While the vast majority of recent
Mac modifications have dealt with the
headless Mac Mini, the Toolman decided to go a different route with his gutted 17-inch
Apple Studio Display. As with most mods, he simply had too many enticing parts lying around without a proper home, and chose to combine them using whatever it took, resulting in a Mac-ish clone at worst, and a sweet all-in-one computer at best. After heavy modifications to front button PCBs, adding a mic for
VoIP usage, rewiring everything numerous times, "butchering" an i2c bus, and using a heat gun to make the pesky plastic conform to his wishes, he still had to get the thing to boot up. After initial memtest errors and a few bouts with frustration, he finally loaded Ubuntu
Linux successfully from the external optical drive. He also noted that the possibility remained open to one day affix a slot-loading drive, but left it out initially due to the inability to truly find an "elegant place" to install it. Regardless, this well-constructed
mod most certainly didn't come easy, and for those who'd dare give something like this a go on their own, be sure to continue on for a look at the YouTube demonstration, and hit the read link for a bevy of photos.
[Via
Digg]
posted Nov 28th 2006 3:53PM
thats awesome i want one!
Looks really rather like the original iMac, only with a clear case!
that would have worked a lot better with a mac mini, but it's a very good mod. deserves a slap for putting anything other than mac on it though =p
Hehe I would have but mini ITXes wouldn't run OSX very easily... and its illegal?
guy needs to learn how to edit video....
nice mod though, and shinier than my mini-itx in a hp network scanjet 5 project http://www.instructables.com/id/EPT3VYMQUKEP287AM3/?ALLSTEPS
yeah he does! i tried to teach him... but he failed to learn. Maybe next time Toolbox you can does some snappy editing eh? Hehe, in all case, the video wasnt really supposed for public viewing. Thanks for checking it out!
Hey, I have one of those displays...if anyone wants to make one, I'm sellin.
Yeah, I'm looking to offload one myself.
I think it looks great but the only reason I'd say it's a bad idea is because he threw an LCD panel (limited viewing angles) into a less mobile CRT housing. LCD's are great for the light weight and ease of posability -- an old Apple studio monitor is not.