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Mac mini to PC Hack
DiZASTiX writes "Kevin Rose, the ever so popular host of G4/TechTV's The Screen Savers, has managed to fit a PC inside the Mac mini. 'I've seen a ton of articles around the web lately comparing the Mac mini to the near full size desktop PC. What they fail to compare is the amount of computing power per square inch you get with the Mini. So, I decided to take it upon myself to create the fastest PC possible with the size constraints of the Mini's small form factor.' The article covers most everything he did and includes pictures."
Not that I don't think that's a cool or challenging thing to do, but how exactly is that a hack?
From the article: "Additional thoughts: Due to size restrictions, fitting a CD-ROM drive in the mini enclosure would be impossible with this motherboard. Luckily, this motherboard supports pretty much every external bootable device, including bootable CD-ROM and USB thumb drives."
You should not only fit a CD-ROM, but actually a DVD-RW combo. In other words, you have failed to fit a PC in Mac Mini, so comparing its speed or price is quite pointless. I hate to say it as a PC user, but the result of this experiment is clear: Mac: 1, PC: 0.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Call me Rip Van Winkle, because I must have taken a nap for too long and missed out on the beginning of perhaps the most annoying, selfish comments to hit blogdom. It's like the freakin' Avon of the Internet on that page with everyone trying to get referrals for their own mini Mac.
Give the man props for his work on his site, don't be a smarmy pissant and use the popularity of his work to increase your chances at winning a Mac mini. If it's so precious and you have to have it, sell your current machine, get a part time job, and actually make the $500 it takes to buy the thing.
I am curious as to how many blog sites have a commenting community with so much self-zeal. I feel sorry for the frequent site visitors, who must find it necessary to wash themselves vigorously with soap and scalding hot water.
"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
Schmendrick the Magician
I thought this was cool, until the "can't fit a CD-ROM" part.
All this proves is you can fit a lower-powered nano-ITX mobo in the same case as a Mac Mini, and power it up. But it's not the same, nor even complete...
It was a cool experiment, but not a sucessful one... Hat's off to the Mac design team for shoving that much stuff into such a small box.
While I agree that a Cheap-o OSX box is awesome in-and-of itself, I disagree that Kevin misses the point. Many people have accused the the Mac Mini of being a poor value because it matches the price of an entry-level Dell pc but doesn't include a keyboard or display.
The point of Kevin's article (or at least, what I took away from it) was that it's damn hard to match the value of the mini when you consider it's size. Even with the Mocha PC it starts at $495, and that is without RAM, a hard drive, CPU, or even a CD-Drive!.
I would like a Mac mini myself, but my plans are pretty much to buy one when budgets allow I cannot believe how many people are suckered into this weird pyrami scheme and then flail around wildly seeking other victims to torment.
I would say that time would be better spent hawking things you really do not need on eBay in order to raise funds.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I assume they mean "computing power per cubic inch".
Otherwise what area are they talking about? Footprint? In that case my 1.5 metre tower case would have more computing density than your desktop G4.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What did it cost him to put a PC into the space Apple engineers er...engineered so precisely for their own hardware?
- Wireless
- Bluetooth
- Optical drive
- Probable heating issues later
- SODIMM slots = more expensive RAM
- OS X, iLife, etc.
Also, Rose doesn't mention the cost of his parts, but I'd guess that, for the specs of the baseline mini even without the optical drive it would likely come to WELL over $500. That mobo in particular looks to be fairly pricey.
I'm not asking "What's the point?" but rather, saying "There is no point." This is just a geek's homebrew project, and a waste of a perfectly good Mac mini.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
If you want something to compare to the G4, how about a 1.5GHz Pentium M at the very least?
If by "off the shelf" you mean "announced over a year ago and still not yet released but hopefully will be sometime before next year rolls around" then, yes, he did build it from "off the shelf" components.
None of the pictures on the page show the PC mobo going into the case. The picture called fit.jpg shows the mobo sticking out at the bottom left. The last couple of shots show no indication that the case has anything in it other than a normal Mac Mini.
I'm not saying that these guys haven't done what they said they've done but it would have been good to have some pictures of the back of the machine with the ports or perhaps some re-assembly shows so we could see just how tight the fit is.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Just who, other than Mac cultists and SFF geeks, is going to buy a Mac Mini?
People who hate Windows, don't want to get caught up in the learning curve or zealotry of Linux, and have been waiting for an inexpensive Mac to become available.
Ever since I got my Powerbook, I've had several friends ask to look at it and use it, and said they'd really like to switch to OS X if only the hardware was affordable. Now it is.
You're missing the point, like most people on this forum, seemingly. Fact is, outside of the tiny minority of humans that constitute the "geeky" market segment, the vast majority of people who buy computers really honestly couldn't give a crap about either "raw horsepower" or "small form factor". They just want a computer that is NICE TO USE and is not overly expensive. Read that part in caps again ... PCs just do not fit the bill (certainly neither Windows nor Linux), Mac Mini does.
You can do whatever you like to a PC, make it fast, small, whatever, doesn't matter, because no matter what you do it will still be "just a PC". Until someone makes a decent, usable operating system for the PC platform, I'll stick with the Mac, because I'd actually like to be able to use a computer for more than a few hours straight without wanting to put a brick through the screen.
I'm sorry for you if you think that only a "Mac cultist" would think Mac's have a vastly better designed operating system that is also more aesthetically pleasing .. obviously you haven't even used a Mac. Windows sucks no matter how much "raw horsepower" you give it, and Linux is not ready for Joe Public.
The mac mini only uses 85 watts of electricity. That is pretty cool in itself in this day and age of 450+ power supplies. And you ou can stack 10+ minis in the space of tower system.
Hmmm, lets see. With OS X we already have a workable model available for purchase. With Windows, we have to rely on a guy 'working in his lab with spare parts.' Sounds like Apple 1, PC 0 to me... for now.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
Your macMiniScore++ statement needs to be qualified by an: if (buildFunds >= appleFunds)
I'm not so sure... after the Mini was announced, I looked at a bunch of professionally designed small-sized PCs people referenced as Mac Mini alternatives (cappuccino whatever, that sort of thing), and they were all pretty sucky compared to the M.M.
Naturally they all looked pretty dorky -- you don't expect random Taiwan PC houses to compete with Apple on that front -- but they were also all rather lacking in features as well: all had slow CPUs (much slower than a 1.25GHz PPC), bad graphics, etc.
I'd say these sort of comparisons, though they generally seemed intended to demonstrate that the M.M. is "just pretty", usually end up doing just the opposite, and confirm how good the M.M. really is (and I'm no Apple apologist -- I've never owned a Mac, or even used one very often). It's not the fastest computer out there in absolute terms, but given its design constraints, it's a bang-up job.
Maybe it's possible to cram a similar feature-set using PC standards into similar-sized case, but it doesn't look anywhere near as trivial as many people seem to think. I think Apple has genuinely upped the ante -- hopefully competition from the M.M. will pressure other tiny-PC makers into improving their rather anemic existing products.
Bravo, Apple.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
The heat sink was too large for the case...
I'll bet that thing sounded like a wind tunnel when you turned it on.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I'm yet to see a benchmark that proves me that the price per (volume/speed) - whatever unit of comparison you wanna use - justifies me buying a Mac.
This argument, while certainly valid from a point of view, is similar to saying that the price per horsepower is the only important criteria for buying a car. Fred Flintstone has you beat there, pal.
In computing terms, your brain has a better price per volume/speed than any computer, so why buy a computer?
I've yet to see a benchmark that proves that price per (volume/battery) justifies buying an iPod. iPods are more expensive than most portable music players. iPods also dominate the market because there are virtues other than cost per song stored on the device, and iPod customers sing their praises. iPods certainly weren't the first, they aren't the cheapest, nor are they the smallest, batteries aren't their strongest suit either... They are popular because they are easy to use, have stellar sound quality, and cost only a little more than the competition.
People who buy a Mac aren't buying it because it's the fastest ship in the fleet; they buy it because it's more luxurious than a Wintel box, or because it's able to do things that a PC currently doesn't do well, if at all. They choose macs because they are still more intuitive and easy than a Wintel box.
The majority of users I know of who complain about Macs are really only complaining about two things: Games, and 'upgradeability'. If it doesn't play their newest AMOR (Amusing Misuse of Resources -- apologies to the KDE team), the computer therefore 'sucks'. Then they complain about 'upgradeability.' That's an interesting argument, seeing that I can't 'upgrade' my PC without replacing the at least the Motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Yet PC's are more upgradeable? If I want a longer 'upgrade path' than sticking with AGP gives me, I'd have to also get an entirely new case and power supply for PCI-Express. Somehow this strikes me as little different than having to buy a whole new computer.
I don't own a Mac; but I've actually used them for real work(gasp). Once you get past the fact it isn't a Wintendo Entertainment System, Macs really are excellent machines, and I'll be glad to shell out the cash for a Mac the next time I 'Upgrade' my computer.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Completely missing the point. Show me a small form factor PC - I still think shuttles are small, and they seem to be really popular by now - with all your *essentials*. Bluetooth, WiFi/802.11/wireless, DVD/CD-RW, USB2, Firewire, keyboard, mouse, 'modest memory upgrades' and all. Does it come out below $1000? It just doesn't work the same way for small form factor computers as it does with ordinary desktop boxes. What's great about it isn't that it comes without keyboard, mouse, monitor and an amount of memory that doesn't suck. What's great about it is that it's cheap enough so that you can get it now and upgrade at least parts of it later on. You know, the stuff that people have been asking of Apple for ages. And that it's small. It's the perfect Mac to 'mod' into something else. Buy a few of them for your software business and use them as build farms - Xcode has built-in distributed building. With external USB2 and Firewire devices, it can morph into stuff like file servers or media centers. And there's already people mounting it into cars and doing cheap dedicated hosting ("condos") with whole racks of the thing.
Nonsense. Give Dell or HP a little time and motivation, and I'm sure they could pull it off. Hell, maybe IBM has a patent rotting in a drawer somewhere to help this kind of thing.
You've got to be kidding. IBM just sold its PC hardware division. Dell doesn't make motherboards, they just put things together - and there aren't ANY shipping motherboards that fit into a Mac mini case...the only one found in this article was a pre-release unit, and even with that one, there was no room for a CD-ROM drive of any type.
I'm sure there will eventually be an equivalent PC this size, but the fact is that it's impossible with any existing technology, and Apple has a huge head start. It will be at least a year before PCs catch up in this particular niche market, and Apple will continue to innovate...