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Retro Mac Hacker Puts Mini Inside Disk ][ Drive

11:13 am, February 16th, 2009, Giles Turnbull

diskmini-20090211.jpg

Wow, here’s a fantastic hack from the RetroMacCast forum, in which contributor Charles Mangin creates a new body for a Mac mini – using the body of an ancient Apple Disk ][ drive.

The drive door works, so you can open it up to slide in a DVD. The power switch is authentically mounted at the rear, and the "IN USE" light on the front flashes up when the mini is, you know, doing stuff. Superb retro-modern hackery, I love it.

diskii-20090216.jpg

The Disk ][ was an external drive for 5¼ floppies. Released in 1978 for just shy of 500 bucks, this little beast was aimed at Apple ][ owners who wanted to upgrade from cassette tapes for storage. Those, kids, were the days. When floppies were actually floppy. And 114KB of storage per side was considered *plenty*.

Charles has got a Flickr set with more photos and details. Our thanks to him for permission to use the pics, and to James from RetroMacCast for the tip.

Posted by Giles Turnbull in Cult of Mac, Hardware, News, Vintage Tech | Comment on this article

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He is a columnist for PA, and has written for the BBC, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, MacUser, Macworld, and The Morning News. He has a blog you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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18 comments

    Brilliant

    Dann, on February 16th, 2009 at 11:28 am

    It is almost as if the designers of the mini had this mod in mind. The fit is remarkable! Great job Charles!

    James, on February 16th, 2009 at 11:28 am

    I like the ingenuity of the modder!

    OnlineStripVideoPoker, on February 16th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    That’s really cool in a very geeky way. I particularly like the rubber feet marks on the top that are from the other drive that must have sat on top of this one.

    My first computer was an Apple ][ plus with dual floppies and a 16k memory expansion card to bring it up to a whopping 64k.

    I did some rough calculations and my current Mac Pro does 25,600x more CPU cycles per second and it’s got 18,700x more memory.

    Barry Wood, on February 16th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    That is flippin’ sweet! :-)

    Charlie Flowers, on February 16th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    I guess I’ll have to build a square wheel to top this.

    Reality Check, on February 16th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    Are you kidding. With the potential out here…. who gives a crap whether some moron can put a mini in a piece of sheet metal. Now if this kid can get a mini in a can of Spam then bring it on.

    Devo, on February 16th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    Finally! A case mod that I truly like (although some of the steam punk ones are pretty nifty).

    Nscafe Unleaded, on February 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    The actual capacities were 113.75kB and later 140kB. Can’t believe wiki is wrong on this.

    Anyway, cool hack!

    Cheers,
    Nick.

    Nick Westgate, on February 16th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    I may have to give that a go…it would take me back a few years. Of course, my Apple drives were bought surplus years after my ][ was mothballed…all us cool kids had Rana Systems drives and had hacked the Apple DOS to allow extra tracks gaining some 30k of storage per disc…they were $5 each at the time so that was a HUGE gain!

    Gregory Markle, on February 16th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    114 KB was never “plenty”, but it was what you had.

    Bill Coleman, on February 17th, 2009 at 6:12 am

    That rocks! I love love love the ol Apple ][+ //e, ][gs days! I owned one of each... one of the best memories was when my grades slipped, mom took video cord away from me for the //e, I found out it was a RCA speaker wire! If there was a way, we'd figure it out!

    Now if the newton would come back!

    HiHoSilver, on February 17th, 2009 at 7:05 am

    is there something we CAN’T fit some model of mac into? i mean, i’ve seen everything from macbook pro’s made into miniature g5’s to mac mini’s made into B.A. all-in-one’s!

    sleeping_with_cyanide, on February 17th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Now if he can turn a, non-working of course, Apple II into a keyboard, and a, again non-working, Apple monitor into an LCD screen then he’ll have somthing!

    Hirudinea, on February 17th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    @Sleeping_with_cyanide:

    I’m holding out for a mac pro in an altoids tin myself…

    snide, on February 18th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    i’m working on that, actually :)

    there’s enough space inside a II or plus to hold a pretty large RAID, too, tho i think i’ll try with a IIc. it won’t be as authentic – most IIc owners bought them with the updated Disk IIc instead of the Disk II…

    on the other hand, i may just try and wedge the mini in the IIc where the floppy sits…

    Charles Mangin, on February 18th, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    . . . and the next step would be a real Apple ][ running with an LCD monitor http://ferdimh.homelinux.net/a2/a2vga/#how , replacing the ol' keyboard with something a bit more modern http://seb.riot.org/appleII/keyboard.sml , and a smidgen of Ethernet from http://www.a2retrosystems.com/products.htm

    Put the mini 5 1/4" beside an intact 5 1/4" on the top of the ][, add a litle KVM magic . . . . .

    Jongleur, on February 24th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Good one!
    ;)

    3õ

    bob, on March 24th, 2009 at 4:34 am