Cheese Grater Now Grates Cheese

If you’ve been using Apple products since before they were cool, you might remember the Power Mac G5. This was a time before Apple was using Intel processors, so compatibility issues were high and Apple’s number of users was pretty low. They were still popular in some areas but didn’t have the wide appeal they have now. The high quality of the drilled aluminum design lived on into the Intel era and gained more popularity, but the case was still colloquially known as the “Cheese Grater”. Despite not originally being able to grate cheese though, this Power Mac actually does grate cheese.

Ungrated cheese is placed in the CD drive slot where it passes through a series of 3D printed gears which grate the cheese into small chunks. The cheese grating drive is automatically started when it detects cheese via a Raspberry Pi. The Pi 4 also functions as a working desktop computer within the old G5 case, complete with custom-built I/O ports for HDMI that integrate with the case to make it look like original hardware.

Funnily enough, the Pi 4 has more computing power and memory than Apple’s flagship Mac at the time, and consumes about 100 times less power. It’s a functional build that elaborates on an in-joke in the hardware community, which we can all appreciate. Perhaps the next build should be something that uses the blue smoke for a productive purpose. Meanwhile, regular readers will remember that this isn’t the first Apple related cheese grating episode we’ve shown you.

11 thoughts on “Cheese Grater Now Grates Cheese

    1. More power than what? A G5? That would be an interesting comparison. G5s started at 1.8 GHz single core at the very low end and went up from there. RasPi 4 is like 1.5Ghz Quad? It might be a close analysis. Looking at them without GPU power would be a bit more apples to apples.

      I could see a RasPi beating a low end G5 but probably not a DC DP with much more RAM.

  1. I was hoping for something like inserting a hard metal rod into the holes and tipping it sideways, one by one. Then some work with a round file or diamond burr to sharpen the raised sides of the holes to make the grille a functional grater. Strip the paint and get it chrome plated so it’s food safe and there ya go.

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