Tiny Laptop Gets A New Case And An Unlocking

March 11, 2025 by Dan Maloney 21 Comments

Unless you’ve got an especially small lap, calling the Toshiba Libretto a laptop is a bit of a stretch. The diminutive computers from the mid-1990s had a lot of the usual laptop features, but in an especially compact and portable case that made them a great choice for anyone with an on-the-go lifestyle.

Fast-forward thirty years or so, and the remaining Librettos haven’t fared too well. Many of them have cases that crumble at the slightest touch, which is what led [polymatt] to undertake this meticulous case replacement. The effort started with a complete teardown; luckily, the lower aluminum-alloy shell was in fine shape, but the upper case parts were found to be almost too deteriorated to handle. Still, with a little patience and the judicious application of tape, [polymatt] was able to scan the case pieces on a flatbed scanner and import them into his CAD package. Great tip on the blue-tack for leveling the parts for accurate scanning, by the way.

After multiple rounds of printing and tweaking, [polymatt] had a case good enough to reassemble the Libretto. Unfortunately, the previous owner left an unwanted gift: a BIOS password. Disconnecting the CMOS battery didn’t reset it, but a little research told him that shorting a few pins on the parallel port on the machine’s dock should do the trick. It was a bit involved, requiring the design and subsequent bodging of a PCB to fit into the docking port connector, but in the end he was able to wake up a machine to all its Windows 95 glory. Better get patching.

In a time when laptops were more like lap-crushers, the Libretto was an amazing little machine, and thirty years on, they’re well worth saving from the scrap heap. Hats off to [polymatt] for the effort to save this beauty, and if he needs tips on reading data from any PCMCIA cards that may have come with it, we’ve got him covered.

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This Wii Has An Apple M1 Inside

November 9, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 8 Comments

The conveniently tiny logic board of the M1 Mac mini has lead to it giving the Mini ITX format a run for its money in case mods. The latest example of this is [Luke Miani]’s M1 Wii. (Youtube via 9to5Mac)

[Miani] chose the Wii as a new enclosure for this Mac mini given its similar form factor and the convenient set of doors in the top to maintain access to the computer’s I/O, something he wasn’t able to do with one of his previous M1 casemods. The completed build is a great stealth way to have a Mac mini in your entertainment center. [Miani] even spends the last several minutes of the video showing the M1 Wii running Wii, GameCube, and PS2 games to really bring it full circle.

A Microsoft Surface power brick was spliced into the original Wii power cable since the Wii PSU didn’t have enough wattage to supply the Mac mini without significant throttling. On the inside, the power runs through a buck converter before making its way to the logic board. While the Mini’s original fan was too big to fit inside the Wii enclosure, a small 12V fan was able to keep performance similar to OEM and much higher than running the M1 fanless without a heat spreader.

If you’d like to see some more M1 casemods, check out this Lampshade iMac or the Mac Mini Mini.

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Mac Mini Mini

August 15, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 28 Comments

The Mac Mini has been roughly the same size and shape for 12 years, as the current design was released in June 2010. However, despite being the same general form factor, the internals has shrunk over the years. [Snazzy Labs] took advantage of this to make a miniaturized Mac Mini.

With a donor Mac in hand, they cracked it open and found an oversized power supply, a diminutive logic board, and a good bit of space. Unfortunately, the logic board attaches to a wide IO shield. He removed that, and the fan attached to the heatsink (checking to ensure it still booted). Relocating the WiFi antennas was the trickiest part of the whole build. Given that he wanted to shrink the power supply and the Mac Mini accepts just 12 volts, he devised a clever solution to use MagSafe as a connector. However, Magsafe negotiates over a complex protocol when attached. So, rather than smarten his port up, he dumbed the charger down by replacing it with a Microsoft Surface power supply spliced into the MagSafe connector.

With his mini Mac Mini board ready to go, he began designing a case to fit what was now a single-board computer. A fan of the channel offered a design reminiscent of the 2019 Mac Pro. Unfortunately, FDM printing struggled with the cheese-grater pattern, so [Snazzy Labs] printed it in resin with some mica powder. As a result, the mini mini looks fantastic while taking up just 28% of the volume of the original.

They’ve posted the STL files online with detailed instructions and a parts list if you want to recreate it at home. Perhaps with the smaller motherboard, it might be worth revisiting the Mac Mini inside a PowerBook hack from a few years ago. Video after the break.
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LCD Screen Windows Are This Summer’s Hottest Case Mod

June 30, 2022 by Lewin Day 21 Comments

Case modding took off in the late 90s, and taught us all that computers could (and should!) look awesome. Much of the aesthetic went mainstream, and now tons of computer cases come with lights and windows and all the rest. [WysWyg_Protogen] realized those simple case windows could be way cooler with a neat LCD hack, and set to work.

The concept is simple. Take an old LCD monitor, remove the backlight and extraneous hardware, and then install it to the window in a computer case. When lit from behind via LEDs in the case, the screen creates a ghostly display through which the computer’s internals can still partially be seen. It’s a really compelling effect, and in theory, quite easy to achieve. All one need do is mount the stripped-down screen to the case and pipe it video from the graphics card.

In practice, it’s a little tricky. Disassembling the screen and removing things like the anti-glare coating can be tough to do without damaging the delicate panel inside. The windows typically used on computer cases can dull the effect, too. However, [WysWyg_Protogen] is continuing to tinker with the project and the results are getting increasingly impressive with each iteration. It doesn’t photograph too well, but it looks truly amazing in motion.

We often forget LCDs are transparent in their basic form, as we generally only use them with backlights or reflective backers. They really do look great when used in this transmissive way, though. Video after the break.

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90s PC With Modern Parts Throws Many Off Track

February 24, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 17 Comments

When building a desktop computer, usually the budget is the limiting factor. Making sacrifices on one part in order to improve another without breaking the bank is part of the delicate balance of putting together a capable PC. If you’re lucky enough to have the sponsors that [Shank] has though, caution can be thrown to the wind with regards to price for some blisteringly fast parts. Putting them in a ’90s Hot Wheels case to build the ultimate sleeper PC, though, is just icing on the top.

This isn’t quite as simple as replacing a motherboard in a modern PC case, though. The Hot Wheels PC used a mini-ITX standard and is quite a bit smaller than most modern computers outside of something like a Mac Mini. To get the RTX 3060 GPU into the computer the shrouds needed to be removed to save space, plus an unusual 92mm form factor liquid CPU cooler needed to be installed. An equally obscure power supply was included to round out the Ryzen 9 build and after a lot of tinkering eventually all the parts were fitted into this retro case including the original, working floppy disk drive. After that some additional case modding was installed such as RGB lighting, wheels with spinning rims, a spoiler, and an exhaust pipe.

The main issue with this build was temperatures, and both the CPU and GPU were topping out at dangerously high temperatures until [Shank] installed a terrifying 11,000 RPM case fan. With a series of original CRT monitors to go along with this sleeper PC he can have up to 9 displays with surprisingly high video quality thanks to the fundamental properties of CRTs. The video is definitely worth a watch and falls right in line with some of [Shank]’s other console mods that he is famous for such as this handheld Virtual Boy.

Thanks to [Fast Rock Productions] for the tip!

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Enter The Matrix With This Custom PC Side Panel

December 28, 2021 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

With a new Matrix movie out now, it’s hardly a surprise that we’re starting to see more and more projects centered around the franchise’s iconic “Digital Rain” effect. A few particularly unique examples have floated to the top of this virtual tsunami of green-tinted sushi recipes, such as this very slick RGB LED PC side panel built by [Will Donaldson].

In place of the normal clear window in his PC case, [Will] has mounted a black acrylic sheet that has had all of the “code” characters laser-cut from it. Behind that is an array of WS2812B LED strips, nestled into vertically aligned channels that keep the light from bleeding out horizontally. A sheet of frosted plastic is sandwiched between the two, which helps diffuse the light so the individual LEDs aren’t as visible.

All of the LEDs are connected to a NodeMCU ESP8266 by way of a 74AHCT125 level-shifter, though [Will] notes you could certainly use a different microcontroller with some tweaks to the code. As it stands, the user selects from various lighting patterns using two potentiometers and a button that have been mounted next to the panel. But if you were so inclined, it certainly wouldn’t take much to adapt the firmware so that the lighting effects could be triggered from the PC.

The sticklers will note that this means the characters can’t actually change or move, but as you can see in the video below, it still looks quite impressive when the LEDs get going behind them. If you’re looking to recreate the look on a considerably smaller scale, check out this Arduino library that can make it rain on a TFT display with just a few lines of code.

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Cramming A DS Inside A Gameboy

November 16, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 4 Comments

Many holiday recipes and console hacks share a common theme: cramming a thing inside another thing. Whether it’s turducken or a Nintendo DS inside a Gameboy, the result is always unexpected. The chassis for this mod is a humble Gameboy color with a Gameboy SP screen tackled on the top to serve as the secondary display. Unfortunately, this mod lost touch screen functionality, limiting some of the games you can play.

[TheRetroFuture] received the custom handheld from [GameboyCustom], which was somewhat damaged in shipping. The original screw mounts had to be removed and the case glued back together to fit the DS motherboard. So for [TheRetroFuture] to get inside to start troubleshooting involved a razor blade and patience. Testing various points and swapping components got [TheRetroFuture] closer to the root problems. The fix ended up being a few wires that came loose during shipping. Finally, after reseating a display connection and some careful soldering, it booted and started playing games.

Overall, it’s pretty impressive to see Mario Kart DS running on both screens on the tiny handheld. But you might be asking, why? Why shove one handheld inside another handheld? Sometimes it’s to gain new functionality like this Raspberry Pi inside a PSP body. Sometimes, it’s just because we can. Video after the break.

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