Press "Enter" to skip to content

Day: August 14, 2011

SSD Installation in a Mid-2010 27″ iMac

Published August 14, 2011

This weekend I fitted my 27″ iMac with an SSD and I now have that running as the boot and OS drive, with large-stuff-storage on the internal 1TB drive. I’ve been considering an SSD for a while, and with prices finally becoming reasonable (~$225 for 120GB) it was time to give it a go. Due to Apple’s screwup last year I ended up with a mid-2010 iMac; a model which could have been ordered with an SSD from the factory. While this 27″ iMac didn’t come with an SSD, thanks to this post by Tobias Müller I found that it was possible to buy the plastics and cabling and add one with a factory-type fit. So, I did.

After receiving the parts and reading through Tobias’ post and the Apple factory service manual I set about fitting the drive. I won’t go into details of the install here, but it would easily rate 4 out of 5 for difficulty of non-custom computer work that I’ve done. Because the SSD sits in a carrier behind the logic board I had to remove the display, power supply, LCD power supply, Airport card, a blower, hard drive, optical drive, logic board, and an IR receiver to get the job done. The SSD, mounted in the pressure wall / plastic carrier and connected with a new wiring harness, settled nicely into the case and everything went back in.

Beyond the SSD, if you’d like to try this modification yourself you’ll need the following Apple parts:

922-9531: Power Cable / Wiring Harness
922-9485: Pressure Wall
922-9538: SATA Cable

I purchased all of these new from Usedmac for a total of $84.24 shipped and installed them along with a 120GB Intel 320-series SSD. These parts, with the SSD attached, can be seen here. If you don’t want to pay ~$20 for an Apple-specific SATA cable, a 10″ cable with a right angle connector on one end (only) which bends towards the top of the drive will suffice.

4 Comments

Flat 400 Pound Monkey

Published August 14, 2011

One of the Colorado beer that I was given was a bottle of Left Hand Brewing Company’s 400 Pound Monkey. Unfortunately, it opened without a hiss and turned out to be flat. The label reads that it is “English Style”, so while I initially thought that maybe they going for the idea of a bottled cask-ish ale, the photo on the beer’s product page shows a rich head, so I think that bottle just happens to be flat. Like the other Left Hand Brewing Company beers that I’ve tried I can tell that it’d be good with an appropriate amount of CO2 in it, but instead this is a bit more like a malty/hoppy wine.

Leave a Comment

Moving Rice

Published August 14, 2011

Over the last week there’d been an increasing number of fruit flies in the house, which I originally blamed on a plantain which Danielle had purchased a week ago. I suspect that by the time it was placed in the under-counter compost bin there were fruit fly eggs in the skin of the plantain, and it’s likely that others eggs were laid in the normal garbage can.

Friday morning when I opened the compost bin to deposit coffee grounds I was greeted by a liberal sprinkling of small, wriggling maggots, pupae (as seen above), and a fair number of flies which immediately took flight. The container was quickly sealed back up and placed in the garage to be dealt with later. This morning when throwing away coffee grounds the normal garbage can was found to contain another illustration of the fruit fly life cycle, so it was time to take action.

Every fruit fly-containing bag was sealed inside of a larger garbage bag which had it’s top folded over and sealed especially well. Each can was scrubbed with painfully hot water and sodium percarbonate and left to dry in the garage, and I used isopropyl alcohol to entrap and kill any lingering flies. There is a black foam activated charcoal filter located in the top of the compost bin, despite the cleaning with hot water I suspect that it too may have live eggs in it. Fruit flies have a relatively short lifecycle, so I’ll leave it in the garage for a few days then clean it again, keeping an eye out for larvae.

Since this afternoon’s cleaning and extermination efforts I haven’t been pestered by flying insects I think that I’ve won war on fruit flies in the house. I guess I’ll know in a week.

Leave a Comment