Comments on: Mac Mini – getting a little more useful

By: Biffo

Biffo — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:37:32 +0000

Link is dead where to find please??

By: dan

dan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:39:44 +0000

If anyone does this and wants to sell me the original apple IR board get in touch – dsg102 at gmail dot com

By: r4 ds

r4 ds — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:17:07 +0000

I am going to definitely try this. I got the mini instead of the apple TV as it can serve a dual purpose. Both allowing me to use it as a computer AND a media center.

Awesome, thanks for the great hacks!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:47:44 +0000

The remote that came with my EyeTV Hybrid works just fine with the built in IR sensor in my Mac.

By: Funky Gibbon

Funky Gibbon — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:37:12 +0000

Best use for a mini mac i’ve seen is this one http://www.bit-tech.net/news/modding/2005/06/10/itoilet_mod/1

By: e3mac

e3mac — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:23:49 +0000

There is an option in both the apple tv and mac os x to pair the remote to that device. Then the device only accepts input from that remote.

By: buggy

buggy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:05:45 +0000

@The_Evil_Machinist, No no no, Woz was all about chip economy and silicon esoterica. He would have used the CPU fan for timing control and routed the IR signals through the keyboard controller during the vertical blanking interrupt. Every 4 microseconds the input would be sent through a barrel shifter to a fifo buffer in the audio chip where it would be read by the CPU during every fourth interrupt.
It would be hand coded in assembly and take up 350 bytes.

By: The_Evil_Machinist

The_Evil_Machinist — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:10:20 +0000

Sometimes you need to ask yourself, “What would Woz do?” So then you’d throw in a zotac mini itx in there with a core 2 extreme quad core. Stick the cpu heat sink out the top and then mount a physical apple over the sink to hide it (stylishly). After you stick the HD 5850 out the side, then you can start building the SSD RAID 0 array that also acts as feet for the thing. Then throw 8GB ram in it, throw away the superdrive, you now have a perfectly hacked mac. Woz style.

By: Just Sayin'

Just Sayin' — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:38:42 +0000

@Urza9814, why didn’t she just pair the remotes? Once a remote is paired to a device, it will only work that device and no other, until it is re-paired.

By: cantido

cantido — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:25 +0000

I’m pretty sure the actual hardware isn’t locked to the Apple remote,.. Under linux it is possible to use the IR like any other IR transceiver as far as I can remember (I haven’t used the IR on this machine for ages). So there is really no need to take the mac apart.

By: max montana

max montana — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:27:54 +0000

Fail , i mean he don’t want a little black box , but he does have a ugly usb cable sticking out his mac mini .
And aren’t the signals on the original Ir receiver usb ? why he didn’t tapped that signals to the new circuit board ?
Would have been much neater

By: Ethicalness

Ethicalness — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:33:33 +0000

@Liam, you sir are right on the target.

An ethical hacker makes what should be personally thought as right, right. What suits him/her is done by the end user for any product is hacked.

An example is custom rat rods… no top and aren’t drivable in rain. It does not sound ethical but consider them hackers with sheet metal…

By: Liam

Liam — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:13:28 +0000

@Ethical Hacker: Ethics are not defined by law.

By: Urza9814

Urza9814 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:56:14 +0000

Hah…any time I see mention of the apple remote I think of when my gf first got her apple TV. She buys nothing but macs. And all apple remotes are the same. So she’d be trying to navigate the Apple TV and all of a sudden both of her macbooks would start blasting music out or playing a movie or something….it was actually rather hilarious. She finally did manage to figure out how to disable the remote for the computer…but then the problem becomes that you can’t disable it for the apple TV, so if she wants to use the remote on the computer….well, she can’t.

By: teh haterbot

teh haterbot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:27:27 +0000

… or you could just get a real computer.