plex installed and then add my RAID drives (Amazon cable purchasing required...), Once I get all the hard ware working I need, I will then move on the the case - remember that at the end of this, I intend to have this thing living in the case of my dead MDD and running that looks and feels a lot like a Mac. If I can get PearPC going it will be a close to the real thing as one could hope given the PSU failure history I have had here.
I have dorked it all up and am now reimaging my SD card back to stock bookworm.
Seems the problems I have (and I solved them incorrectly) are:
1. I need to use X11 instead of Wayland in order for RealVNC to work (got a paid account, so that is a must-do). I just cannot go from X11 back to Wayland as it does not like this and will rfuse to boot (likely do the the other things I have done below...)
2. Using unstable dev source to pick up the libraries to add netatalk (so I can see it on my network with my Macs) is dnagerous and led to adding some libraries that caused my menu bar/taskbar to blink and then disappear. As I cannot solve this with my limited linux knowledge, and trying to switch back to only stable libraries did not solve my issue, I felt it was just easier to start over. What I think did it was doing an update command followed by an upgrade. While this let netatalk find the needed libraries it was gripinig about, it also resulted in error codes (1 and later 10) and an autoremove solved that but also took too much out and messed up other things.
3. The SheepShaver install just is not working but I know it will as I used this same source before and I had to alter some setting. As I lost the card where I had those notes, I am having to re-learn what I once knew.
4. PearPC is not working when I follow what I think are the guide steps. Since I need Barney-style stuff on this, I defintely need a clean slate to try again after the mess I created with multiple concurrent efforts to do too much at once. Starting over and then letting the other things happen first and get stable is best. I may have to set up a test system and experiment on that. I got a 3B+ that I could use. I may chrsten in EmpokNor...
Got the reimaged system back up and on to X11 from Wayland. Things are working well in RealVNC.
Trying to get netatalk going again. It says it is installed but it's actions say otherwise. The netatalk/afp.conf file is void whereas I know it should have a default template in there. The service also does not appear to be startable. Online doc does not appear to answer anything like what I think I need especially since I had it working this morning. It may be a library issue but I cannot determine what I need to add to the pin list from Unstable to make it work. I have done a few update/upgrade/reboots along the way to make sure I am resetting things.
Okay, I got Empok Nor up and running. It is the same OS but running on a 3B+. It does not have the schlitz to run Chromium since that is a total pig under bookworm, but it serves the need and is expendable.
It is initially a clone of Terok Nor. I did pull down the novaspirit version of SheepShaver and nhave been trying to follow along with the guidance from emaculation but everything stops when I try to launch the app. It tells me that the "sudo: SheepShaver: command not found".
Not sure what is wrong here...
After playing around and getting nowehere, I dropped the novaspirit package of SheepShaver/ppc onto Rotarran and Nomad (a once derelict Dell laptop now running Rpi Desktop (4.x) and a 3B+ running 3.x, respectively). Seems the that version of SheepShaver/ppc is compiled and set such that it is only able to run out-of-the-box on piOS 3.x. It was great, but not able to run on the more recent OSes. Trying to run this on 5 or even 4 just dies with no feedback (although I do not know where to look for the logs that might be helpful...)
Seems I will have to go the less noob-oriented route and download the packages from github and then compile for my system. <eyes liquor cabinet>
At least I have solved that mystery, for now. Next up is get conky running or revisit the nettalk fiasco from last week. Empok Nor is holding its own so I will plug ahead...
I was having too many issues trying to determine what libraries I was missing so I decided to start from a fresh install of RP4 on a 4B+. I got netatalk working right off which made me happy. conky i having issues with pm2 but it is just a finishing touch to worry about later.
I am working right now to get SheepShaver and PearPC up and sunning. The novaspirit download was my starting point and now it is just a matter of identifying the libraries they want that exist on RP3 and are not immedialtey installed on RP4. I will use EmpokNor to recompile the github instance nad see what it complains about as missing and then go back to Add/Remove on Teroknor to try and install them there.
The long term plan here is to get this all running and then upgrafe to RP5 (bookworm).