tech e blog

5. Millenium Falcon Mac Mini

The guys over at MacMod managed to stuff a Mac Mini into a $20 Millenium Falcon Toy from Playskool. That's not all, an iSight webcam was fitted into one of the gun ports.

"As it turns out, this mod is pretty simple. We spent about a total of 4 hours putting the whole thing together. About an hour was spent coming up with an idea and taking the toy apart."

[Source]

4. Mac Mini NES

Borrowing some of the NES's retro looks, the Mac Mini NES is one of the strangest mods we've seen. Underneath the shell you'll find a fully functional Mac Mini, DVD-Writer, and IDE to USB 2.0 circuitry. The power button turns off the Mini (or puts it in sleep mode), reset ejects the DVD tray, and both controller ports have an integrated circuit which allows any NES peripheral to be plugged in/used with emulators.

“Well, someone had to do it! The Mac Mini NES was an idea born out necessity, and a love of the hardware modification arts. Necessity because I owned an internal DVD writer for my previous PC and, with the switch to an Apple PC, I was left to use an IDE to USB adapter (enclosures are expensive). This was to much of a ghetto looking setup for my taste. Most of all, the two tone 8-bit console has appealing style and is a famous icon of console gaming (not to mention, ideal dimensions for a desktop system.)"

[Source]

3. Mac Prius

This modder connected a Mac Mini to his Prius MFD touchscreen for the ultimate multimedia setup.

Of course nothing goes perfectly and I'm going to have to pull the mini out later. I need to check the audio connection, I'm now occationally hearing a loud squeel when I turn up the volume on the Prius. I think it's probably the the little connector I made with the electrolitic cap. I attached to make sure no stray voltages enter the Mac, it's kind of squished in the back of the Mini now

[Source]

2. MacMini Portable MkII

Peter Green took a Mac Mini, stuffed the internals into a custom enclosure, attached an LCD screen, battery pack, thumb board, and trackpad -- to create the "MacMini Portable MkII".

From the article: "...which makes numerous improvements upon its predecessor such as mounting the thumb board flush with the case, significantly reducing the overall size of the device, and generally making it look more like something you'd want to take out in public."

[Source]

1. DeLorean Mac Mini

Ryan Brandy created this custom Mac Mini setup in his DeLorean, complete with sound system, iSight on dashboard, and a projector center.

I have always wanted to put a Macintosh-based computer into my DeLorean. Today, you can read about how I made that a reality. This project involved more than just a carputer. This is the merging of an automotive environment and a computing environment. This creates a portable office in your DeLorean. Not just a drive-in movie theater, but a drivable drive-in movie theater

Honorable Mention - Mac Mini PVR

This PVR setup features a Mac Mini Core Duo, Westinghouse LVM-42w2 1080p monitor, 300GB HDD in fanless enclosure, Miglia TVMini HD OTA HDTV tuner, and a Peerless ST650P Universal Tilt Wall Mount. [Source]