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PiZeroWed Mac mini

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macmpi edited this page May 18, 2020 · 8 revisions



Our venerable Late 2005 G4 Mac mini died in a thunderstorm, but happilly internal CD/DVD drive was safe:
what a great opportunity to have a perfect housing for a first tiny-radioCD build!

Let's take it all apart, remove motherboard and stuff, just keep DVD Drive, plastic bezel, and stuck-in a tiny PiZeroW as the new mainboard. We just need:

  • PATA to USB board to adapt DVD drive (or slim SATA to USB depending on your drive)
  • USB OTG Y cable for connect PI with then now-USB DVD drive and power source
  • 2 pairs of wires to refactor Power ON/OFF button and unit's front activity LED
  • a decent 2.1A/5v power source with micro USB cable (cable must be capable to draw over 2A !...)


    open view Despite all internal metal frames (could be removed eventually), PizeroW Bluetooth & wifi antenna offer quite decent performance.


Adding the following to usercfg.txt enables PowerON/OFF button and external Activity LED:

# ON/OFF button on GPIO3
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown
# External activity LED on GPIO 21
dtparam=act_led_gpio=21


Pairing a cheap Bluetooth remote such as original Amazon FireTV (or clones) makes a very compelling overall tiny-radioCD unit.
If Wifi is available, a mpc client such as MaximumMPD on iOS adds-in fine complementary UI to the mix!

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