John May of Point In Space Internet Solutions has adapted a PC-based rack-mount case to use iMac internals.

Discovering the iMac's power supply conformed very closely to a standard ATX PC supply, Mr, May used a standard PC one-unit rack-mount case with power supply, fans, and drive mounts. He fabricated a custom-wired power adapter, slightly modified of the back panel and using some 3/4" stand-offs managed to successfully mount the iMac motherboard and get the machine booted. The rest of the transplant involved only the relatively minor issues of constructing longer cables for the monitor plug and CD-ROM. Mr. may says the total price of the project was the cost of the rack case plus about $50 bucks for miscellaneous parts.

Why a rack-mount iMac?

Mr. May explains that he runs a web hosting/authoring company (Point In Space Internet Solutions - http://www.pointinspace.com/) specializing in serving on the Macintosh platform. " Partially because I've been a die-hard Apple user since my father built our first Apple II (when you could actually get the schematics, and even the parts), and partially because of the types of sites we host (Filemaker, Lasso and the likes)."

He notes that while Filemaker is a great database for adding dynamic data to web sites, it has the limitation of being able to host 50 databases on one machine, so it requires lots of machines for his operation. May relates that it seemed only logical to him to somehow take advantage of the iMac, which has plenty of horsepower for serving, and can be acquired for less than $1,000 -- much cheaper than Apple servers that run three to four thousand dollars apiece.

The problem with this plan from Mr. May's perspective was "this big thing built into the iMac called a monitor - something which defeats space efficiency. However, he had some little PC-based Cobalt Raq one rack-space computers and asked himself, "why couldn't the iMac be a Raq with a little coaxing?"

He then discovered that a company called Marathon Computer was promising to ship a product called the iRack - a rack-mount case configured to receive an iMac's guts dropped right into it, but according to Mr. May the Marathon kit is so far vapor.

To date Mr. May has built three rack-mounted iMacs which have been serving out databases flawlessly for more than a month now. If someone else would like one, Mr. May is open to negotiating a deal.

For more information, visit:
http://www.pointinspace.com/www/imacrack/

or email John May at:
jmay@pointinspace.com

Charles W. Moore

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October 06, 2008