Applefritter - Hacks

Glowing Wallstreet

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:02:47 -0700

When I first got my Wallstreet 250 two years ago, one of the first things I wanted to do was to adapt it to have a glowing logo. About a year and a half passed before I actually had any idea of how to mod the logo. Thanks to digital's directions on the forum page, I've just modded my logo to know, and I thought it would be worth sharing with the Wallstreet owners. The tools: 1. T-8 screwdriver 2. Hard plastic spatula 3. Various small flathead screwdrivers 4. Container for screws 5. Exacto knife 6. Small sanding block with 220 grit (and finer for a more frosted effect) sandpaper The process: [center] I started off with my normal 1998 PowerBook G3 Wallstreet 250. Not a single mod, unless you consider the missing latch a mod. [center] At this point, I removed the plastic covers from the bottom screws and the rubber stoppers from the upper screws. After taking the screws themselves out (upper ones are silver; lower ones are black), I taped them to a sketch of the computer, but they are easy enough to tell apart. Also, before closing the screen, I put the foam pad that was shipped in my iBook over the keyboard to protect it and the screen. [center] Considering I got somewhat lost when it came to taking off the cover, I'll explain how to properly remove it. You must first start by removing the cover over the power and volume buttons. It is very difficult to get the hinge potion of the back cover off without this off. Then, in the back portion of the sides, gently pry the outer cover upward, therefore unclipping it there. At that point, lightly bowing the sides of the bezel out with a spatula will unclip two more clips per each side. From there, there will be 3 clips visible between the hinges. Pushing on each (both sides first, then the center one) will release the back of the screen. From there, you only have to gently lift the rear part of the cover to unlatch the clips at the latch end of the display. [center] With the foil backing visible, I lightly scored it with a exacto knife after determining where the logo was by holding the cover in place and guessing where the center of the logo met the foil. You must score it VERY LIGHTLY, gradually making it thinner where you want to cut. [center] After I scored the backing, I discovered a bulge where a circuit board is. I lightly pressed at the edge of that board on one of my scored lines, cutting a small hole. At that point I simply had to pull up the square I had cut out (along with the paper beneath the foil). I made the peeling easier by cutting along the scores again with the exacto knife, but the shiny surface beneath the foil and paper is the LCD itself, so you must avoid touching it at all costs. [center] After having finished cutting out the hole in the backing, I carefully opened the display-being conscious of the display cables- and turned on the computer to make sure the screen hadn't been harmed. Seeing the LCD was fine, I took a sneek peak at the glow from the it in pitch black. This picture isn't very good, but the glow is a rather eerie purple that fades to the metal surface when brought back in light. Afterwards, I shut down the computer, closed it, and covered the back of the LCD. [center] Moving on the the back cover itself, I tried my original idea of soaking a rag in rubbing alcohol and leaving it on top of the painted plastics of the logo. The paint held up against the alcohol, so I decided to tape off the plastics around the logo, and simply sand off the paint in circular motions. Once the paint was gone, I kept sanding with the same motion to give the logo a frosted appearance. I used 220 grit paper, but I think that the results might have been better if I were able to use a finer paper afterwards. [center] This is the cover against daylight after the paint had been removed. It's very translucent and appears white, but light transfers through it very well as the picture shows. [center] Putting the cover back onto the display was probably as hard as taking it off depending on where you start. I began with trying to line up the clips around the latch. With the cover lined up, I snapped the sides back in place followed by the clips between the hinges. The latch edge is much harder however. The cover must be pressed down into the bezel plastics and back toward the hinges at the same time to force the plastics back into the clips. After that, the only thing to do is open the display, put the screws back in their proper locations, and put the covers back on. In the end, my logo looked just like it did before I started, which is just what I wanted. [center] In pitch black, however, the normal looking logo actually glows a dim purple. It's not noticeable in the picture, but it's very cool in person. So after 3 hours sitting on the floor with my PowerBook, trying to force the plastics to do what I wanted, I finally have the glowing logo I desired. There are probably ways of getting it brighter that I haven't though of, but I like the purple as it is. I hope this page was of use to any Wallstreet (or maybe other PB G3) owners, and I'd very much like to see anyone else's results after having tried this. Note that I am not responsible for you damaging your PowerBook in any way. The LCD is fragile, and must be treated accordingly. Breaking any clips around the rear cover of bezel will not cause any harm. The screws and remaining clips will hold the display together just fine.

3.5" hard drive on laptop/Mac Mini internal IDE

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 10:45:06 -0800

[thumb:10851 left hspace=5 vspace=5]Want a cheap way to add storage and speed to a stationary laptop that might not have Firewire or USB 2.0? Disappointed that your Mac mini uses a puny little laptop hard drive? If you've got a desktop hard drive that you'd like to connect to either of these, it's possible with a little work. I did this with a stripped-down graphite iBook that I've been using as a server, and had all kinds of trouble finding information until I realized that the process would be very similar for a Mac mini and started searching for that. There are two different obstacles to connecting a 3.5" desktop hard drive to a computer designed for a 2.5" laptop hard drive. Getting data across is the relatively easy, but meeting the higher power requirements of the larger drive can be a bit more difficult. [thumb:10853 right hspace=5 vspace=5]Data is simple because the first 40 pins of the 44-pin, 2mm pitch connectors used for 2.5" drives have the same pinout as the 40-pin, 2.54mm pitch connectors used for 3.5" drives. All you need is an adapter that changes the pitch of these pins. Such adapters are quite common, as they are used to attach 2.5" drives to the 40-pin connectors in desktop PCs. These adapters are available with both male and female 40-pin connectors. If you get an adapter with a male 40-pin connector, you will need a standard IDE ribbon cable, which has the potential to connect multiple drives (assuming the IDE controller can handle this, I haven't tried it). If you get one with a female 40-pin connector, it will connect directly to the 3.5" drive. [thumb:10854 left hspace=5 vspace=5]They will generally have a female 44-pin connector to connect directly to the 2.5" drive, but the Mac mini needs a male one. The only one that I've seen with a male 44-pin connector is Adam Eberbach's adapter specifically designed for the Mac mini. See [url=http://www.macmod.com/content/view/273/2/]his article[/url] for more information. This adapter is a custom PCB that converts a male 40-pin connector to a male 44-pin connector, which is necessary to connect to the Mac mini's female 44-pin connector. Printing custom PCBs isn't cheap, but since the adapter was so small he was able to make a bunch of them and sell the extras for $23. Personally, I would have just used a 44-pin gender changer and a standard adapter.[thumb:10855 right hspace=5 vspace=5] The problem with this is that a standard 44-pin gender changer will reverse the even- and odd-numbered pins (pin 1 becomes pin 2 and vice versa, etc.). Adam gave up on them at that point, but a proper gender changer can be constructed with two of these and a short length of 44-pin IDE ribbon cable for about $13 according to Froogle, less if you're a keen eBay buyer. Of course, if you're working with a laptop that has a male 44-pin connector on the board, you can use the female connector on the adapter and not worry about any of this. Powering the drive is a bit trickier. These adapters commonly have a molex connector wired to the last 4 pins of the 44-pin side to power a 2.5" drive from the power supply in a PC, but you're converting in the other direction. A 2.5" drive has two +5 VDC pins (one for logic, one for the motor) and two ground pins, but 3.5" drives use 12-volt motors. [thumb:10857 left hspace=5 vspace=5]Theoretically, you could use the 5 volts intended for the laptop drive for logic and steal 12 volts from elsewhere in your laptop/Mac mini to power the motor, but I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, you can use a separate power supply with a molex connector. This can be a standard PC power supply (which will usually need a jumper on the motherboard connector to work, search for information about using your specific power supply as a secondary one for instructions) or you can use a single-device power supply from an external drive as I did. I pulled one out of an old SCSI CD-ROM drive, but you can also use one from a hard drive enclosure. In fact, keeping the drive inside an enclosure might be a good idea. [thumb:10858 right hspace=5 vspace=5]However you power your drive, you should make sure that it shares a ground connection with the logic board. I'm not sure I entirely understand the purpose of this, but all of the guides for using parallel power supplies say that Very Bad Things (tm) can happen if you don't, so I didn't want to tempt fate. I connected my drive's power through a short extension that had extra wires for powering a CPU fan, and connected the ground wire to the adapter's ground pins. Now your drive is powered and able to talk to the logic board. All that's left to do is figure out where you want to put your new 3.5" drive, as it probably won't fit where the 2.5" one was. This is an exercise for the reader, because your specific hardware will determine your options. In my case, I cut off a small piece of my clamshell iBook's case to allow it to sit in the space where the optical drive is supposed to go and put the power supply in the battery compartment, since both of these components were non-working and had already been removed. [image:10852 width=600]

SportPod

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:46:08 -0800

I recently found a need for a sturdy iPod case -- one that would hold the iPod safely and provide substantial protection, preferably from the elements. This need arose when my fiancée got a new job and, having neither a driver's license nor a car, she needed to start taking the bus to work. It's a long commute, and not the safest one either. She likes to listen to her iPod, but of course was afraid of being mugged if she had it out in the open. She'd been making do by leaving her iPod in her purse, but that became a hassle with the headphone cord becoming tangled, and also having to dig through her purse to find the iPod when she wanted to change the volume or track. (Naturally, she doesn't use the Apple headphones -- she'd be asking to get mugged if she wore those.) I was surfing at work one day and came across an article on [url=http://www.engadget.com]Engadget[/url] about the [url=http://www.retropod.com]RetroPod[/url], an iPod case made out of an old Sony Sports Walkman. This struck my interest as this seemed to be the perfect solution to my fiancée's problem. It would allow her to keep the iPod out in the open, but disguised -- any casual observer would think she was simply listening to the radio or a tape. Unfortunately, the RetroPod was expensive, and eventually sales got shut down by Sony because Sony felt that it would make people mistakenly think they made iPods (whatever). But the design made me remember that I had an old sports radio laying around, so I decided to make my own RetroPod. I call mine the SportPod. The sports radio isn't Sony. In fact, it's a piece of junk made by Wilson (yeah, the same people who make basketballs). It had an analog tuner and cassette player, and the audio quality wasn't particularly good. [i]The donor sports radio for the SportPod project.[/i] Unfortunately, I didn't take many photos of the construction process, but that's OK in the end because the specific steps taken will vary greatly with the donor radio. What's nice about this one is that there's a decent amount of weatherproofing to it, so hopefully the iPod will stay nice and dry. I don't expect it to be submersible or anything, but it should be able to withstand a bit of rain easily. With this radio, all I really needed to do to gut it was to remove several screws from the inside and the cassette mechanism and circuit boards came out in one piece. I then shaved down the internal plastic standoffs and some other structures for the battery compartment, and was left with a completely empty shell. Thankfully, the rubber cassette transport buttons are attached to the case itself, not the innards, so I didn't need to do anything special to keep them in place. The headphone jack was soldered to the circuit board, so I needed to find a replacement. Luckily, a spare panel-mount 3.5mm stereo jack I had fit perfectly. [url=http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103452&cp=&pg=1&kw=panel-mount&parentPage=search]This one[/url] is the one I used. With the securing nut in place, it fit perfectly in the headphone jack cutout on the case, and all I needed to do was superglue it in place. I didn't want to just provide a passthrough audio connection, because it would mean having to open the case in order to change the volume. I had originally toyed with the idea of somehow creating a passthrough connection so the iPod's corded remote control could be used, but that would involve two things: First, I'd have to source the female jack, which would likely involve finding a dead iPod to scavenge it from (which would be relatively costly, as even broken iPods can fetch a decent amount on eBay). Second, it would mean I'd have to find a male jack, which would mean I'd have to cannibalize a remote control. When the cost of the broken iPod and remote control were totaled, it would have cost me way too much to be worth the effort. I decided instead to at least provide an external volume control for the headphone jack. The volume and tuning knobs were secured to the sports radio by a bolt that threaded right into the potentiometer on the circuit board. That board being gone, I had to come up with another way to interface the external volume knob with a potentiometer. While digging through my parts bin, I found one of [url=http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102975&cp=2032057.2032187&cp=2032057&f=Taxonomy%2FRSK%2F2032187&categoryId=2032187&kwCatId=2032057&kw=volume&parentPage=search]these[/url]. It's an inline volume control, with a right-angle miniplug on one end and a potentiometer in the middle. With some careful cutting and soldering, I got it wired up to the minijack mounted in the casing and, with the help of some superglue, got it mounted in the case. I had cut off one side of the potentiometer casing, so the entire surface of the dial was visible. I glued it to the casing so the dial faced the hole the volume control sat in. All I needed to do was superglue the volume control to the dial. The tuning knob was just superglued in place; it's just a dummy now (along with the rest of the switches, which are also glued in place). [i]Only the volume knob and headphone jack are functional on the SportPod. The rest are superglued in place.[/i] The rest of the hack was pretty easy. I found some dense open-cell foam and carefully cut it into three pieces. The first was the liner for the lid, which I made a little notch in so it wouldn't get hung up when the case was closed. The second was a 1/4" sheet that lined the bottom. The third was the sides that held the iPod in place and provided cushioning agaist side impacts. All the pieces were held in place with hot glue. All I had to do was drop in the iPod, plug in the headphone cable, close the case and I was set. [i]The final product. Note the cutout in the foam on the lid to allow the case to close properly.[/i] [i]The SportPod sans iPod. The iPod is protected on all sides by foam padding.[/i] [i]Closeup of the internal headphone jack. The black piece between the foam and the side of the case is the volume control. The external headphone jack is to the right of the volume control and hidden under the foam. To prevent the possibility of a short, the solder joints on the external headphone jack were coated with hot glue.[/i] I paid a total of $8 for this hack, and that was just for a new tip for my Weller WLC-100 soldering iron. If you had none of the parts, I'd estimate the total cost at about $30 (assuming you found a cheap sports radio on eBay or something). This hack required a lot of attention to detail, but I say that only because I wanted it to look good.

Darth Maul PowerBook

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:04:43 -0700

[center][image:3210][/center] Basically what I have done is replace the metal inserts on the top and bottom of the machine's outer plastics. I obtained some unpainted panels from a friend of mine in PowerBooks, which already had adhesive on them. Since the original panels has started to come loose at the edges, I started there. Using a heat gun, I applied heat to the metal panel and gently peeled it up using a pair of pliers. It took about an hour for each panel. I discovered that it was easiest if I left the machine fully assembled with 2 batteries in it for weight. Once the old yucky black panels were removed I cleaned the plastic with alcohol and applied the replacement panels. No, I cannot get more replacement panels for you. [center][image:3211][/center] I then removed the rear display housing leaving the front housing and display still attached to the machine. Utilizing an Exacto knife I carved away the black plastic inside the cover right above and below the white Apple logo insert. When I was satisfied with the size, I mounted a T-1 sized red LED on either side with the lenses pointed towards the center of the Apple logo. Do not use an accelerator if you use cyanoacryllate to attach the LED's. The accelerator will dissolve the white coating on the Apple logo. For power I tapped the 5V line going to the microphone apmlifier board. Make sure you wire this circuit in parallel, not in series with the microphone power line or you will reduce the dynamic range of the microphone. The LED's I purchased were rated at 20mAh maximum current. From the 5V line I went through a series of resistors to limit the current, the each LED in series, ending at the ground wire on the microphone amplifier. I calculated the resistor values using Ohm's law (V=ir). In this case 5V(minus 1.2V drop per LED) = .02A(r) solving alegraically, r=130 ohms. There is no such thing as a 130 ohm resistor so I wired 2 47 ohm resistors in parallel, then in series with a 100 ohm resistor arriving at the value of 123.5 ohms. Considering the 5% tolerance on these resistors, it's close enough for government work. Doing the math again with that value I see that I will be allowing 21.05 mAh of current through the circuit. Running the LED's 5% over thier rated spec is nothing to be concerned with; it simply means that I have to dissipate an additional 2.7 milliwatts of heat. An LED can easily tolerate that. In fact it would take a pretty darn precise instrument to even measure the change. Finally before reassembly, I glued all the components down and covered the contacts with capton tape. I will probably pour epoxy over them later. When later finally came I decided to remove the original LED's and install a pair of high intensity red LED's that are each 3 times brighter. It now shows up even in daylight. Also I changed the circuit so that each LED has it's own 100 Ohm resistor. I'm not adding anymore pictures as the camera flash still obliterates it. [center][image:3212][/center] The LEDs are bright enough to be seen indoors, and seen very well in dim light. However, the camera flash is too bright to photograph it well. Here is one without a flash: [center][image:3213][/center] I must emphasize STRONGLY that this project should not be attempted unless you are comfortable with wiring basic electronic circuits, are very very patient, and you are brave/stupid enough to risk destroying several thousand dollars of machinery for a cool red light. [center][image:3214][/center]

Bruiser

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:58:47 -0700

[center][image:3205][/center] Note the Blue LED I installed behind the Apple logo. It blinks whenever the disk array is accessing. [b]How I installed the LED:[/b] Basically I used a standard T-3/4 sized Blue LED. You can buy a mounting grommet for that size and then drill a 1/4 inch hole in the metal behind the apple logo. To locate the hole you should remove the front cover, remove the apple logo, and replace the front panel without it. You should indent the center of that area with a centerpunch or a pointy phillips screwdriver and a hammer (Don't worry, the steel of any decent screw driver is many times harder than the soft sheet metal of your G3.) You should remove the front cover before drilling and also you should consider that some small metal shavings will fall inside your machine if you aren't ready to catch them. Have a friend hold a paper cup under the drill site while you drill. To drive the LED, do not ever hook it up to the power supply directly or it will light very very brightly for about 1/10 of a second and get very hot. You have two choices. If you want it on all the time, wire the LED into the 5V supply with a 100 ohm resistor in series to limit the current. Or, if you have a SCSI card or hard drive with and LED output, you can simply hook it up to that. LED's are polarity sensitive, but it won't hurt them if you hook them up backwards. Be sure to consult the directions that came with your LED as they are not all created equal. If your LED only comes with a maximum current rating you can calculate the resitor value algebraically using the formula "voltage = current X resistance" Since you know the voltage of your supply is 5V and you know the maximum current rating of the LED, calculating the resistance is simple. Don't be surprised if you can't find the precise value of resistor you calculated, just be sure to buy the next highest value rather than the next lowest. If you can't find a proper resistor you can run the equation again using the 12V supply. If you're still stuck you can get creative by putting resistors in series and adding thier values or putting them in parallel and dividing thier values. Make sure to test the resistance with a meter before trying the circuit if you are not experienced in calculating complex resistor values. Also, you should run the formula again and calculate the current flowing through your resistor to be sure that you don't smoke it, either. [center][image:3206][/center] The marbling effect is cased by inconsistant translucency of the clear panels. [center][image:3207] [image:3208][/center] By painting the inside of the plastics, I was able to preserve the shine of the front panel. The Configuration: [list][*]Dual 500MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) processors with 1MB of 250MHz cache [*]512MB of PC100 RAM [*]140 GB hard drive [*]True 52x Kenwood CD-ROM [*]16MB Rage 128Pro AGP Graphics Card [*]Airport [*]Adaptec 3950U2W SCSI card [*]Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card[/list]

PowerBook 3400 Pictureframe

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 13:50:37 -0800

[center][thumb:2359][/center] After seeing projects like the [url=http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalframe/]Duo Digital Frame[/url] and others online, I thought I'd try my hand at it. Instead of hunting down a Duo or Powerbook 100 for a 4x6'' frame, I decided to go for an 8x10'' size (or 800x600 resolution) to display my travel photos. I have, or had, a PowerBook 3400c that had been surplussed from work due to a dead CD ROM drive, the replacement cost of which is about the same as buying another used 3400. The trackpad button also had some issues, but otherwise, the 3400 was in pretty good repair - no spots on the screen, for one thing. And so it began, as most of these project do, with disassembly. As with every Mac model, Apple provides assembly and repair instructions for the 3400 [url=ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Misc/Service/servicemanuals/powerbook_3400c.g3.pdf]here[/url]. Don't lose that Torx #6. Once the 'book was apart - completely apart - I set aside all the parts I didn't need, everything but the motherboard, power supply, RAM, hard drive and LCD. If anybody needs a 3400 keyboard, trackpad, bezel, case, speakers... call me :) [center][thumb:2360][/center] [i]update: In a recent overhaul of the 3400 frame, I put the speakers back in, so I can now, potentially, have the tiny little speakers sound off alarms or something. I don't have any real use for putting them in, but I thought I'd find something eventually.[/i] With all that taken out, I needed to be sure the PowerBook still worked for what I wanted to do with it. So i hooked everything that was left back together (on the coffee table in my living room) and fired it up. With thoughts to making the frame wireless, I popped in a WaveLAN Silver PC card and configured it so I could control the 3400 from my iBook via AirPort with Timbuktu, load new photos onto it, etc. It's a lot easier this way than trying to hook up a keyboard and mouse to the ADB port which, at this point in the build, I couldn't be sure was going to be accessible. [i]update: if you look at the [url=http://www.applefritter.com/node/2356]detail[/url] you can see where the ADB port is, next to the AC power in the upper right. it's accessible when the lid is opened, and comes in handy for soft reboots and making occasional tweaks.[/i] [center][thumb:2357][/center] At this point, I also wrote an AppleScript to manage the tasks of 1) randomizing the photos to be displayed, 2) copying the photos to a RAM disk, as I could never get the contents of the RAM disk to be saved between boots, and 3) kicking off the slideshow. At first, I had intended to use JPEGView set to display the photos at random, fade between, etc. But I noticed one problem with JPEGView: the cursor! So I poked around amongst my old utilities and dug up KPT QuickShow, which does slideshows with configurable fades and delays, but doesn't do random, hence that step in the AppleScript. The JPEGs and slideshow software are on a RAM disk, so the hard drive can spin down and the frame can run almost silent. [center][thumb:2356][/center] [i]update: Instead of a RAM disk, I've updated the script to copy images to a 16 meg PCMCIA flash memory card that acts as a little hard drive, just big enough to hold about 25 photos. The advantage of this, in addition to being flash and thus maintaining its contents between reboots, and the continued silent operation of the pictureframe, is that the limited RAM of the powerbook can be used for the system and slideshow program. cutting into the RAM for the RAM disk posed too many problems (a memory leak somewhere, the setting reverting every time power was cut out). It also comes in handy to shuttle files to and from the machine, now that the waveLAN card is being put to use elsewhere, in one of my Newton MessagePad 2100s.[/i] [i]update again: I've posted my applescript in [url=http://www.applefritter.com/blog/3795]my blog[/url]. share and enjoy.[/i] Then came the woodwork. Quarter-inch poplar (probably my favorite material to work with) was cut, sanded, stained, burnished, and attached with hot glue and some scrap quarter-round for strructure. (Remember, measure twice; cut once.) I lay the screen into the frame and attached it with double-sided tape, then built the rest on top of that with a combination of double-sided tape and white masking tape. [center][thumb:2363][/center] I left the top panel of the frame free so the necessary ports on the motherboard could still be accessed. You can see the AC power plug, the ADB port, and PCMCIA slots. The wireless card is removed during normal operation so I can use it elsewhere, but its a simple matter to pop it in and update the scripts or upload photos. On the far right in this shot, you can see where the hard drive is mounted. [center][thumb:2361] [thumb:2362] [thumb:2358][/center] I took some pains to get the little details on the outside of the frame to look right, despite the mess that's on the inside. For one, I needed a way to power up the 3400 without a keyboard and without taking half the frame off. So I drilled a small hole in the frame opposite the reset button on the motherboard and inserted a... um.. well, it's a chopstick from some carryout Chinese food. I didn't have any dowel on hand, and the chopstick tapers perfectly to hit the button on the motherboard. I also cut a notch in the frame to thread the power cable through, so the frame can sit flush to the wall it's hanging on. The final result is a nice addition to my living room, and leaves a lot of room for improvement. For one, I'd like to keep the wireless card in place, and put together an applescript to grab images off my network, rather than having to pre-load them onto the hard drive myself. There's also the possibility of using it to display things like the weather map or scrolling headlines, but showing off my vacation photos is enough for now. Maybe I'll use the PowerBook 190 I've got in the closet for the other stuff, once I find a power supply for it.

Mighty Kat!

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 15:19:00 -0700

[center][image:3200][/center] My most current project is customizing one of my home grown PowerBooks. This machine is based on the PowerBook 2400/240, which was only sold in Japan. The Japanese are rather fanatical about customizing thier machines. They have available to them a plethora of vinyl sheeting that can be applied with a heat gun. Unfortunately, it's hard to make the vinyl conform to oddly shaped pieces, so they tend only to do the big parts. I have decided to paint mine. I have selected as my pigment Pactra "True Blue Pearl" metallic part #RC293. The pictures really don't do this color justice. My digital camera's compression just eats up the sparklies. Pactra is nice because it's thin enough to fill in the embossments around the ports and because it has an agressive polycarbonate solvent that makes it polymerize as part of the plastic, therefore making it very tough. It takes about 3 days to cure completely and I should warn you that it's profoundly stanky. I do mean stanky. Use it outside on a warm day. The downsides are that because it's thin I have to sand all the texture off the plastic, and pactra does not cure with a high gloss finish. After I'm satisfied with coverage and it's cured fully, I plan on shooting it with some acryllic clear coat that I can later wax to a new car shine. [center][image:3201][/center] Sanding every surface is a long, boring, tedious, and very thereputic process. I enjoy sitting out on my balcony on a mild bay area summer day sanding and painting. Given the amount of overtime I've been working, projects like these keep me from climbing the nearest clocktower and shooting my co-workers. Yes I know you guys are reading this and you all know what kind of a nut I am. My roomate thinks I'm completely off my rocker. Some day I shall endeavor to buy a rocking chair and fall off of it periodically. Sorry the picture of the bottom is a bit out of focus. [center][image:3202][/center] I now have 2 coats of Pactra on every piece and I must admit it's turning out quite nice. The color is opacifying properly, and it's even picking up a shine. I'm all out of Pactra now so I won't be able to do any more until the hobby store re-opens after the holiday, which means next weekend at the earliest. I wish they sold the stuff in cans bigger than 3 ounces. I had to apply some liquid mask to the IR window to protect it from overspray as well. I still plan on doing at least 3 coats of Pactra and then 2 coats of clear acryllic. Hopefully this project be done in the next few weeks. I have a spare mouse button and I'm considering painting it and the PCMCIA eject buttons a crimson red. I'll probably paint the mouse button first, see how it looks, and then decide. I've also been debating whether or not I should buy a blue translucent keyboard from MacImports or not. It looks cool but it's kinda expensive for a computer I will hardly use. [i]Update 9/19/99[/i] All of the parts are fully painted and several are now clearcoated. The clear coat takes several hours to dry so this is going to take some time. After that I need only to wax it up and I'm good to go. I also found a T1 sized blue LED that I'll replace my sleep light with. No new pictures yet. It doesn't look that different from above. [i]Update 9/26/99[/i] Almost everything is clearcoated at least partially. This stuff takes so long to dry that progress is very slow. Look how shiny that is! [center][image:3203][/center] [i]Update 12/8/99[/i] Not much progress has been made. The rainy season is upon us and it always either too cold or wet (or both) to paint. The laquer takes so long to dry that dust gets in it. Still, I'm watchful for a sunny weekend... Also I have gotten an EVIL idea. The 20th Anniversary iMac. Not till new year at least though.

UFO Mouse

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 12:25:46 -0700

by Anonymous [center][thumb:1880][/center] To open the mouse first remove the ball and cover. Then using a small screwdriver pry up the blue plastic trim. Remove both trim pieces and this will reveal two small philips head screws (remove). Now the top and bottom halves can be separated by pulling them apart. This takes a bit of work the first time. Now that you are inside the mouse, solder on a LED to the main board as shown. The voltage here is 5 volts. Radio Shack sells a Blue LED that is designed to run at 5 volts (part # 276-311) This is ideal because no dropping resistor is needed. When connecting the LED, connect the negative side to the pin #4 (right side) and the Positive side to pin #1 (left side). [center][thumb:1881][thumb:1882][/center] [center][thumb:1883][/center] Reassemble mouse and plug into computer, you now have a lighted mouse! A fellow named Kevin wrote the submitter of this page with a slightly different method of adding a light to an iMac mouse. The above picture was taken using this method "I felt the intensity of the LED pointing upward was too concentrated, so I popped the mouse open again and drilled a small hole into the plastic housing where the ball resides... that way I could point the LED straight into the ball chamber. I get more of a diffused lighting effect and you can even see the ball rolling around."

Apple FireWire case

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 12:44:39 -0700

I have found a use again for the old Apple branded, and manufactured by Lacie, external SCSI drives. I was inspired to convert a case into a FireWire unit one day looking through the store at fwdepot.com. They sell boards that can be added into an external hard drive enclosure to add FireWire capabilities. These boards do not convert SCSI to FireWire, the old SCSI drive has to be junked and replaced with an IDE drive that connects to the FireWire board. The board I selected was the 142AS bridgeboard. for 69 dollars. There is unit a little cheaper (142AV) but space was a concern so I went with what I thought would be the easiest to fit in the case. This is by no means an example on how to save money. I was just interested in converting old hardware into something useful again. I like the fact it has the Apple logo and at first glance it looks just the same as before the change. This drive also has a an internal power supply that allows you to use a standard power cord so you don’t have to carry around an external power brick for your case. Many new 3.5�? and larger Firewire drives use those stupid power bricks. If you need a drive that you can move around easily choose the smaller laptop size drives or get 3.5�? drive that has a built-in power supply. Usually the built-in ones are a little more robust as well. The first few pictures here document the features these drives have for people who are not familiar with them. I know that at one point they came in 2, 4, and 9 gig sizes. [center][thumb:1647] [thumb:1648][/center] Taking this case apart is not real difficult as long as you are not in a hurry. I started with the 2 screws on the back next to the SCSI connectors. There are 4 feet on the case that can be moved around to allow the case to stand straight up or rest on its side. For this conversion 2 of the feet need to vacate so the case can be opened. [center][thumb:1653][/center] Taking things slow pays at this point. I had to set the case on its side and pry the top portion away from the bottom. I started at the pry points located at the front of the case and opened that part of the case just enough that it wouldn’t snap back into place. Next I did the same thing on the rear 2 pry points. Then I swung the top portion up like the hood on a car so that the rear was the hinge point. Then I had to pry the rear part a little more for the top part of the case to come off. Take a look at the pictures to see why I had to pry things apart gently. [center][thumb:1645] [thumb:1649][/center] Now I was into the case and thinking I was home free for removing the old hard drive, I was wrong. The HD is mounted to the chassis from the bottom. To get to those screws you need to remove six screws so you can separate the plastics from the metal chassis. The first four screws are pretty easy to locate but the last 2 are in the mix of wires near the power supply. There is a nice big capacitor in there and I made sure not to test and see if it was still charged up. [center][thumb:1652][/center] From this point things got pretty easy for a bit. I removed the HD from the chassis, and unscrewed the old SCSI connectors from the back of the chassis. As you can see from picture just showing the chassis it looks like there is a lot of room. You can also see the power cable zip tied to the chassis. I had to cut the the cord from the chassis later because of space issues. I also removed the SCSI ID selector cable, it was a nice easy to remove plug. I left the actual selector in place because I had nothing to put in its place. I tried to think of something useful to put there but came up empty. [center][thumb:1654][/center] I wanted to stay away from them but the next part required power tools. Unfortunately I moved recently and couldn’t find my Dremel so I couldn’t cut off these annoying little tabs located on the chassis in the exact spot that the bridgeboard needs to go. (see picture) So I bent them up with a pair of pliers. Not the prettiest way, but it sure was easy. With the tabs bent up I tested the board in the opening and found that the old screw holes from the SCSI connectors did not match up with the holes on the board. I wouldn’t normally use a drill to make the holes on the chassis bigger but I couldn’t wait to get it all done so I used the drill bit to grind away some of the chassis. I need a new drill bit now but it worked. With the bridgeboard in I soon realized I should have mounted the new IDE drive to the chassis first so I had to remove the board and put the HD in followed by the board. I would still suggest doing the fitting of the board before you mount the HD though. In the 2nd picture below you can see the the board directly behind the new HD and I do mean directly. If you don’t put the board in the top opening there is no way you can hook the power and IDE cable to the HD. [center][thumb:1651] [thumb:1644][/center] To make things appear nice and neat I took apart one of the original SCSI connectors and used it to fill the hole under the bridgeboard. [center][thumb:1650][/center] Once the board is in I just reversed the steps and put things back together. After a few days of use I didn’t like the noise from the fan and the rattling that came from the long IDE cable flopping around in the case. The cable is extra long and comes with the board. It is longer than I needed because the board is designed to be used with 2 IDE devices if you want. I popped the case open again and strapped the thing down real good so it will never move again. While I was in there I replaced the fan with a different one. I could do that because to be honest we have 3 of these cases and I just fired them all up to see which one had the best fan and then ripped that one out and put it in the modified case. The odd thing was how the other case had a soldered on SCSI selector cable and the HD power cord was routed completely different. So I guess that the build process at the factory was not always the same. [center][thumb:1646][/center] The new drive works great. Only problem I have had is trying to use it with 10.2.6 and my Newertech FW Cardbus card on my Wallstreet PB. During my initial testing of the case it refuses to mount on the desktop. If I boot into OS 9 it works fine with the case. Other FW drives I use work fine with this setup so I am not sure why this bridgeboard does not seem to be compatible. Doesn’t really matter since the drive is going to be used at work for backups and will most likely never be used again on my Wallstreet. I did some benchmarking at work and found that using OS 9 was a lot slower than OS X in the transfer of files. (by minutes) I don’t know if this is due to the kind of bridgeboard or the OS in general. I tried on multiple systems and got the same horrible results. I haven’t moved files in OS 9 with FW in a while and the results came as a surprise. I will have to test with some of our other FW drives and see the results.