Originally posted on my old blog on February 28th, 2006, this articles popularity took down my entire website. Go Daddy then locked me out of my account permanently. Years later I have decided to restore it since the URL still seems to receive hits.
Please note that this is a project that a friend of mine did, not my own.
I hope you enjoy.
"Well, someone had to do it! The infamous Mac Mini NES. It was an idea born out necessity, and a love of the hardware modification arts. Necessity because I owned an internal DVD writer for my previous PC. And with the switch to the mini, I was left to use an IDE to USB adapter (enclosures are expensive), this was a ghetto looking setup. Most of all, the two tone 8-bit console has appealing style and is a famous icon of console gaming, not to mention, ideal dimensions for a desktop system.
Inside you will find simply, a Mac Mini, a DVD writer, and the IDE to USB 2.0 circuitry. I decided the best way to maintain a high level of functionality, would be to keep the bottom and rear of the mini casing. In doing this, all connections on the rear would be neat and well mounted. I did not want to permanently alter the Mini (at first) so I placed the USB port for the IDE circuit case mounted. As opposed to soldering to the mac motherboard. The circuit's power connection is also case mounted. A quick little loop of the USB cable over to the Mac's port wouldn't look bad anyway.
I left one important part of the mac visible on the front panel, the white indicator lamp that shows that this is still an Apple. The power button does just what it says, as well as sleep mode. Reset is used to eject the dvd tray. For the controller ports, I found a circuit to enable me to plug in any NES peripheral and use it in emulators."