Dye Mac Dye!

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Fabric dye is one of those products where it keeps popping up for unintended uses, we have seen it coloring printed circuit boards, and now a Macintosh computer? [The Brain]'s project to add a little color to his Macbook has been done before, but he chooses to do it in a different way, which comes down to a little bit of sandpaper. You could go ahead and dye the Macbook plastics as is, but that … [Read more...]

Speedier hard disk option for your Mac Mini

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[Andrew] was left wanting by the slow hard drive in his 2011 Mac Mini. He set out to add a 10,000 RPM drive and we think he did a great job of pulling it off. Luckily he also took the time to document the process so you can try it yourself. As with a lot of Apple products, a big part of this hack is just getting the darn thing apart without breaking something. Once that's done, you're got to do … [Read more...]

Rebuilding a Mac SE as a server again

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Around this time last year, [Sprite_TM] took a 1980's-era Macintosh SE and rebuilt it as a home file server. He used a Seagate Dockstar as the new motherboard, but over the past year he's been annoyed with the fact that the Dockstar doesn't have real SATA ports. Using USB to SATA converters on a server is a slow way of doing things, so [Sprite_TM] rebuilt his SE using an HP thin client. To do … [Read more...]

Booting a 1989 Mac with Mario

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As a new recruit to the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army, [dougg3] is really showing off his hardware hacking ability. He came up with a replacement ROM SIMM for his Mac IIci and made it play the Mario theme on boot instead of the normal chimes. Swapping out the ROM in these old macs isn't an uncommon procedure. On some 68k machines, there's a SIMM slot to either replace or expand the soldered … [Read more...]

Recreating the Mac Plus with an FPGA

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[Steve] over at Big Mess O’ Wires has never been so happy to see the “Sad Mac” icon. A little over a month ago, he decided to take on the task of building his own Mac clone using modern technology. Not to be confused with Mac emulation on modern hardware, he is attempting to build a true Mac clone using an FPGA that is functionally identical to the original. He is calling his creation … [Read more...]

Add a real life hardware terminal to that newfangled computer of yours

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If you find a crusty old IT guy and give him half a chance, he’ll probably regale you with stories of how things were done “in the old days” where no one had their own computer and everyone worked on mainframe-connected dumb terminals. [JSTN] yearned for a true to life terminal display that he could attach to his 2010 Mac Pro, and since there’s no chance anybody is bringing one to market … [Read more...]

Hacking 14 year old Power PC Mac back to life

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For a while now I have been battling a dying 2.6Ghz dual core computer, but due to laziness and budget I just let it ride. At first it would occasionally crash in games, then it got to where it would crash during routine activities. After a year of this it would nail 105 degrees C in like 20 seconds and that is where the drama starts! I threw my 2ghz “electronics” computer into my main … [Read more...]