Mac mini Sans Wires - Batteries Inside the Case

An anonymous reader writes "Running Debian (or Linux generally) on a Mac mini is old news. Silas installed rechargable batteries inside the case, delivering a couple of hours of runtime while retaining the small form factor. Although it runs fine without wires, he had to plug in the monitor to be able to show that it was really up."

Comments

iMac

[Mensa Babe]

Using an iMac would be a better idea, for it has a monitor already included.

Re:iMac

[Anonymous Coward]

...but that would require quite some juice.

Re:iMac

[Barnoid]

only on slashdot: don't put the obvious tags, and you'll get modded "+5 Interesting"

Re:iMac

[Anonymous Coward]

How could such a post be modded as interesting?!?

Oh oh oh... Use a mouse to make working with the GUI easier! Yes! Interesting!

Re:iMac

[SlinkyDink2004]

Why not use an UPS? They are dirt cheap and no modifications are needed.

Re:iMac

[brontus3927]

My experience with UPS is that they are usually a good deal larger than a MacMini and most are also going to have several unneeded outlets if your using it as a headless server.

Also, if its use includes being moved about every so often, then this way it can stay up during transport. Or maybe its purpose is to act as a server for only short periods of time such as a LAN party or a lecture. Although, for either of those uses, it would be better if the batteries held up a bit better than that, but for a first try, not bad.

Re:iMac

[nine-times]

Yes, terrific idea. If only Apple made something like the iMac with a battery already installed. In fact, if they made a portable version of the battery-powered iMac, I'd buy one and finally ditch my Powerbook.

Re:iMac

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, an iMac running on battery power? I think they already have that. It's called an iBook.

Re:iMac

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you get a G5 into your iBook, and how is the therapy coming along for the burns on your lap?

Re:iMac

[Rosonowski]

The MacMini is not an iMac, and it does not have a g5 processor.
Furthermore, the 65 watts or so of heat the g5 puts out is not that much compared to many x86 CPUs, which makes apple's latency in putting out a g5 powerbook somewhat bothersome.

I don't think it's heat, though, that is the primary issue, but rather power consumption for a portable.

For now, I'll stay with my g4 867 12" PowerBook, I suppose.

Re:iMac

[capmilk]

Using an iMac would be a better idea, for it has a monitor already included.

I know it's lame to use prebuilt stuff - but have you realized Apple sells iBooks that serve this exact purpose?

Re:iMac

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandparent:
Hmmm, an iMac running on battery power? I think they already have that. It's called an iBook.

Parent:
How did you get a G5 into your iBook, and how is the therapy coming along for the burns on your lap?

You:
The MacMini is not an iMac, and it does not have a g5 processor.

Learn to read, dumbass.

And the use would be?

[PIPBoy3000]

What exactly do you do with a Mac mini that you can't get any visual output from, especially one with a lifespan of two hours? It seems pointless to make it mobile.

Wireless network games? Find the server before the batteries die?

Re:And the use would be?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I havn't read the fucking article so I don't know if its possible, but the best use would be just using the battery as backup and having a fileserver that can last a few hours even in a power outage.

Re:And the use would be?

[Skynet]

Since when did nerds need a reason to do something nerdy?

This is Slashdot!

Re:And the use would be?

[hey!]

And the use would be?

As a random act of senseless beauty.

You see, geeks do have poetry in their souls. It's just in a language they don't teach in the English department.

So -- do what appeals to you. The utility will come later.

Re:And the use would be?

[FunWithHeadlines]

"What exactly do you do with a Mac mini that you can't get any visual output from"

Bah! Real programmers don't need screens. Why, in my day we didn't even need keyboards to issue our commands. We merely bellowed at the computer and it whimpered off to do what we wanted. Honestly, the kids these days...

Re:And the use would be?

[justforaday]

Hmmm, wouldn't a UPS be better for that sort of thing?

Re:And the use would be?

[Cecil]

It's a portable wireless hard drive for my laptop. Duh.

Re:And the use would be?

[jellomizer]

2 hours isn't to bad. Think of it as an imbedded UPS. for your system.
Preventing data loss on an accedental power outage.

Secondly if this job is done right it could help improve the life of the computer, giving the system a reliable source of power helps keep the equiptment from those little surges and dips.

Portability. 2 Hours should be enough to get you to your location without bringing the system down. So when you get to the office and quitly plug in the system to the projector bingo your keynote presintation is ready on the first page.

Convience. You have to compile your project and finish it at home. While you are driving home the code is compiling. When you get there and put power back on it is ready to test.

The Mac Mini is less of a PC and more like a Portible Laptop Computer without the extras,

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is a computer that runs on batteries new or nerdy?

And since we're talking about Apple: s/ner/tren/;

Re:And the use would be?

[YomikoReadman]

When I saw this, it reminded me of a very old joke I saw once.. and compelled me to post it here.

Top 12 Things A Klingon Programmer Would Say

12. Specifications are for the weak and timid!

11. This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual processors if I am to do battle with this code!

10. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.

9. Indentation?! -- I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!

8. What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.

7. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' -- they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

6. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.

5. I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.

4. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!

3. By filing this SCR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!

2. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!

1. Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Seeing as how old school programmers think like klingon programmers, I believe that it can be reasonably assumed that all old programmers are klingon.

Re:And the use would be?

[nine-times]

But an UPS would be big and clunky. If you're using a mini for any kind of a headless server, size is probably an issue.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yea? I bet you used a hard drive and an "operating system" too .. pfft.

In *my* day we used to edit inodes by hand on floppy disks with a magnet and a paperclip!

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reinventing the "portable computer" is not nerdy. Laptop computers are commonplace and I bet we all have seen a ultra small subnotebook before, perhaps even own one.

Even though soldering a battery to a small case computer is nerdier than just plugging it into a factory built battery slot and calling it a notebook, but the total nerd factor is still way below room temperature.

Gumstix have nerd value. Power-over-ethernet powered Gumstix even more. A notebook computer without high battery nor comnputing power has none. It is not very small, not very power efficient, not very fast, requires no impressive tinkering and has no advantages over any existing technology. Tell me where this nerdy then...

Re:And the use would be?

[archivis]

*blinks*
*imagines the quality of Klingon code*
So...Microsoft is a Klingon outfit?

That explains sooooooooooo much.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. that wasn't funny at all.
In fact, it was so UNfunny that it has drained funny from neighboring comedic material.
Never has the internet been so dull.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feeling a little light in the loafers this morning?

Re:And the use would be?

[slapout]

Portable music server.

Wanna show your friends a Mac? Take it to their house and plug it into their montior. No other cables to mess with and you've got two hours to demo it.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

barf

Re:And the use would be?

[hey!]

Not particularly. Just the usual resignation and free floating disgust at how uncommon a sense of humor is. Present company excepted, of course.

Re:And the use would be?

[OldeTimeGeek]

Floppy disk? We would have killed for floppy disks.

In my day, we had to magnetize each element of the core by hand. In the dark. With two safety pins and a battery. When the battery ran out, we had to use static electricity. I went through *six* pairs of shoes in one year.

Re:And the use would be?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

That, and you could always use both. UPS's are nice, but once they fail, wouldn't you like another few hours? (Especially on a cheap UPS where plugging a monitor into it will drain the battery in a few mins)

Re:And the use would be?

[springbox]

You could always use it as a built in UPS, which would be a pretty cool thing to have.

Re:And the use would be?

[Pollardito]

you forgot to add "that's slower than an external firewire enclosure"

Re:And the use would be?

[tonsofpcs]

So the guys at Compaq who decided a folding case like the LAPTOP would be better than the heavy lunch box style case of the PORTABLE Computer series weren't doing anything nerdy?

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hardly think the speed of the hard drive would be the limiting factor. 802.11g is a lot slower than Mac mini's hard drive as far as pushing data around. Not to mention that the Mac mini's wireless card has no free drivers, so the setup this guy had wouldn't be able to be used wirelessly (you'd have to run OS X, or reverse engineer the Airport Extreme card, which no one has done thus far, since there are no specs.)

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you RTFA, you'll see that there is no room for a charge controller. If you plug in the external power adapter, the batteries will be continuously charged with constant current. This will ultimately lead to the creation of gases from the battery (which can explode) and melting parts.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

The old school programmers I've known tend to comply with traditional academic conventions (thus, their being referred to as ``old school''---get it?). It's the young whippersnappers who religiously devote themselves to delusions like ``self commenting code'' could ever possibly be adequate and even that comments are dangerous because they could get out of sync with updated code. Of course, even the descriptive names of the variables could get out of date, but hey kids, let's not even think about that. The solution is not to leave out comments, but to update them---crazy, huh?

Re:And the use would be?

[krakelohm]

Evidently 'joke' means something wayyy different in Klingon.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if you noted the time when the Portable was built and when the folding style came into being. Oh yeah, that was nerdy, nerd factor 99 percent and rising, no doubt. At that time. But that was when? 1982? When there were no other computers like it around, especially not commodity hardware sold at stores worldwide in numbers of millions.

Building a portable computer with its own battery is today about as nerdy as reinventing the wheel. Look ma', it rolls!

Re:And the use would be?

[jordie]

I'm thinking a ~dozen servers taking up the same space as a 1U server.

Re:And the use would be?

[Inkieminstrel]

You see, geeks do have poetry in their souls. It's just in a language they don't teach in the English department.

Klingon?

Re:And the use would be?

[fnord_uk]

Not to mention the potential damage to the power supply from inrush current when the batteries are flat and power comes back-on. Can the PCB tracks handle that much current? What about a low voltage supply as the battery power fades? Corrupt data anyone? No thanks.

Re:And the use would be?

[Vengie]

Shoes? Gah! Sloth! In my day, we didn't have DAYS. And we didn't have FEET. We had to walk to school on bloody stumps! And we were greatful for that!

Re:And the use would be?

[morbiuswilters]

So you are assuming your friends don't have electricity? I mean, I actually thought this was a terrific project, but it seems you are stretching a bit :-P

Re:And the use would be?

[Eosha]

How 'bout as a controller for a mobile robot? Especially with WiFi. The screen really isn't necessary, one can do all sorts of cool things with a headless box. The firewire/USB can handle all sorts of I/O (sensors, relays, cameras, etc), and it's got more than enough processing capacity to do some on-the-fly analysis of what it's seeing.

Hell, maybe we could be nearing a robot that can plug itself in when it needs recharged...

Re:And the use would be?

[Golias]

What exactly do you do with a Mac mini that you can't get any visual output from, especially one with a lifespan of two hours? It seems pointless to make it mobile.

Wireless network games? Find the server before the batteries die?

Here's a thought: You use a mini at an office and at home. With a two-hour battery, there's no need to power it down when you relocate it. Just put it to sleep, unplug it, and go.

Honestly, anybody who can't think of at least three situations off the top of their head where it might be useful for certain people to have a battery option must have very limited imaginations.

Re:And the use would be?

[slapout]

:-) No, i just meant that they wouldn't have to fiddle around under their computer desk to plug another thing in. (You should see the mess under some of my friends' computer desks :-)

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to be using it as a server, all you need to do is remotely log in every once in a while to check up on it. You dont need to have a head for it.

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't they say invention is the mother of necessity?

Just look at the i-pod.

Re:And the use would be?

[Tore S B]

Portability. 2 Hours should be enough to get you to your location without bringing the system down. So when you get to the office and quitly plug in the system to the projector bingo your keynote presintation is ready on the first page.

These things can go into suspend mode, like a laptop - now there's portability.

Re:And the use would be?

[bursch-X]

Actually it is Vogon.

Re:And the use would be?

[TG1]

See that was funny

Re:And the use would be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, reinventing the wheel would be awesome, you could make so many design improvements!

Re:And the use would be?

[shobadobs]

"Since when did trends need a reason to do something nerdy?"

or s/ner/tren/g;:

"Since when did trends need a reason to do something trendy?"

Maybe I'm missing the point, but what is the use of such an operation? The results don't make any sense!

Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Although it runs fine without wires, he had to plug in the monitor to be able to show that it was really up."

Helps that Macs generally (yes, there are exceptions) run whisper quiet. Is the computer on? With a PC, just listen for the fan noise. With a Mac, hmm..can't tell, better look at the screen.

Re:Quiet Macs

[freeplatypus]

Wake up Neo. This is a dream. This is a big lie!

If You think that 20dB from the PC case is a lot then maybe You should think it over.

Re:Quiet Macs

[clontzman]

Er... yeah, tell that to the wind tunnels I've had under my desk for the past couple years -- first an MDD, now a G5. Nice, yes, but quiet they ain't.

PC's engineered to be quiet are quiet. My Dell is nearly silent. Macs engineered to be quiet are also quiet. It has nothing to do with the platform.

Re:Quiet Macs

[jrockway]

We have "silent" MPC computers in one of our computer labs. The silence is a copmromise between noise and melting the processor. Once in a while, we install a gaming image onto these machines... but it's pretty much useless because every single machine crashes solid after about ten minutes of gaming.

Silent != good.

Re:Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

*sigh*

I specifically wrote " generally (yes, there are exceptions)" to avoid this sort of response, by pre-acknowledging what you later wrote. I'm well aware of the wind tunnel Macs, but they are the exceptions. The iMac -- very quiet. Powerbooks -- silent. iBooks -- silent. Mac mini? I've heard silent too, and in fact that was the whole point of this thread. I was responding to an aspect of the mini in question from the article.

Re:Quiet Macs

[endx7]

My Dell is nearly silent.

I had to use a dell for a while, and it was unnerving. The lack of fan noise I mean.

I felt a lot better once I got back to a computer I could hear.

Re:Quiet Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

With a PC, just listen for the fan noise

That would only tell you that you've got enough power to run the fans.

Re:Quiet Macs

[geoffspear]

My Powerbook sounds like a jet engine is starting up on my lap when it gets too warm. Granted it's an older titanium model and I haven't used any of the new ones, but it's definitely not silent.

Re:Quiet Macs

[adam1101]

> With a PC, just listen for the fan noise.

One of the biggest reasons that Mac-PC hardware comparisons are doomed to fail is that there is no such thing as "a PC". Most PCs are loud. But there are many PCs that are quieter than desktop Macs. Many PC laptops are heavy, loud, hot and have short battery lives. But there are PC laptops that are lighter, cooler, quieter (fanless 1.1ghz Pentium-M) and have longer battery lives than any Mac 'Book. Mac fans invariably pick the worst PCs to compare with while PC fans pick the best (which are usually more expensive as well). More on topic: I've been running a fanless 1.4ghz Athlon XP-M on my desktop for over a year. I doubt any Mac is more quiet.

Re:Quiet Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

> The iMac -- very quiet. Powerbooks -- silent. iBooks -- silent.

You should look around on forums for "iMac G5" or "Powerbook" and "fan noise" sometimes. There have been numerous complaints about the G5s and especially the 12" PB noise.

Re:Quiet Macs

[radish]

I can hear my PC only at night, in an entirely silent room, with no traffic noise and no aircon. Then it's a just-noticable whisper from sitting right next to it. With any other sound in the room it's inaudible.

This is an Athlon XP 3200+ with 3x 200GB Seagate drives and an Nvidia 6600GT. It plays all the games I throw at it just fine, core temp never gets above 50 degrees C. All you need to do is be careful with your cooling solutions (I use a Panaflo case fan, SilenX PSU and Zalman CPU and GPU coolers all on FanMate speed controllers). Sure it's a custom job, but it wasn't hard. Newer Dells (that we have at work) are alomst as quiet as mine out of the box.

Re:Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

Well, I'm going off my experience with my Powerbook, and it's silent. I agree that if it gets too warm the fan goes on and the fan is far from silent. But the fan on my Powerbook goes on about once every couple of months, if that.

Re:Quiet Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I then conclude from my Thnkpad X31 that PC laptops are silent? Or from my coworker's Dell Latitude X1 that PC laptops are fanless?

Re:Quiet Macs

[clontzman]

I know what you said, but you can't say that "PCs are loud and Macs are quiet (with some exceptions)" and not expect someone to call your bluff when the "exceptions" are at least half of the product line. My point is that it isn't a platform thing -- there are quiet PCs and there are quiet Macs and loud PCs and loud Macs. All friends here.

Re:Quiet Macs

[geoffspear]

You must never use Classic applications.

Re:Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

I don't actually use Classic applications. Must make a difference, I guess.

Re:Quiet Macs

[jacksonj04]

My PC is whisper quiet right now

When I go play games and the fans start to turn on, it sounds like a jet engine.

Power-up is even better, because *everything* kicks in at once along with the hard disks so it's just plain loud.

Re:Quiet Macs

[Council]

I don't know much about hardware, but I have an HP Vectra VL (according to the label here on the case) that I picked up from the MIT Flea Market. It's a Pentium 1 with all sorts of built-in ports, and I use it as a miscellaneous linux machine.

It is absolutely silent. I had it running, sitting a shelf right between my desk and my bed, happily waiting for someone to connect, for over fifty days. I lived, ate, and slept with the computer a foot from me. And I never realized it was turned on.

The blinky light was pointed at the wall, and if it has a fan (there's an exhaust grill on the power supply) it's silent. If you put your ear right up against it you can hear a very faint hum.

It cost me $50 and has been a good little server. Good form factor, too. Anyhow, it's the only silent computer I've run across. And in forty days of sitting next to my bed it didn't even feel warm to the touch, so I guess heat isn't a problem. It still works fine.

Re:Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

Fair enough, but it's news to me that half the product line is noisy. Desktop G5s? Fine. But I know of nothing else, although people keep pointing me to research noisy laptops. I acknowledge they exist, but I've never experienced it with three different Apple laptops.

I never claimed my post was scientific evidence, just my personal experience and what I extrapolated from that personal experience. I certainly understand how someone who had a completely different experience would object, but it just isn't anything I've had to deal with.

Re:Quiet Macs

[bdcrazy]

The quest is silent, but for how long?

I've built silent computers with larger slower moving fans and quiet hard drives etc., but after about 6-8 months or so, they start getting louder. The fans aren't so quiet, noises start to come from the hard drives etc. I've even heard computers that were on display at stores say they were quiet, but after being in the store for 2-3 months, they aren't so quiet anymore.

Re:Quiet Macs

[admactanium]

My Powerbook sounds like a jet engine is starting up on my lap when it gets too warm. Granted it's an older titanium model and I haven't used any of the new ones, but it's definitely not silent.

the older titaniums are definitely louder than the new aluminums. i had a 667 titanium and that thing's fan was on all the time. my 1 Ghz titanium's fan was still pretty active. i have a new 1.67 Al and it's pretty quiet. i have to be doing quite a bit to get the fan running and i've never heard it as loud as my titaniums. the cooler chips seem to be doing the trick.

Re:Quiet Macs

[Rosonowski]

While you CAN get x86 machines running at that kind of noise level, it's difficult and time-consuming, especially if you want one with any kind of real power.

Re:Quiet Macs

[kevcol]

So the fans power up 6 times a year or less? Come on, seriously now.

Crimony- The fans on my G4/867MHz/640MB PB power up so often every day I am afraid OSHA is going to give me a warning for myself. I use my PB about 6-8 hours a day, so it is constantly getting a workout. I love the system, no doubt, but it certainly heats up often. I usually only have browser based apps, a shell or 3 and sometimes a mail client on, but that's it.

Re:Quiet Macs

[ceejayoz]

I had a stock Dell, replaced it with a Mini.

When I got the Mini up and running, I turned off the Dell. The difference was very, very noticable.

Re:Quiet Macs

[FunWithHeadlines]

I'm serious. My G4/1GHz/1GB PB never has its fan go off unless I've been using it for a long time doing video work or something. Having my usual 3 or 4 apps open at the same time and doing text editing or web browsing never sets the fan off.

Re:Quiet Macs

[jjeff]

I vouch for this.
my 1.5GHz 15inch powerbook never has the fan power up. (granted i've only had it for a week, but it has been on for 99% of that time and I have yet to hear any noise from it apart from the built-in speakers).

/Linux geek turned mac-head

Re:Quiet Macs

[kevcol]

Yeah, I should note I have a 12" PB, which is notorious for fan activity.

Currently it is on an aluminum contractors clipboard on my lap, the kind that you can open up and put invoices in. It makes a dandy heat sink on the cheap, functionally not unlike the iLap when it comes to drawing heat away.

Re:Quiet Macs

[freeplatypus]

Ok, but...

1. You pay for quality product, such as Mini, so consider buying quality PC.
2. You don't have to loose performance for quiet, nor does it take a lot of time.

To Do:
1. Change stock power supply. You don't have to get poor performance one, there are 400W supplies WITHOUT fan, but there are also cheaper options with quite quiet fans. Say, about $70.
2. Change CPU box fan for some quality Zalman, or water cooling in extreme case. Zalman, say $20-30.

So, $100 + 10 minutes to order and + 10 minutes to mount it in :)

Done!

Umm... Whats the monitor for?

[bodfa]

Looks like a black screen on the monitor... Maybe he uses a blank screensaver :)

Re:Umm... Whats the monitor for?

[Loco3KGT]

You mean you haven't seen the new version of Aqua?

You're sooo 1Q 2005.

and then...

[PooR_IndiaN]

and then...

Re:and then...

[Phu5ion]

No "and then"!

Re:and then...

[d474]

Just the miniMac, internal battery, and that's it.

Re:and then...

[Anonymous Coward]

aaannnd theennn? ;-)

Mini Mac

[bitswapper]

Hang on, MiniMac! If you were to go down, I don't know what I'd do.
I'd be inconsolable for ... a few minutes .. I don't know ... whatever.

sniff sniff

[BobVila]

It sounds perfect for hiding in the ceiling tiles.

Re:sniff sniff

[hey!]

Not quite, cause you'd have to get it up there right before the packets you were interested in hit the network.

However -- figure out some way to parasitically power it off the wiring going to the flourescent lights, in a way that can be installed in one or two minutes, then you'd really have something.

Yes, but

[killa62]

the monitor would drain the batteries like hell

Re:Yes, but

[Eravau]

I think the point being made is that if you have to have one power cable for the monitor anyway, why not use the iMac with its one power cable and not have to worry about your power running out in only two hours.

Re:Yes, but

[mbbac]

What is the point in a headless computer that runs from batteries?

Re:Yes, but

[WD_40]

A small-footprint webserver with a built-in UPS.

Re:Yes, but

[punkass]

You mean an iBook?

Re:Yes, but

[WD_40]

Yes, but any non-geek can do that. The main point of this mod is the geek factor, which alone is reason enough. :)

Re:Yes, but

[shantanusharma]

Well, if these LiPos last long enough, I get a music player supporting all sorts of audio CDs and a 80 gig hard-disk: Mini-Shuffle!

Re:Yes, but

[MikeHunt69]

Except it's (currently) not, since according to the article he can't run it while both the power & batteries are plugged in, otherwise it would overcharge the batteries.

Re:Yes, but

[danigiri]

A lot.

I am working on a research project that deals with Augmented Reality (basically VR goggles that are see through).

AR deals with guys that hang around somewhere and use the following simultaneously to do some shit:

- GPS receiver: to know where one is going and have data referenced following position

- See-thru goggles that display geographical information (coming from an VGA port)

- PDA or some sort of input/otput device

- Wireless: for network stuff and group behaviour

- Database: some sort of sane data repository that can be updated

- Bluetooth: problably to connect all these devices together and not strangle the users with cabling

Yeah, an small/light non-custom-built machine that can deal with all this easily would be great indeed. Oh, and sane developer tools as well.

Once proof of concept and prototyping is done, someone else will find the funding for embedded custom development.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Running a computer on batteries hardly meets criteria for geek factor.

Re:Yes, but

[CastrTroy]

The iBook is not headless, and therefore does not fit the requirement of a headless computer with a battery.

Re:Yes, but

[jordie]

He includes (basic) instructions on how to make such a system work.

Re:Yes, but

[Jesus_666]

What about a small monitor about as wide as the top of the mini? That would drain less power and might still give a decent resolution - once you have managed to get it to display the stuff from the mini's video out. Add a small keyboard and maybe a trackball and you have a very portable desktop.

I'm fascinated by the idea of the Mac mini being a smaller iBook. ;)

Re:Yes, but

[w9ofa]

The only way to achieve these ends is through dedicated custom hardware.

General purpose CPUS are not there yet.

Re:Yes, but

[gcatullus]

This must be Slashdot - someone who reads the article and responds to a post with information from the article is modded less than the parent poster who just made stuff up

Awesome...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now do it with solar power! //MMN-o

External Batty pack + VCN

[JawzX]

VNC is the obvious way to talk to the machine without a monitor connected...

If an external battery could be housed in a mac mini form factor external case (stacked under/ontop of the mini) I bet battery life could be equivelent or longer than a power-book (no LCD to run). Could provide some interesting low-cost remote monitoring solutions...

Re:External Batty pack + VCN

[xenotrout]

This one is running Debian, so ssh is the obvious way to talk to it. For graphics, just tunnel X over ssh (`ssh -X $address` and start the X program normally after login).

Re:External Batty pack + VCN

[The Bod]

I can confirm that this will work. I recently set up my Mac Mini so that I can take it with me without having to bring along a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. I just plug in the ethernet cable and power cord and I can control it from my Windows laptop via VNC. The only problem is you are limited to two display resolutions. You might be able to force it into recognizing different resolutions using SwitchResX or having some kind of VGA adapter connected.

Re:External Batty pack + VCN

[ErikZ]

Connecting to the Mini Mac via VNC is an exercise in patience.

It's surprisingly slow on a network. Over a cable modem is something you do only when you have no other option.

and thus

[Anonymous Coward]

spake Zarathustra

I'M AN OPEN PROXY, BAN ME!

[shird]

heh, just kidding.

old news?

[justforaday]

Old news? That must be why slashdot posted that story only a week ago...

Great, or not really?

[Niekie]

Hmmm.. a system powered by batteries, but not the monitor? So what's the use then? Taking it with you to places without power? No. No power for the monitor.. Using it at home? No. You could just plug the thing in and not waste the poor batteries. The only thing they have to come up with next, is either a monitor that runs off batteries, or just lower the prices of laptops. (Which would probably be a better deal then this anyway, since this new system will ofcourse cost lots of money.)

Re:Great, or not really?

[mrch0mp3rs]

Two Words: Wireless Server

Re:Great, or not really?

[Niekie]

Use it as a Wireless server? How would you want to pull that one off? I don't think the uptime would be very long, considering it's battery powered.. catch my drift?

Re:Great, or not really?

[mrch0mp3rs]

Well, I think a lot depends on the battery, doesn't it?

Since the Mac Mini uses mostly iBook parts, I tend to think that the Airport Extreme (802.11g) and Bluetooth functionality is already somewhat energy conscious.

I would apply this solution for a host of demonstration and training purposes -- anywhere where I need to demonstrate any kind of client-server network interaction and I need to control all the enviromental variables. If I can't rely on Internet connectivity (and trust me -- I've been screwed on this a couple of times in the last few weeks), I could just bring a couple of laptops that work with the mac mini as my application/db server for demo purposes.

Would the battery life last 8 hours? Certainly not. But it might last 4 depending on the battery, and for $500 + change, that's a heck of a nice little server to take on the road with you.

Re:Great, or not really?

[Niekie]

Hmmm.. it all depends on use. It sure wouldn't be good for a server for a production environment, but as you say, it could make a good demo platform.

Re:Great, or not really?

[Palshife]

Stop all the dreaming! Only things that are immediately useful will be considered! Forget all your delusions of poetically geeky mods!

Just the other day I was marvelling at the concept of being able to run my Mini on battery for a short while on battery so that I could launch it in target disk mode, get some files to my friend's machine, then shut it down.

I came up with one use. I'm sure everyone has a thousand more. To answer your question of great or not really, I say great.

Re:Great, or not really?

[Karl Tacheron]

Hmm. Maybe if Apple did the reverse of what the ADC does for power, the Mini could be powered through the display port.

Thats nothing

[Timesprout]

wait till you see my gerbil powered mini. I'm having a small problem with it though, it runs just fine in my test harness but the power seems to tail off and then die shortly after I hermetically seal the case.

Re:Thats nothing

[Jesus_666]

Duh! You apparently use an air-cooled gerbil in a case without airflow. Of course it overheats!

Better coat the gerbil with clear varnish and fill the case with water; water-cooling usually improves both the temperature and noise values.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs are sometimes a little too smart for VNC -- if they do not detect a monitor connected, they do not create a console display and the VNC server will fail because it does not have a display to serve. You need a dummy adapter on the monitor connection to fake the computer into creating a display.

4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

The author says he measured 14-20W for the mac mini under load, but his 80W-Hr battery only lasted 1H:50M, implying a 40W+ power draw.

Am I missing something?

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Am I missing something?
I remember reading a toms hardware review, they mentioned it consumed 28 watts while playing dvds

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[v1]

Macs do draw that low of power. My powerbook g4 draws at most 28 watts when charging the battery and playing UT 2004 at the same time. (graphics and CPU maxed out) It draws 18 watts under normal use, and 2 watts asleep OR off when not charging batteries.

Not sure why his unit only lasted 2 hrs though. The author mentioned the computer will run off from 12-20v, and it seems like he had enough cells to keep the voltage up until they wound down all the way. G4 processors are good at conserving energy, and run cool and lean when they're not busy doing things. (I never understood why do PCs run full tilt all the time?) It's possible he made his measurements with the machine idle, and then in the actual test was actively using the machine, increasing its power consumption. I can't fault your math, but 40w seems excessive for a mini. The mini's pack is rated 85w, but that's to power USB and firewire too.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery capacities are specified assuming a relatively low current draw. Battery capacity is not linear, so if you draw more current than the specified amount, the life can be much less than advertised.

Think of it like this... a particular car can go X miles on a full tank of gas if you drive at the optimum speed. However if you try it at 85 mph, your efficiency will drop and you will not travel as far.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[the_2nd_coming]

he might not have been counting WiFi

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Cool N Quiet downclocks when idle and ramps back up when you need it.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[mprindle]

The author did say the batteries were still under development so that could be the reason.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I never understood why do PCs run full tilt all the time?)

They don't. The CPUs in PCs consume less during idle as well.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[enosys]

The author says he measured 14-20W for the mac mini under load, but his 80W-Hr battery only lasted 1H:50M, implying a 40W+ power draw.

It's not that simple. It's not like the batteries supply 80W-Hr of power at their rated voltage and then shut down. With most types of batteries the voltage drops slowly as they discharge. Batteries also aren't perfect voltage sources. They have internal resistance, which means that if you draw more current the voltage will drop. I suspect the voltage got too low because of these two factors and the Mac Mini crashed or shut down. The batteries might still be able to power a flashlight.

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[stienman]

Several things:

The author likely measured average consumption sans peaks. In other words, the multimeter he used does not respond to short huge current demands. Depending on the meter, in fact, and the switching regulator inside the mini he may have a very bad reading. This kind of measurement is difficult to take accurately without equipment meant to measure this - one which integrates the current consumption over time, including peaks, for instance.

The cells are rated for 4AH, but there's no guarantee that he charged them to capacity, or that their usable capacity is 4AH.

There are four cells at 3.7V making a 14.8V battery, multiply times 4AH to find that the pack's maximum charge is actually some 59WH.

His initial measurements were made with a power supply of 18V, and he is supply under 15V. It is likely that the mini's switching regulator is less efficient at the lower voltage.

To obtain the maximum energy from a battery you typically must limit consumption. In other words, you can get more energy out of a battery when drawing 100mA than you'll get when drawing 500mA. He is drawing over 1A from these cells (perhaps as much as 2A, with peaks of many Amps), and the efficiency of the battery is lower at this discharge rate. You can see this effect by taking a laptop with two batteries - use them one at a time and they'll last for 2x minutes, where x is the amount of time you would get from one. Use them simultaneously and you should get more than 2x (should, because some manufacturers still consume from only one available battery even when two are available).

There are many other factors affecting this, such as keyboard power consumption (100mA, or 1/2 watt), heat, and other efficiency variations.

-Adam

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[fnord_uk]

A good few years ago, I had some trouble when I broke the heat-sink retaining lugs off the ZIF socket for my AMD K6 based machine. Many bodged fix attempts later, after settling for using heat-sink glue to hold the metal to the chip (and hoping that it didn't drop out from the socket), i noticed that when running at idle, the CPU temperature was 10 degs C hotter under Win95 than QNX. The answer then, is Windows...that's why!

Re:4Ah 20V battery and 1:50 runtime = 40W draw?

[calidoscope]

When I asked the author about the power draw (in between jibes about his new found /. fame), he stated that the power draw under heavy load was more like 25 watts. Idling, the AC power draw runs about 10 to 11 watts (figure ~3w disapated in the PS brick, leaving maybe ~8w for the mini).

A couple of things to bear in mind, the nominal AH rating for batteries is often given at the 20 hour discharge (e.g. a 1A draw for a 20 AH battery) and the battery pack may not have been delivering the full 4 AH.

One reason for picking the Mac mini was it had a good performance per watt metric and it was reasonably cheap. It has about twice the power consumption of a Soekris x86 system, with about a 4X higher clock for about 2X the price of the Soekris.

Mac Mini was already basically a notebook computer

[Anonymous Coward]

without the screen. The hardware used was notebook rated hardware. The cost of making the machine itself moble is more then buying a notebook all together.

I'd just have bought a UPS, because that is all this will be useful for.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that Windows users don't mind rebooting 5 times a day, Don't change when the machine loses their data. Truth hurts.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If you modded a mac mini sans mac mini now that would be impressive. Although you would need to add a mac mini so you could connect a monitor to prove it was there, although then that would ruin your mod...

Kind of like a 21st century "tree falls in the forest" .

Huge new product line!

[dave_mcmillen]

Hey, this could be the start of something big! What if he were to also install a portable screen? Maybe it could, I dunno, fold down into the top of the machine, or something. Then you could carry the computer around and do stuff with it, wherever you went, while resting it on your knee. A sort of "knee-top" compiter, though maybe there's a better name someone can think of . . .

Re:Huge new product line!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be awkward to have it resting on your knees, your thighs would probably be better. I think "thigh top" sounds good.

Re:Huge new product line!

[nine-times]

Bah... and what are you going to do for input? You can install a screen, but then you'd still have to carry around a keyboard and mouse. What, you're going to attach a keyboard and mouse to this whole setup? It's patently absurd.

Re:Huge new product line!

[Uruk]

..Or maybe someone could make the Mac Mini even smaller, something that could sit on the "top" of your "palm". What kind of computer would they call that?

Here's the basic idea. You have several product lines: desktops, laptops, palm tops. Each line has a top of the market, and a bottom that provide the most and least features within that line, respectively. I think what we're seeing here is an instance of a phenomenon where the bottom of one product line can come into the neighborhood of the top of another product line.

Re:Huge new product line!

[tiptone]

Save some time:

http://www.myzaurus.com/

Battery lasts as long as the Mac Mini, w/screen and keyboard.

Re:Huge new product line!

[dangitman]

It's patently absurd.

Isn't absurdity what patents are for?

Re:Huge new product line!

[fermion]

Or the screen could just be flat on top. And the it could ne a touch screen. You could write on the screen and the writing could be converted into text!

Darwin award soon

[ballpoint]

Exactly how is the LiPo battery charged ?

Without a proper charger, combining the energy density of a 80Wh battery with highly reactive Lithium is a recipe for disaster.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20 9187

Re:Darwin award soon

[brontus3927]

From TFA:

The second thing I wanted to mention, and this is IMPORTANT, these cells don't have a current regulator on them. So when you recharge them, do not use the Mac's power cord. Instead use a power supply which has a current limiting knob on it so that you can keep the current low whilst charging the batteries. Don't blame me if you plug in your Mac's power cable and it fries your power supply.

and:

TODO:
Include a current regulator so that the battery can be charged from the power cable.

Re:Darwin award soon

[ballpoint]

A simple power supply with a current limiting knob isn't safe. Overcharge a LiPo and you'll set it on fire in a rather spectacular and difficult to extinguish way.

A charger that is specifically designed for LiPo charging is a MUST.

Re:Darwin award soon

[brontus3927]

I admit not knowing much about Lithium-Ion Polymer batteries. If this is the case, you might want to bring it to the attention of the author. The story was submited as an AC, but there's an email address on the website, spamproofed:
silasb_at_earthlink.net

Unless you enjoy knowing that people have caught on fire from their own ignorance, it would be a good idea to write an email explaining the problem and why.

Re:Darwin award soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you enjoy knowing that people have caught on fire from their own ignorance,

This is slashdot, we live to laugh at people catching themselves on fire because of thier own stupidity... just someone hurry and set up a camera, so we have pictures of it...

Re:Darwin award soon

[brontus3927]

This is slashdot, we live to laugh at people catching themselves on fire because of thier own stupidity... just someone hurry and set up a camera, so we have pictures of it...

And then post the story to slashdot with a title like "MacMini's explode when plugged in"

Re:Darwin award soon

[Anonymous Coward]

but there's an email address on the website, spamproofed:
silasb_at_earthlink.net

Why, that isn't spam proofed at all! I simply changed the _at_ with an ampersand and I just sent him links to my online porn sites!

Re:Darwin award soon

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, how does he prevent the LiPos from overdischarging? The article said something about the mac Mini running on anything down to 10v. The minimum safe discharge for LiIons / LiPolys is to 3v per cell (or 15v for 5 cells in series). So when the Mac gave up running, the batteries could be 5v (30%) below the safety limit. Oops. Letting these cells drop below 3v can damage them.

There IS a reason why your cell phone / notebook battery pack includes a bit of circuitry. Use LiPos with care!!!

Re:Darwin award soon

[0x20]

They have porn sites online now?

Re:Darwin award soon

[Anonymous Coward]

LiPo-suction.

wow, a revelation!

[Se7enLC]

wow, we've reinvented the laptop, except we gave it a shorter battery life.

What exactly is the revelation of this project, again?

12W

[IceFox]

Wow, at only 12W for the entire system? It is pretty hard to get a x86 box that low for that
cheap.

-Benjamin Meyer

Re:12W

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be more like 40W if he only got 1 hour and 50 minutes off an 80W-hr battery pack. A 12W system would have lasted several hours from an 80W-hr battery pack.

Re:12W

[the_2nd_coming]

WiFi networking is a fixed wattage, so if that was turned off I am sure it would be close to 12 Watts.

Re:12W

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mini-ITX systems have comparable power requirements and slightly lower prices, but have much weaker processors.

Re:12W

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. I've got a pentium 2 with 128mb of ram sitting in my closet drawing *zero* watts.

Re:12W

[toddestan]

I wouldn't call it an entire system. He had no keyboard, no mouse, no ethernet, and no picture on his monitor (probably because the graphics card was in sleep mode). I know someone is going to say he might be using wireless, but no way is he using bluetooth and wireless networking and only using 12W.

Also, he is using a microdrive instead of the stock HDD.

Re:12W

[ArbitraryConstant]

I think you'd be surprised what you can do with a VIA C3. You could get even smaller/lower power than a mini. A G4 is easily the better processor in general, but a C3 may be good enough (I dunno about this guy's project's needs), and it wins easily in areas like encryption (as it has encryption acceleration). It's also way cheaper if you're doing a lot of customization, those boards can be had for a lot less than a mini.

Re:Sans?

[chiark]

I (am || can speak) French, you inconsiderate clod!

UPS

[tezbobobo]

Well, I for one see a use for this. If you could get it to cut in when power fails this could be very useful... even commercially so. I wouldn't think it would need to be to complex - such as sending messages to the interface - as I can usually tell when the power cuts out because of the lights going out.

Except on second thoughts you'd also have to insert batteries into the monitor to be able to shut down the machine properly.

Re:UPS

[child_of_mercy]

I've had more late night call outs caused by Borked UPS's than I have by screwy power.

I'll grant you I live in a city with very, very regular power (Canberra).

I still hate UPS makers.

Re:UPS

[tezbobobo]

Tell me about it. I'm in Perth and I left work the other day after an hour of hearing the UPS's beeping and not being able to shutdown the servers.

Still, I've seen a harddrive after a bios was set to startup on power failure and then had the power flick on about 15 times in a row.

You could see the damage when we opened it up. I know my preference.

Just so you know (and i don't mean to condescend) but did you know that UPS wear out and loose their responsiveness over time?

Re:UPS

[Anonymous Coward]

They "loose" responsiveness over time? That I wasn't aware of. Maybe you have a "loose" connection somewhere.

But no. UPS's don't become slower with time. It doesn't take the inverter 2ms to start one year, then 10ms to start 5 years later. That's not how power supplies work. The batteries get soft with time, I'll grant you that. But a little PM fixes that. Dead batteries will simply shorten your holdup time (could be all the way to zero...). But not responsiveness.

And if you can "see damage" in a machine after having the input power cycle 15 times, it's time to reconsider what brand of power supplies you are using. No input transients should EVER cause secondary side damage. Save for direct lightning strikes, of course.

Re:UPS

[arashi no garou]

Except on second thoughts you'd also have to insert batteries into the monitor to be able to shut down the machine properly.

No, you wouldn't. Map a keyboard shortcut to open a terminal window, then when the power goes out, hit that shortcut and type "shutdown -h now", or even better write a shell script to do the same and launch it with a keyboard shortcut. You aren't very familiar with *nixes, are you?

Re:UPS

[child_of_mercy]

Yep I realise you get at best three years.

We've got a swap-out program.

Because we use them we never see what the worse alternatives might do.

Having said that I run a webserver with friends that we keep on domestic power and it's reliability has been pretty good.

I still maintain that UPS are godawful technology.

And as a side note...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in 5 years, they say that they may actually be able to produce a portable, battery-powered Mac with a 17" flat screen monitor, a powerful 1.67GHz PowerPC G4 processor, a standard 5400-rpm 100GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, 2GB of DDR RAM and AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR built right in.

Wait a minute...

Re:And as a side note...

[ari_j]

...and better than two hours of battery life.

Article Text

[riffzifnab]

Mac Mini Surgery

I had an itch to scratch so here it is...

Earlier this week I read an article on the Debian Weekly News, about a Debian box running on 3 Watts, and it reminded me of a project that I was asked to put on the shelf some time ago. The gist of the article linked to by the DWN was that Alex Perry got to wondering how much power his Linksys switch was sucking down whilst running 24/7, and found that his Manga, an ARM based router box, not only consumed less power but was able to run full blown Debian to boot. His point was "If I am going to pay to have a switch run 24/7, I might as well have the switch be a useful server as well." Following his article the PepLink community promptly got X11 working on the Manga and Alex's website was updated with the screen shots, which I might add are quite amusing.

While I do sympathize with the original thrust of the article, I must say that the Manga's ARM is a rather diminutive processor for a desktop machine these days. So my question is why would you run a Manga as a desktop to get down to the 3 Watt mark when for just a few more Watts you can run a box with a G4 processor? Yes, I am talking about that little machine that all of my geek friends (me included) seem to be drooling over as of late. The Mac Mini!

Several months ago I was in need of finding a small but powerful computer that could be run for a long period of time on batteries and not be a burden to carry. I was looking at several embedded options from places like kontron and mini-box, when I saw an article on the Mac Mini. Looking at the limited specs for the Mac Mini on Apple's website I began to suspect that if I removed the cdrom drive I would be able to fit a "lithium-ion polymer" battery pack inside the vacated space. I say that I suspected this because Apple is lousy about posting specs about internals and stuff that your Grandparents wouldn't normally ask about. So I ran down to the local Apple store with my trusty calipers and had one of their technicians go into the back and measure the dimensions of the cdrom drive for me. The numbers that he gave me made my day, the batteries would fit! Now about power specs. Apple of course did not have the DC power specs online, and nobody I talked to at the Apple store or on the support line could get them for me. In an act of desperation I resorted to sending email to combinations of addresses like steve_at_apple.com sjobs_at_apple.com, steve.jobs_at_apple.com, etc asking for the specs. Funny enough I got a reply (No, not from Steve Jobs) from an Engineer who was quite helpful. It looked like the Mac could do it, so I decided to get one and hack on it. The Mac was dirt cheap compared to the embedded systems so it was a very limited risk approach to proceeding on the project.

I ordered the Mac, a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive, and a laptop-IDE to CF adapter. I also talked to Mike (Dr. Zhang) at SKC PowerTech, Inc, and he was kind enough to send me some batteries for evaluation. The batteries were a new design and were not yet in production, so there was a bit of a lead time on those, but at the end of two days I had the rest of the necessities at hand. First things first, I measured the out of the box power draw of the Mac Mini, which turned out to be only 12 Watts! This was better than the specs I was given. I then proceeded to remove the hard disk and replace it with the Microdrive-CF adapter setup. Then I got me a Debian (Sarge) disk *GRIN*. This was the first time I had touched a Mac, and I was pleased to find that the Debian install on the Mac was smooth and painless. After getting the system up and running, I did some stress testing on it. The testing involved running simultaneous FFT routines (like 30 of them) on 80MB data files. The system was so heavily loaded that it took about 15 minutes to log into the machine from another terminal, and another 15 minutes to get to the bash prompt. During this utter thrashing of the system the highest the power usage spiked to was 20 Watts, but it stayed around 14

Vision analysis for a robot

[Anonymous Coward]

I build lego and meccano robots for fun but blind robots are frustrating.

This modded mac-mini looks perfect to allow me attach a webcam to my robots and let them see objects rather than have to rely on touch sensors. It should also allow me to build in a capability of a virtual world, ie:to allow a robot to remember what is no longer in view and recognise if something has been moved or removed when it wasn't looking in that direction.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[jamie]

Macs are sometimes a little too smart for VNC -- if they do not detect a monitor connected, they do not create a console display and the VNC server will fail because it does not have a display

Old Macs, maybe. I had to plug in a display dongle to a Mac IIci server back around 1995. But the Mac mini doesn't need one. I have a mini in my basement, and it works fine over VNC with nothing plugged into its video port.

Wireless network not available...?

[mrdogi]

So, could they not just connect to the thing over a WLAN? I suppose, they couldn't verify that it was that specific mini...

Re:Wireless network not available...?

[Chucker23N]

The AirPort Express WiFi card in the Mac mini uses a Broadcom chipset with unknown specifications. Therefore, Linux drivers do not exist.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[stratjakt]

Only an Apple zealot would call that a "smart feature".

The XBox does the same thing. Turn it on without anything plugged into the A/V ports, it flashes red/green as if the unit was faulty. Plenty of people have taken perfectly good units back to Best Buy (or wherever) claiming they were broken out of the box, which of course fueled a whole bunch of "Ms is teh gay xboxes are broked" dipshittery right here on slashdot.

Anyhow, you can run VNC on a virtual framebuffer under linux or BSD, don't see why you couldn't do it on a miniMac.

Re:Big deal

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

My XP Pro machine has been up for 36 hours. Before that it was up for a week. And before that, 4 weeks.

Think before you speak, boy.

Nuclear Battery

[COMON$]

Fit that nuclear battery as discussed on slashdot earlier that is supposed to be available into it and then I will be impressed, That would have some great possibilities.

Re:Nuclear Battery

[-Harlequin-]

You won't get anywhere near the amps you need out of betavoltaic batteries. Generally, yor're not talking amps at all, you're probably not even talking milli-amps, but micro-amps. The new improvement allows them to be significantly better to the point where they can be barely useful, ie, no longer nano-amps and almost completely useless, like they always have been.

Obviously, if you have unlimited money you can just keep making the battery bigger until it serves, but realistically, betavoltaics are the last thing that will power a computer. Driving part of a computer as a memory-backup on the other hand...

Double power wires

[RainbowSix]

He says that he used two wires for each power connection to ensure that it could carry enough current. Does this actually work? Doesn't electricity take the shortest path thus overloading the wire with the least resistance?

Re:Double power wires

[gadgetbox]

No, using two wires is similar to using a larger gauge wire. It decreases the resistance, thereby allowing the path to carry more current safely with less heat dissipation.

Re:Double power wires

[hairykrishna]

No, it's like a circuit with two resistors in parallel ('cos that's essentially what it is).

Re:Double power wires

[bunratty]

No. Electricity will take as many paths as it can. Adding resistors in parallel, however high the resistance and however long the wires, will decrease the overall resistance of the path and decrease the current in each wire.

a nice hack

[Rumagent]

It looks like a nice hack... But what would be really cool, was if you somehow could get the power from the monitor.

Re:Sans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Illiterate clod.

Even better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better... try it with a PowerBook. The monitor and the batteries are already included!

would it be better to..

[martin]

buy a laptop....iBook....

???????

I'm holding out

[WormholeFiend]

for an Apple computer that runs on human blood!

Oh wait...

Re:I'm holding out

[Anonymous Coward]

It would only be compatible with 10% of the human blood supply.

Re:I'm holding out

[catdevnull]

Why not!? Windows already runs on blood, sweat, and tears!

Re:I'm holding out

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac Mini that runs on blood? That would be especially good news for the emo kids.

It's also

[chadseld]

sans optical drive.

i could find use for it

[Anonymous Coward]

if someone would like to download pictures from digital camera to his/her computer, then why not take that enhanced mini mac with him/her, and then power it up when there is a need for computer, and use some clever keyboard shortcut that moves pictures off of camera and voila...

there you go, at least one use for it... so no need to complain about no uses.

This is what we are doing nowadays?

[WiFireWire]

C'mon, who really gives a crap that some geek put batteries in his mac mini. This article is hardly worth the kilobytes it occupies.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a keyboard or mouse hooked up to it? I'm just curious because I'm having much the same problem as the parent said. It seems like VNC will not come up unless there is a screen attached first so the mac can figure out the resolution. I've only had a few days to take a crack at it however so I could have something set up wrong.

this would be akin to

[Anonymous Coward]

a crack addict with a refillable bag of dope in their chest cavity... wtf?

-SJ53

Great, just needs a real HD now :P

[core]

It just needs a decent internal HD now and it'll be a nice box.

Cartoon miniature golf for MacOS X: http://www.funpause.com/

Come on now....give the guy a break

[gadgetbox]

Seriously, give the guy a break. This mod probably wasn't as easy as it looks. Yes, it does have a very limited practical application due to the fact that you need a powered monitor (network access aside), but....in the long run, things like this can serve up some very innovative creations. Perhaps someone else will see this, and take it a step further, and eventually some ingenious application for a battery powered Mac Mini will appear. I say bravo, good job, and keep on tinkering.

Re:Come on now....give the guy a break

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very easy to spot the losers without the brains or inspiration to take a piece of hardware and modify it - they're the ones who point out all the flaws with any project featured on slashdot. It makes them feel not so stupid and lazy, or something, who knows.

Processor cycling with PPC linux

[wazzzup]

I'm curious, does the linux kernel have processor cycling for PPC (Mac) computers? The reason I ask is that the computer may run longer with OS X if the linux kernel keeps the processor consuming power at a standard rate. The OS X kernel cycles the processor during idle periods to consume less power.

Perhaps I'm off base and this is handled on the motherboard?

Re:Processor cycling with PPC linux

[adam1101]

Cpufreq works fine on iBooks and PBooks. Since the Mini uses the same processor (7447A) I suppose it should also work.

Re:Big deal

[rubycodez]

wow, a month of uptime on windows, I'd better switch! 10:40am up 642 days, 17:47, 7 users, load average: 1.01, 0.20, 0.15

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no Apple anything, but for a game console this *is* a good idea. The FRAG lets you know that there is something wrong and you need to look at the Xbox, so that you don't sit on the couch with the controller, flipping the TV channels and cursing at it.

Also important to note that any "modified" BIOS of the last oh, two years, disable this feature so you can run it headless.

Not that I would know anything about those.

not bad...

[mrselfdestrukt]

I think it's a nice hack. Despite the fact that it only lasts a little while and you need power for your monitor.
I think it would be REALLY nice if you could find another empty mac mini case and stack more batteries, a small LCD display and a foldable keyboard in there and stack the two on top of each other. All you need then is a small cable running from the real mac to your power-box.(power-mac?) and voila!

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[petermgreen]

i'm sure you could run xvnc on the mac and make an X display that was totally independent of the mac desktop without too much trouble

i imagine it would be considerablly harder to do the same for a mac type desktop though.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a mac lab of 10.2.8 macs. I get the spinning beachball of death on at least one of the machines during each class. Truth hurts! My PCs rarely need rebooting. Typically BSOD's are harware (RAM) related, not software. XP is solid..

Power Over Ethernet

[chudgoo]

Given the availability of POE switches that can deliver 15.4 watts per port I'd like to see the next Mac Mini rev add POE support to its NIC.

This could mean a one-cable-fed fully functional Mac Mini with network.

Re:Power Over Ethernet

[enosys]

It shouldn't be too hard to mod a Mac Mini to use Pover Over Ethernet. I'm not sure if POE provides enough power though. This page claims that about 13 watts is available. Even 15.4 watts would be too low. In the article it says the power usage can spike to 20 watts. You'd probably need a very high efficiency DC-DC converter and you may have to run the Mac Mini diskless or maybe with a flash card instead of a hard drive.

Re:Power Over Ethernet

[Anonymous Coward]

>I'd like to see the next Mac Mini rev add POE support

Nope. Power spikes to 30W when using disks and such. That's why the stock power supply was specc'd at 80W.

Rene

Re:Power Over Ethernet

[mollog]

Ok, underclock the MoBo and then have the POE supplement the battery's power, not replace its power. With some intelligent power management, this would work and even keep the batteries charged.

Now we need a good application for this. How about an alarm system?

Since it runs X11, just use that on another PC

[crovira]

with a screen, on the LAN.

You could always VPN into it, like my friend who leaves stuff running on his box when he comes over from his place in the Bronx to my place in Jersey City.

That's how he checks the status of his box.

Re:Since it runs X11, just use that on another PC

[Thijs van As]

Sure, but when your friend has arrived at your place his battery ran out, because it only lasts for 2 hours...

I like the experiment, by the way.

Re:Big deal

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

That sure is impressive. Of course, I get to upgrade and play with the insides of my computer instead of measuring my online dick with uptime. I installed a pair of 74 gig Raptors in a RAID 0. And installed an x800xt.. But, I guess you probably don't game on your machine.

Re:Sans?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is trying to prevent himself from learning anything outside of the english language. Please respect his desire to maintain ignorance.

you're wrong

[tezbobobo]

From totse.com:

Myth #9. SURGE PROTECTORS ARE PERMANENT DEVICES. Most point-of-use surge protectors use metal oxide varistors as their primary protection component. Despite all its strengths, this inexp- ensive (15 cent) component wears out a little with each surge above a very modest threshold... a threshold that is exceeded mant times a day in most environments. Unfortunately, the race among surge protector manufacturers to provide the "best" protection (i.e., the lowest let- through voltage) has led them to use lower voltage MOVs which age faster and fail sooner. The normal failure mode for an MOV is overheating, and they have been known to cause fires. Thus MOVs wear out and should be replaced periodically. Unfortunately, equipment to test MOVs is very expensive (on the order of $20,000). Indicator lights purporting to show that protection is operational ,are not always reliable; in fact, those are sometimes wired across the power line and thus only indicates that the power line is live.

and surge protectors work the same way:

Surge suppressors eventually wear out, but the better quality ones have an indicator light that flashes when they have been damaged. If you are subject to frequent storms or brownouts, it's best to replace them every three or four years.

Re:you're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment made no mention of surge supression devices. You claimed that UPS response times diminished with age. UPS response time is the amount of time required for the inverter to power on and supply power to a load after a power failure.

However, I do agree that surge suppression devices do not age well, and that they should be replaced periodically. Also, you are correct, it's very difficult to test MOV's, and quite often the testing procedure can end up destructive...

Re:Old news

[LuckyStarr]

Never mind. I found it quite funny. :)

Server batteries

[scrotch]

I've often wondered why there aren't servers with batteries built in for a few minutes of power after the UPS goes down.

Apple could get especially good results from doing this because of their hardware-software integration. Imagine an xserve with ten minutes of battery power built in. Can't you see the interface where you have the computer run a script that emails you after it's been on battery power for two minutes? Imagine hooks for when battery power starts to be used, and when a clean, painless shutdown begins, or when power is restored before the battery runs out.

This would be of great value to me anyway. I know some UPS software offers this (though I'm not sure what the state of Mac-compatibility is), but Apple could surely do a better, more thorough job.

Re:Server batteries

[mprindle]

The huge down side to putting batteries inside of the units is space, weight, and life span. It is less expensive to buy a high quality UPS to keep the servers up than it would be to have some type of battery built in. With the UPS you can replace the batteries fairly inexpensively and if a battery does leak then it runes the UPS. Where is if a battery was mounted in the computer if it did leak it would fry the whole machine which could be very expensive.

Re:Server batteries

[scrotch]

I assume leaking would only be an issue for the lead-acid batteries that are usually in UPSes? Because it doesn't seem to be an issue for the millions of laptop batteries Apple has shipped.

This article, and the laptop I'm typing this on, are evidence that space concerns are not a big deal.

A high quality APC UPS runs at least $500 and will shut down a single server without spending more for networking. It also takes up rack space unless you're going to leave them laying around on the floor, which is worse.

And it's the software that would make it worth another few hundred bucks. They could tie it into launchd (I'm guessing, since I haven't looked at it yet) and easily run scripts or react based on the hooks I was talking about.

Re:Server batteries

[gerardrj]

The other option is to purchase high-quality SERVERS. I'm not generally speaking about x86 based systems here. If purchase servers that have N+1 redundant hot-swapable power supplies you are significantly likely to notice an option of a power supply that has -48v DC inputs instead of AC line current. These things are a beauty to use.

These supplies are routinely used in col-lo type facilities, especially in telco based systems. For both reliability and thermal issues.

Re:Server batteries

[drinkypoo]

I've often wondered why there aren't servers with batteries built in for a few minutes of power after the UPS goes down.

spend less time wondering and more time doing research. Some of IBM's AS/400 systems (whatever-series, now) have a built-in UPS; they are sold as a complete computing solution for businesses. Just plug it in, and compute.

Or, you know, you could try a google search, if that's not too much trouble.

Re:Server batteries

[SupremeChalupa]

Most UPS systems have more than enough monitoring and alert capability without adding another component to the actual server. Because if the external UPS is down, then so is the networking equipment that you'd use to send that email or remote in with, the KVM/monitor to do anything about it locally would be awfully lacking in power as well. So basically you've just added 10 minutes to pray the power comes up instead of shutting down the system when the external UPS told you to already.

Re:Server batteries

[eSims]

have the computer run a script that emails you after it's been on battery power for two minutes?

You'll get you're email about a minute after the power (and therefore the network) comes back on! Although this has been done with systems that have modems attached for dial out notification.

Re:Server batteries

[greed]

Yup, and the RS/6000 7015-900 series had a drawer full of batteries. They were basically the same rack design as the CISC AS/400.

And I see they still do, at least on the p5 590-class machines.

Smaller, single-drawer servers do not generally have integrated UPSes because it makes much more sense to have a UPS drawer in the rack to run the entire rack frame.

Re:Server batteries

[drinkypoo]

They also sell tower-case AS/400s with the integral UPS, and have for some years.

Re:Server batteries

[Henk Poley]

Together with a wireless backup connection you could move your servers while still operating ;-)

Also escapes my why they haven't done that with external storage. Pull the plug, the OS get's a signal and syncs the data to disk wirelessly, unmounts when it's finished.

Re:Server batteries

[sfgoth]

I know some UPS software offers this (though I'm not sure what the state of Mac-compatibility is), but Apple could surely do a better, more thorough job.

Funny you should say that.

Apple supports the standard USB UPS profile. So if you buy a $30 UPS at Frys with a USB port on it, and plug it into a Mac, no software is required.

The Mac just uses the same power manager software it uses for a PowerBook. You even get the little battery icon in the menu bar if you like.

-pmb

Re:Server batteries

[drinkypoo]

Servers usually consume a lot more power than laptops. Therefore, they would need a larger battery to get significant runtime. At some point, you'll need an interface for external batteries.

On the other hand, if you need a server, you generally have space for a UPS. UPSes have had "smart signalling" (in APC's parlance, anyway) and you have been able to monitor remaining capacity and such for a long, long time. These days practically every UPS comes with a USB connection used for monitoring.

The high-quality APC UPS you were speaking of, which can run not only your PC but also other niceties like a LCD display or a powered USB hub, or for that matter an external RAID, comes with monitoring software which can be configured to send email, net send messages (on windows) or pages (via TAP I think) or to run a command, at assorted thresholds. It also provides for distributed monitoring.

Basically, the only class of machine that would benefit significantly from an internal battery that doesn't already commonly have one is the home desktop PC. An external UPS is just more clutter, and most people have their computer in their bedroom or family room and don't really need yet another beige box on the floor. You could put an adequately-sized LiIon battery into a drive bay. However, that won't let you run the display; You might as well use a smaller battery still, and just use it to ride out short blackouts, filter power during brownouts or overvoltage, and to give your computer enough time to hibernate. THAT would make sense, especially since it need not be very expensive.

Re:Sans?

[Reignking]

What's wrong with sans? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

APC needs to make a mini-styled UPS!

[argent]

OK, it's cute to fit it inside the case, but if you could get a UPS that'd stack under the Mini with a compatible power connector you could get almost all the convenience (and, let's face it, "mini chic") with a lot less complexity.

They'd probably need to coordinate with Apple on the power, but it'd make the standby a lot more efficient than if they did the usual DC->AC->DC thing, and they already do DC UPSes for racks.

Re:APC needs to make a mini-styled UPS!

[jrushton]

Just stick two CS 500s side by side and balance it on the top!

Schrodinger's Mac

[mathmatt]

"Although it runs fine without wires, he had to plug in the monitor to be able to show that it was really up."

Actually, the mac is both dead and alive until the monitor is plugged in - at which time the mac's probablility wave instantaneously settles in at its definite and final value...that is until the batteries run out, then it's a $500 doorstop.

Re:Schrodinger's Mac

[spectre_240sx]

I hereby award you a virtual medal for the best schrodinger's cat reference viewed by spectre_240sx.

Moving it to another room

[Space Coyote]

One of the things I tend to use the battery in my laptop for most is to keep the thing on when I move from one room to the other in the house and then plug in again. Seems like a sensible thing someone would want to do with a mini, to go from a desk in a study over to the bedroom or to the stereo to play some music for a while without having to shut down and restart.

been out for years...

[Anonymous Coward]

except my one has a screen and runs for 4 hours. Its called a powerbook. next please.

An LCD and off you go

[polemon]

A Nice graphical LCD display would do the job, one similar to contemporary UMTS Cellphones, for instance. This Battery powered Minimac is filling the gab between Barebone Systems and fully portables. It's something between Desktop and Laptop (LaskTop maybe?). This Batt powered mac would run nicely as an Adhoc Fileserver or even Adio/Video Streaming device, think of Partys and such... On the other hand, it could be used as some sort of diagnostic device, I'm thinking here not only inside the IT-Box, Think of emeregency services like a breakdown service, or even for medical care... The lifespan of the batteries is short, no doubt, but maybe some technology my emerge to take better control over the power consumption, I'm thinking about something like Centrino Technology here. I don't know what kind of Batteries he used, but take a look at Lithium-Ion recharg.Batt.s used in todays cellphones. They can provide quite large ammounts of power, are easy to recharge, and are lightweight too. Anyway, I'll try to connect an LCD monitor to the mini of my friend's, I'll post the results if anything worth mentioning comes out

A kind of UPS device

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you do with a Mac mini that you can't get any visual output from

...The Mac started right up, so I pulled out the power cable...
...And it kept right on going.

Imagine you are in a third-world country or california and there is a power-outages, you better have a backup battery ;-)

Re:A kind of UPS device

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points, I'd give you a "+1 Funny" just because it's been too long since I've heard a really good rolling-blackout joke.

Re: hack

[jrushton]

Haha like the old power supply pass through on PCs except in reverse!!

Of course you could buy a UPS, and that would come with a socket for a montor and the mini as well. Still thats not what this guy was doing.

But... all he has really done is put a small battery in the case. What would be good is apple combined a real UPS with their macs, and to swap the battery it had a small compartment on the underside so you could swap the battery. Charges from a power cable yes, but you could yank that out and carry it away if you wanted to show it worked.

Re:Big deal

[rubycodez]

no gaming, just coding in C/C++ and Ruby. Soon that RedHat 8 machine will be replaced by a SuSE 9.3 machine. I do have a windows 98se machine for taxes and printing that never gets OS upgrade because MS is still putting out patches and security fixes (got the commercial Linux distros beat there).

Two questions...

[Decimal Dave]

Does the Mac mini have an inertial sensor like the PowerBooks?

If so, is it accurate enough that I use one of these modded Mac minis as a guidance system for an intercontinental ballistic missile?

Re:Two questions...

[Game_Ender]

That would be an accelerometer, and you would need more than one to guide a missile. You would need three along with a couple of gyros and/or a magnetometer.

Re:Sans?

[KillerDeathRobot]

Huh? Is it too hard to do a simple dictionary search before saying something like this?

sans
Pronunciation Key (snz, sä)
prep.

Without.

Best Troll...EVER

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done. Either you have not owned very many Macs or you have NO experience with PCs.

Macs aren't that loud and are (for the most part) well designed, but the same goes for any well built x86 box, as well.

Nicely trolled.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[brummie_andy]

I am running a Mac Mini as a personal backup / file / web server at home with only the power supply and ethernet cable attached. I control it from my PC using VNC and SSH without any issues what so ever.

Doh!

[Klivian]

No, an iBook does not cut it.
Price of iBook - price of Mini+battery
Size of iBook - size of Mini
QED

Re:Doh!

[punkass]

Price of iBook vs. price of Mini+Display+battery to run both? 72 in^3 vs. 114 in^3? I understand the "because I can" axiom, but this does seem a tad impractical. What does one use a wireless battery powered webserver for, anyways? WAR-porn?

Re:Doh!

[punkass]

Could you quote that particular part? My reading comprehension skills are pretty rusty...

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Arielholic]

I have a mini in my basement, and it works fine over VNC with nothing plugged into its video port.

But since you live in the basement (being your mom's basement) you could just as well plug the monitor directly into the Mac mini.

Re:VNC + Mac OS X

[mpaque]

Try with Mac OS X 10.3 or later. If there are no display devices on-line the window server will create a virtual framebuffer.

In Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, fast user switching gets a related feature. When a user session is switched off-screen, if a screen watching program such as OSXvnc-server is running, the off-screen session will get a virtual framebuffer so that it can be remote-operated while another user session or a login window is on the hardware console.

Try running OSXvnc.app, for example, and switching users. A remote VNC viewer will be able to connect to the session switched off-screen, so you can continue working from a remote location. When you set this up, make sure you set up a password for access and take the usual security precautions for a remote-controlled system.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm setting up my Cube as a file and music server. No monitor, keyboard or mouse and VNC runs fine. I'm running Mac OS X 10.3.9 and OSXvnc on the Cube and Chicken of the VNC on my iBook.

Well, Duh!

[callipygian-showsyst]

The Mac Mini is esentially a headless laptop. (Not a bad idea, mind you, but that's what it is.)

Wouldn't you be better off buying a *real* laptop? And if running L*nux (or FreeBSD) is your goal, you can get a trailing-edge, used laptop cheap.

Re:Well, Duh!

[Mike Buddha]

Wouldn't you be better off buying a *real* laptop?

Of course you would. But it wouldn't be neat.

Re:VNC + Mac OS X

[bnenning]

In Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, fast user switching gets a related feature. When a user session is switched off-screen, if a screen watching program such as OSXvnc-server is running, the off-screen session will get a virtual framebuffer so that it can be remote-operated while another user session or a login window is on the hardware console.

That's fantastic. Is there any limit to the number of framebuffers? i.e. can Alice, Bob, and Carol simultaneously have their own VNC sessions while Dave is actually at the Mac running his own session?

Re:VNC + Mac OS X

[mpaque]

Is there any limit to the number of framebuffers? i.e. can Alice, Bob, and Carol simultaneously have their own VNC sessions while Dave is actually at the Mac running his own session?

No limit on the number of framebuffers, beyond the limits of available memory and address space. Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave can all use the system at the same time.

I was not trolling

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Well done. Either you have not owned very many Macs or you have NO experience with PCs."

I have owned several Macs, four in all, both desktop and laptop. None made a sound except when the fan came on, and that was hardly ever. So rare that it startles me when it happens because I have to remind myself what that sound was again. As for experience with PCs, how about decades? All I have to do is walk around the office to notice the dull roar of dozens of fans running non-stop from all the PCs.

Your experience is different? Very well, express it. But don't call me a troll just because I talked about my personal experience. Troll Disagreement. I stand by what I said, for this is what I have experienced and continue to experience.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Your gonna love it when next time you reboot your server some patch you installed 4 months ago renders it unbootable.

of course you'll have no idea what patch that was.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Skuld-Chan]

I have a G5 that does this - has to have a monitor connected otherwise VNC will show everything black.

Tune in tomorrow...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for another pointless Mac mini story. This time, an enterprising Slashdot reader uses a Mac mini as... a computer. It's a must read!

Modify a Game Console Portable Display

[CyberNigma]

I think it would work well with a modified (battery-powered) game console (xbox/ps2/gamecube) portable display like they sell in stores.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[hyperizer]

Old Macs, maybe.... I have a mini in my basement, and it works fine over VNC with nothing plugged into its video port.

It's only booting without a monitor that's the problem (once the Mac booted you can disconnect). This dongle tricks a Mac into believing a monitor is connected.

Monitor? HEADPHONES!!!

[d474]

...iPod for n3rds.

Details details...

[CatsupBoy]

The real issue here people is keystrokes...

while [ "true" ] ; do
uptime | tee -a ~/minimac_uptime.log
sync
sleep 20
done

good greif!!! where do I start, if he's got better things to do with his time then watch a computer (ha! yeah right) he should learn to code faster. ex:

while [ 0 ];do uptime >> ~/minimac_uptime.log;sync;sleep 20;done

Now, where did I put that dvorak???

Re:Details details...

[AdamTheBastard]

erm... wouldn't
while [ 1 ];do uptime >> ~/minimac_uptime.log;sync;sleep 20; done

work a whole lot better?

Re:Details details...

[CatsupBoy]

It doesnt matter what number you put in the test parameter it will always return true, because the expression "0" is evaluated true. Just as the expressions "1", "2", "3"... are all evaluated true.

Now look, you've gone and made me type even more characters... This website is NOT a keystroke efficiant means of making a point!

What's the point?

[Coward Anonymous]

Why not buy a cheap laptop and achieve the same thing with a much longer battery life and monitor for free.

DVI less power than VGA?

[Shuh]

The set-up on this guy's web-page indicates he's using a digital-to-analog converter. I wonder if this isn't draining more power than simply sending digi-bits via the Mini's native DVI.

Mac mini special edition!

[Shanep]

Apple is pleased to announce an new, special limited edition of the Mac mini! The Mac mini Semtex.

Apple takes no responsibility for user safety when travelling through Israelli check points.

Re:Mac mini special edition!

[fnord_uk]

Interesting point. Anyone have experience clearing airport security with shoddy home made electronic items?

Re:Server batteries -- they exist. AS/400 i5

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I've often wondered why there aren't servers with batteries built in for a few minutes of power after the UPS goes down.

Our AS/400 has a built in battery pack which intigrates into the OS.

When the power fails, and the triple redundant generators fail, and the 80KVA UPS fails, the internal UPS puts the system into a hybernation state. All the SCSI controllers flush to disk (DASD) and the batterys hold the 8GB of RAM in their current state.

When power is restored for a period of time, the system recovers by closing down jobs (services/programs) that were running and writing buffers to disk as best as can be asertained by the OS.

Works great. I've seen it happen once, first hand. In this case, electrical short killed all power except the built in UPS.

Re:VNC + Mac OS X

[bnenning]

No limit on the number of framebuffers, beyond the limits of available memory and address space. Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave can all use the system at the same time.

Sweet. Multiple graphical logins was the one thing on my wishlist for Tiger that I didn't think was in there, and you guys snuck it in anyway. Great work, I'll be playing with that tonight.

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Old Macs, maybe.... I have a mini in my basement, and it works fine over VNC with nothing plugged into its video port.

It's only booting without a monitor that's the problem (once the Mac booted you can disconnect). This dongle tricks a Mac into believing a monitor is connected.

Thanks for the link, I might use it to get my mini to boot with a resolution higher than 1024X768 (which it does just fine, like he said).

-Anonymous Phil

No No! SLEEP MODE!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really great! The value is that you can put the mini into sleep mode, where it has really small draw, and then take the thing WITH you to be awoken at the next place. Smaller then a laptop, cheaper, with battery it sound DAMN cool for telecommuting. on the cheap!

Think about it.. Moving it from the car to the living room without shutting down or losing state, can you say C-A-R M-P-3 P-L-A-Y-E-R? i knew you could.

gawd that's cool.

Re: hack

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

www.apple.com/powerbook

equal or greater power than the mini, integrated monitor, and a built-in "UPS" -- aka laptop battery

Rather impressive....

[TheDefenistrator]

The problem is that in terms of a portable system, a mini with baterys is not very practical. For the same cost one could purchase a basic iBook with over 2x the batery life.

If all it is being used for is to transport the mini from one monitor to another, it is even stranger. You can easily move an non-batery-packed mini from one monitor the the other. Using a normal mini would also allow for larger hard drive space and an optical drive.

I am all for technological development and hardware hacking, but this is rather pointless. On the other hand, it would be rather nice to have a transportable headless server.....

VNC works fine without screen etc.

[mbaudis]

No problem without screen, keyboard etc., at least under OS X. That's the way I run a server (o.k., for most things you would not even need VNC...).

Also, I have done it on a mini Mac after disconnecting the 23in LCD; makes you scroll a lot on the client side... booting without screen leads to XGA resolution.

Re:Sans?

[Anonymous Coward]

The old "cromulent" joke would be a little more funny were it not for the fact that the word "sans" is, in fact, a real word.

Yes, even in English. Look it up.

correction

[geekoid]

I (am || can speak) French, you inconsiderate Claude!

Possibilities for even better power-savings?

[dirkstoop]

I'm wondering if he disconnected the keyboard after starting the uptime-logging script.

these usb keyboards draw something like 350 MAh from the USB port and the USB ports' regulated 5VDC is probably just that: regulated. so there will probably be some excess generation of heat going on while an USB device is connected.

the keyboard should cost around 2 tot 2.5 Watts.

It might also be possible to save some extra power by removing the USB voltage regulator altogether from the logic board. And while you're at it you might try to remove some other excessive stuff like the built-in analog modem. That probably saves some extra milliwatts.. (although that one is probably built in to the main controller chip)

RAM size might also have a (minimal) effect on power usage.

it would be nice to see how far you can go bringing down the power.

anyone else have some ideas on bringing down those watts?

(too bad Apple's Developer Notes don't dig as deep as they used to some ten years ago, older developer notes really went into great detail concerning the electrics of those machine.)

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[NightLamp]

My G4 550 does this also, really annoying. I wish there were a software fix for it.

cool would be to power a mac mini using PoE

[legal_asshole]

Power over Ethernet

Note From Autor:

[Fuzzy_The_Quantum_Du]

Wow, that was fast. I only posted the page on Sunday evening...

To address questions asked here on Slashdot. The main purpose of this project was to build a wearable debian box. We had a 2 square inch VGA LCD heads up display that we were using. Also we had toyed around with Festival to read output to the user. The application did not require any user input, so no keyboard was nessasary. If someone wanted user input one could use bluetooth and a Linux PDA to run ssh or VNC. Also I have seen some IR remote controls that have a full keyboard (Do a Google search on CarPC's and remote controls), so user input is not out of the question.

Also several people were talking negativly about the battery life. My run time test was conducted under heavy load so the Mac Mini was pulling around 14-20W at the time. The device I used for measuring the power was a Watts Up Pro which was specificly designed for measuring the power draw on consumer electronics, so the readings are accurate. Bear in mind that these batteries are preproduction prototypes that were sent to me for evaluation, and SKC Films informed me after I recieved them that they would not perform optimally do to a mistake in that batch. They also offered to make me another batch, which I declined as my application only needed about 45min runtime and the ones I already had would do fine for proof of concept. The point here is that with further work the battery life can be inproved. Simply using CPUFreq in the Linux Kernel will help strech out the battery life a good deal. To address concerns someone brought up about charging the Li-ion batteries, A power supply with a current limiting knob _is_ a safe method of charging the batteries. The chargers that are designed for charging Li-ion batteries, say for instance in cell phones, do just that. I have recharged my battery pack just fine using a Topward power supply set to 20VDC and limited the current to about 50mA and the batteries didn't even get warm let alone explode in my face ;0).

Granted my application was very specific, but this could be used for lots of things. Slashdot has already mentioned quite a few. How about this one:
A portable compute brick. In a lab setting one might need to take a part of a Mosics cluster from one lab bench to another to collect and process data. Having a built in UPS on the Mac Mini with a Wifi network interface allows you to move the compute node physicly without having to first remove the node from the cluster and migrate all of it's processes off the node. Please note that Wireless comunications with the Mac Mini need to use a USB or Firewire Wifi card because the Mac airport card uses the broadcom chipset, which Linux users have learned to hate with a passion. Before someone mentions NDISWrappers I would like to state the obvious Mac is non-X86 and the binary drivers that are used with NDIS are compiled for X86.

"Why do this?" was also asked. My response...
I am a Geek, and it was fun!

Cheers,
Silas Bennett

P.S. My uname should read Fuzzy_The_Quantum_Duck but Slashdot didn't like the last 2 characters...

Re:whats the point of debian?

[steeviant]

Never stopped Windows from being popular...

Re:Mod Parent Up: +5, Apple Fanboy

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true, I'd only pay $4999 tops.

Unless the box was made of rounded aluminium and white plastic... but I still wouldn't pay more than $10000.

Beowulf cluster

[wkos]

they'd still be ideal for a wireless beowulf cluster...

Mac Mini with Batteries?? I'd rather have an ibook

[maizena]

If you wanna run a Mac using batteries, it's better to buy ibook. Why? - it has almost the same specs - it has a screen, a keyboard and a trackpad (mice) - it runs on batteries by default - it has no cables... it's wireless :P I wonder WHY would anyone bother to do such a silly thing... If you want a Mac Mini running on batteries and with no cables you should have bought an ibook.

Re:Big deal

[rubycodez]

no big deal in the Linux/Unix/BSD world, install a whole freakin' new distro and remount the old partitions. I do burn my config files to backup along with my data.

Not so

[FredFnord]

Can't run it with the power supply plugged in as normal. Plug a supply in with a current limiter and you can charge the batteries while the machine is running.

-fred

The biggest problem I see...

[aarku]

is that the heat from the machine will adversely affect the battery. The laptop I am typing now has a cleverly placed battery that is away from the most heat producing components, and remains fairly cool. Fun idea still.

why? backup

[CyberdogOSX]

no need for a UPS

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[achbed]

Try this: Use the included Apple Remote Desktop client with the VNC option turned on (there since version 2). This launches even before the login screen appears. As long as it boots, you can get into it.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

if only there were more than 3 programs for it

Re:Sans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is pretty silly, since "sans" has been part of english usage for while.

English doesn't just borrow words from other languages, it mugs them in back alleys and then rifles their pockets for verbs and adjectives.

Some interesting thoughts on men

[Anonymous Coward]

1. If you are over 30 and you have a washboard stomach, you're gay. It means you haven't
sucked back enough beer with the boys and rather you've been sucking-off the boys and
have spent the rest of your free time doing sit-ups, aerobics, and doing the Oprah diet.

2. If you have a cat, you are a Flaaaayming Fag. A cat is like a dog, but Gay: it grooms itself
constantly but never scratches itself, has a delicate touch except when it uses its nails, and
whines to be fed. And just think about how you call a dog..."Killer, come here! I said get your
ass over here!" Now think about how you call a cat..."Bun-bun,come to daddy, snookums!"
Jeeezus, you're the poster boy for GAY.

3. If you suck on lollipops, Ring-Pops, baby-dummies, or any such nonsense, rest assured,
you are a Gaylord. A straight man only sucks bar-b-q ribs, crab-claws, raw oysters, craw-fish
guts, pickled pigs feet, or titties. Anything else and you are in training to suck El-Dicko and
undeniably a Fag.

4. If you refuse to have a shit in a public toilet or piss in a parking lot, you're in a deep
homosexual relationship. A man's world is his toilet; he defecates and urinates where he
pleases.

5. If you drink decaf coffee with skim milk, you like a high hard one in the poop-chute. Coffee
is to be had strong, black (or with thick, wholesome milk) and full-aroma. A pussy-eating man will never be heard ordering a "Decaf Cafe Latte with Skim" and he will never, ever know what artificial sweetener tastes like. If you've had NutraSweet in your mouth, you've had a dick in there too.

6. If you know more than six names of colours or four different types of dessert, you might as
well be handing out a free pass to your arse. A real man doesn't have memory space in his
brain to remember all of that crap as well as all the names of all the players in the NRL, Super
12 Rugby, Cricket, PGA, NBL, and Supercar series. If you can pick out chartreuse or you
know what a "fresier" is, you're gay. And if you can name ANY type of textile other than
denim, you are faggadocious!

7. If you drive with both hands on the wheel, forget it...you're hungry for man sausage. A man
only puts both hands on the wheel to honk at slow-arse Volvo drivers or to cut the
mother***ker off. The rest of the time he needs that hand to change the radio station, eat his
hamburger, hold his beer, or, if he's a wog, talk on his mobile phone.

8. If you enjoy romantic comedies or French films, mon-frere, vous sonnez le Gay, oui? The
only time it is acceptable to watch one of those is with a woman who knows how to reward
her man. Watching any of the above films by yourself or with another man is likely to result in SHC (spontaneous homosexual combustion), which is what happens to fags when they flame
out too quickly. So follow the rules and beware. Or keep that sh*t to yourself, you flamming
faggot!

9. If your name is Marty, Brent, Josh or Nat then stop living in denial. You're a dung punching
arse bandit from way back and everyone knows it.

In italy

[mkiwi]

I speak fluent french, however I cannot stand the sound of "sans" used in the language. In italy, sans = senza- sounds much cooler and more romantic, doesn't it? Unfortunately Frace will not change its language merely to appease me.... t,t

Re:External Batty pack + VNC

[jamie]

Do you have a keyboard or mouse hooked up to it?

You got two replies already saying "no," and I'll be the third. VNC works through a restart. The only things plugged into it are power, ethernet, and miscellaneous USB devices (iMic, hub, APC UPS monitor, and telephone adapter).