Didja check Google?

right after posting I found one...

does anybody know if it is possible to tweak a powermac motherboard to take (much cheaper and easier to get) 3.3V instead of the 5V DIMMs?

pinouts are all the same. I know that they don´t fit physically because the small holes are in different positions but that is not the problem. you can easiely wide them so that they would fit.

my intention is that I can do same trace routing on the motherboard to find out where the power for the RAM slots come from and then feed a 3.3V supply instead of the 5V in there.

Is it that easy?

Thoughts please...

Sounds like a good way to release the magic smoke. There is a reason the small holes are in different positions.

hmmm...

magic smoke and funny smell is always good...

so the dimms have to go to ebay...

And don't forget, even if you were to change the power supply on the ram, you'd still be up the creek. The memory talks to other chips, of course, and they're going to continue driving with their larger voltages (and expecting same). Again, that's a recipe for emitting much magic smoke.

The magic smoke came out of one of my computers once... It stopped showing the pretty pictures and information... I wish I hadn't let the magic out...

I've never let the magic smoke out of a computer, but I have for quite a few unfortunate transistors.

And it is *really* hard to put the smoke back in...