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How I converted a “dead” Apple MacBook to a Mac Pro Ultra Mini.Digg it here

Welcome Digg, Hack A Day, engadget, & GIZMODO users

 A Little Background:  I was given a “dead”  13″ MacBook that had water poured on it.   After taking it apart and testing I found that the motherboard was still good but everything else was dead.   The screen, dvd drive, battery, hard drive, ram, left speaker, CPU fan, top case / keyboard all were fried.  Water seems to be a very good tool in making an $1,100 paper weight.A few hours of solder / hot-gluing I got it up and running with new ram and a new hard drive.  I re-soldered the cooling fan and the right speaker to get them working. The left speaker connection was dead on the motherboard.  The airport card “sees” wireless networks but fails when trying to connect, but the Ethernet port worked.  I ran the unit for a few weeks with an external monitor with no problems.  It works great as a multi-media machine for my LCD TV.Browsing the web I found a Mac Mini Mod to make it look like a Mac Pro.  I started thinking it might be fun to make 20% of a MacBook look like Mac Pro Ultra Mini.  Looking at the motherboard I found it was slightly larger than a full sized hard drive.  Next I found a few external hard drive cases that looked like a Mac Pro.  The first one I found was the iomega UltraMax Pro 33744 Hard Drive.  I couldn’t find a retail site  that sold just the case and at almost $450 was not an option. Then I found the Macally G-S350SUA Aluminum External Enclosure for only $40.It looked like a Mac Pro, front mounted power button, & all aluminum case.

The PDF manual and all the specs I could find listed did not specify the overall case size.  I enlarged the PDF to the actual size scale using the FireWire port to judge scale.   The MacBook’s motherboard is  4.83″ x 7″ inches and doing an estimation I found that the board just might fit in the case.  I also found a Flickr set that had these images.  Looking at the construction I figured I could mod the case to support the motherboard and still have it open up if needed for service.

Once the case arrived (UPS lost it for a week) I set to work taking it all apart and seeing what I had to work with. Click on the images for a larger view

I quickly saw the motherboard wasn’t going to fit without cutting off the bottom of the HD case.  I did see that the case would be tall enough with the legs to house the motherboard.  I also measured for thickness to see if  the notebook hard drive would fit once the motherboard was mounted.  Next I cut parts off of the inner hard drive mount so that all ports would be accessible from behind.  After a few extra cuts and grindings I was ready to attach the motherboard.

Looking at the old Macbook case all the motherboard support mounts were molded into the plastic case.  I decided to reuse some of the plastic, removed all of the metal frame, and cut it down to size. Next I placed small holes in the plastic near the hard drive mount holes on the external hard drive mount frame.  I then zip-tied the old case to the frame.   I was going glue or screw it in place but this gave me some adjustment room if needed.  You can see the cut case and frame below.

You can see the first dry fit below

 

Next came cooling.  I placed 3  1/2″ holes on the top for the cooling fan.  I placed the metal on a wood box to support it while drilling with the drill press.

Once all was aligned I tightened the zip tie and tested for strength.  Finding all was well I moved on to the next step of the power button.  You can see in the images below a small ribbon cable.  The cable runs to the keyboard / track pad / power button / and top-case.    Tracing the power button leads back to the ribbon cable was done with a voltage tester.   I found that if you went from the ground to the fourth pen from the left it would bring up the shut down message box.  This is important because I had the power setting set to “power up” after a power failure.  If I had ever done a shutdown instead of a reboot I couldn’t have powered the notebook back up.  Finding the leads was easy compared to connecting  them to the power switch on the front.  As you can see below they were very small.

Carefully removing the ribbon connection under the track pad and then removing the extra pins,  I soldered the red lead to the 4th pin.  I then scraped off some of the protection coating and soldered the black wire to the ribbon’s ground wire.  I did not connect the green wire which powers the blue LED built into the power button. The LED is much too bright when the lights are out in my living room.

After covering the connections with a hot glue gun I did several tests insuring  a good connection and that no short-circuits were occurring on the other pins. Side note:  I solder about as well as I weld, both are not pretty but they hold

Next step was to mount the hard Drive.   The original configuration used a long cable for the SATA connection so I had some options.  My first thought was about heat so I did not want to mount it above the cooling fan.   Looking at the old case the hard drive is stored inside a metal frame.  Removing  just the “cage” I made a few holes in it.  I used longer screws in one of the CPU heat-sink and the wifi card.    I added some hot glue to the bottom where any contact might be made to prevent shorting.  This still allowed the unit to slide into its  housing while providing a strong mounting spot.   I ran before and after temperature tests using Hardware Montior and found the new configuration runs just a few degrees hotter.

 You can also see I mounted the magnetic power connection on top of the Ethernet port.  I also temporarily added electrical tape to the top of the ram and board to keep down the chance of electrostatic sparking from the desk.  The working right speaker & “sub woofer” are also mounted up front.   The IR and white LED where damaged by the water.

Last I slid it back into the outer case and put a small bar with a screen on it in the center of the back of the case to keep the outer and inner case parts from moving.    That was it!  I now have a Ultra Mini Mac Pro.   I’ve watched a few HD Movies and did some stress test to make sure it would not over heat and all is well.    After a  week or so I’m going to take the out case down to the local high school and use the laser etcher to place an Apple logo on the side.   I will post the finished photos here along with more shots of the finished case.

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Note: I didn’t write this list but I found it reddit.com and thought i would share.

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.

 




6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.