Mac Mini Pro

[spence4]

I finally found a case I like for my NUC - the iMac G4 mod will have to wait. I am pretty pleased with this thing except that the power LED is red rather than white. As you can see from the pictures, there is room to fit a 2.5 HDD in the case and once I get the right USB cable I will do so. Also contemplating switching out the LED, but that might be a bit of a challenge. Please see the below pics. Not a super in depth pictorial journal, but there wasn't much to do. Thanks to neilhart for helping me with the power switch/LED.

Oh one last thing. I used to hook my NUC up to a 1920x1200 monitor. When I tried connecting it to my tv (1080P) the picture was cut off on all sides - no menubar, bottom of the dock was missing, and the sides were also cropped (I could only see about half of the HD icon) Any thoughts? I changed the graphics mode from 1920x1200x32 to 1920x1080x32 but nothing happened.

EDIT: Solved this by switching the mode on my TV to THX. Weird.

 

[Yannich]

Very nice mod Looks pretty sweet

 

[spence4]

Thanks Yannich,

I'm pretty pleased with it. I had tried tucking it into the old Cub PSU shell, but couldn't come up with a clean power button solution. The added bonus of this case is that it matches the old school Apple monitor, too.

Spence

 

[minihack]

Good job Spence.

Looks like it is probably a pretty quick little case conversion, nicely done. Gets rid of the boring little NUC case and looks like a tiny Mac now.

 

[spence4]

Thanks minihack- you know I always value your compliments.

You are absolutely right; it was a very quick conversion. All I did was remove the PCB that came with the enclosure, made a couple slits for the NUC PCB in the back with my Drexel and used some JB weld for the front two stand offs. The back standoffish don't need the JB weld because the slits in the back keep it in place.

The case is a bit bigger than the NUC, but since it allows for a 2.5 HDD to be placed inside, I think it is a fair trade off. It will make for a very nice complete little computer without the spaghetti in the back.

Since there is no 3.3v on the board, and there is not a lot of space to put one of those 5v to 3.3v dc-dc converters, I am wondering how I should try to make blue tooth work. I have the little BT dongle, but you know me- I would prefer a real apple BT solution. What do I need to solder into the wire connected to the 5v of the USB header to make this work? I have a number of low noise adapters for noctua fans lying around.... Would one of those drop the voltage enough? I assume the way those low noise adapters work is by dropping the 12v from the fan headers to something lower than 12v with a resistor or something.

Here are some pics of the switch. See the black plastic anchors? I suppose I could shave them down, remove the cover and then swap out the LED. There are two LEDs in there, red and blue. I suppose I could get rid of the switches wiring and just plug the leads from my white LED directly into the front panel header. Although it might be easier to just snip the red LED, and put the white one in its place. Thoughts? I full accept - leave the red LED as a suggestion.

 

[rick26]

Hi Spence4!

I was hoping someone would do a mod like this!

I have this hdd case too at home and I use It for my external hdd for back-ups.

Very cool mod!

Rick,

 

[minihack]

Hi Spence,

The classic way of reducing voltage without taking up too much space would be just popping a diode or two in line with the +5v from the USB connection.

The diode itself just needs to be capable of handling the current of the BT unit (which will certainly be 500mA or less - i.e. half an Amp) and you then should choose an appropriate forward voltage drop (Vf) diode - the usual guesstimate for those is 0.7v. Two general purpose diodes in series will get you down to 3.6v at the BT module which would probably be good enough.

I have seen though some people claim that this is not as good as having a proper voltage conversion circuit, so there will be different opinions out there - might be a good idea to read through the various threads about the Apple BT conversion and make your choice form the different solutions offered.
Personally, I just use a tiny BT dongle and leave it at that.

 

[neilhart]

WoW! That is a really nice hack. Clean and attractive. I am impressed.

Good modding,
neil

 

[spence4]

Thanks neilhart,

Highest compliments coming from you. Once I get the proper USB cable I am going to add a 1TB 2.5 HDD into the case for storage, and perhaps create an internal Apple BT solution. I know that i could just cut my current USB cable and wire it up to the USB header on the board, but with the front USB port on the NUC, I think just plugging it in is a cleaner option. Minihack's suggestion of using a tiny BT dongle (I have the Targus one and it works great) is tempting, but that does put a little bit of something on the back and then limits me to one USB port. Of course, who knows why I need USB ports except for the moving of files, but doing it over the LAN is so much faster.

Anyway, so for the running commentary form inside my head on that. Will put up new pictures once the HDD is in and it is up and running.

 

[pagaille]

Congratulation for this real nice mod !

Sorry for the dumb question, but what's that case ? Where does it comes from ?

Yeah, that's probably a really dumb question ;-)

Matthieu