Skip to content

PiZeroWed Mac mini

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 new mainboard. We just need:

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

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

Adding a cheap Bluetooth remote such as original Amazon FireTV (or clones) makes a great overall unit. If Wifi is available, a mpc client such as MaximumMPD on iOS adds decent complementary UI to the mix!

Clone this wiki locally