Macmod released some of the first entries for their contest. James and Mick submitted their M3 Mobile Mac Mini. That’s a touchscreen lcd mounted in the rear, Up front it’s equipped with video halogen lights and IR range sensors. The chassis is interfaced through a PIC 16F877A controller. You might want to check out the rest of the mods here.
The Scalable Computing Laboratory has posted instructions on how to get Xen running on a Intel Mac mini. Xen is an open source virtualization system that lets multiple guest operating systems run on the same processor. The Mac mini is small, relatively inexpensive, and because it supports VT instructions you can run WindowsXP without modification. This makes the mini a really good choice for a hardware virtualization box. The install does have some quirks. You need a distro that uses lilo to boot because of Mac mini’s lack of an A20 gate. Once installed you switch to a patched version of grub because that’s what Xen requires.
[thanks steve, the good steve]
Our friend [Markie] keeps insisting on dragging all of his old tech into the new millennium. In his recent article about cramming a non-airport WiFi card in his old iBook he hinted at another wireless project coming up. Well here it is: a wireless eMate. eMates were sold to the education sector as durable computers for classroom use. Markie had to build a serial cable to transfer the necessary software to the machine. With only 3MB of RAM and a 25MHz processor the machine isn’t up for much, but it seems to work fairly well as a terminal.
Feeling a bit nostalgic, reader [blurry] decided to write this Apple Game Server in Java using the rxtx library. The server eliminates the need for a floppy drive on your Apple //. You just need to connect the Apple // to your computer using a null modem cable and you will have access multiple games. To get started you tell the Apple // to accept serial commands. Then the Java program takes over, typing the loader program one line at a time. It takes about 15 seconds. Once that’s done you’re presented with a menu to boot whatever game you want.
Hack-A-Day reader [Lee Olivares] stuffed a Macintosh Plus full of new hardware without butchering the case. From the original test fit he could see that the Mac Mini’s DVD slot lined up well with the original floppy slot, so it just needed to be widened a little bit for clearance. The monitor is black and white, but a separate VGA port has been split off for an external monitor. The original motherboard was cut down so that the original power switch and ports could be used. Any new ports were hidden behind the battery cover.
This Powerbook 150 was purchased as a simple media reader. Once the hard drive failed the owner decided to replace it with a compact flash card since IDE adapters were available. There was a problem: the ATA device driver would probe the device and then immediately shutdown because the “identify device” bit wasn’t the expected value. The device driver had been written before more recent changes to the ATA spec. Greg solved the problem by constructing a daughter card that plugs into the adapter board’s 40-pin header and then flips the identifying bit when the device is initially probed.
[thanks iamdigitalman]
Here’s an easy hack compared to our usual craziness. Reader [Alex Dawson] was having issues with his Apple Pro Optical mouse. The new mouse had broken its USB cable connection internally due to insufficient strain relief. Cases for these mice are epoxied together and working on them is a one-way trip, never to return to their original state. He salvaged an ADB mouse and disassembled it with ease. The optical circuit board fit into the ADB case without any trouble. The button switch on both mice is exactly the same and almost in the same position. The optical sensor does not line up with the hole though. Once the ball ring was fused in place, Alex cut a new slot for the sensor. That’s all it took to end up with modern performance and old school flavor.
