Homebrew Mac Mini Dock

mac mini dock hack

hackaday reader lazzwaldo writes:

I’m too impatient to wait for someone else to come up with this, so here’s a quick’n’dirty (working) prototype of a Mac Mini Dock so I can use it in my truck or Jeep as a CarPuter, then be able to unplug it and take it elsewhere.

It consists of milled aluminum stock (perforated for ventilation), ProPoxy formed around the connector ends, and soft/”female” velcro to give a firm but smooth slide on the sides.

What it doesn’t have is a good way to UNplug it yet; I will install a tug strap to be able to disengage it. All connectors are present except for the phone/modem line.

there have been concepts, but i believe this is the first ever real life mac mini dock.  nice job!

11 thoughts on “Homebrew Mac Mini Dock

  1. This is awesome. Geese, the last few pics make it look like a big harddrive. That would be awesome to mod one of these into a pc case, so there would be two working computers in 1 box. Kinda pointless tho.

  2. Google: bookendz

    If they’re smart (they aren’t), they’d use the gross of connectors they have sitting in boxes in their warehouse to build these asap before Griffin does…

  3. Also, how about instead taking all the pins from all the connectors and connecting them to one large connector, which would hook up to the dock. The dock would convert the large connector back to multiple connectors. You would have a dock at each place you want to use the Mac mini. Having a single connector would make docking and undocking much easier. Plus, it wouldn’t be too hard to make – just buy a cable for each one of the connectors, buy a couple large connectors, cannibalize the cables, and connect the wires from the stripped cables to the large connector.

  4. I’d say…. about 50 pins/wires for all together into one connector.. If you do it all together, it may effect it slow or static on monitor because it cause by electromagnet… (not really sure)
    -Deafcon (A_Deaf_Guy)

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