Slashdot Mirror


Mac mini Built Into Wall

Lilmuckers writes "I have just completed a project to build a Mac mini into the wall of my kitchen. It is hidden and everything works perfectly."

16 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Unix built into a wall at ISCA by Foofoobar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me of an old story at the Univeristy of Iowa where they moved a computer department into a new building wherein years later they are trying to find a server. It is still serving packets and no one can seem to find it. Suddenly someone realize that it was probably left at the other building years before when they moved. They go over there and are looking around when someone says 'well the server would have been right here where this wall was. On a hunch, they rip open the wall and sure enough, there is the server still serving packets... 4 years later!

    --
    This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
    1. Re:Unix built into a wall at ISCA by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 5, Interesting

      dunno if this is a different story, but it sounds awfully familiar to a novell server at UNC

      --
      vodka, straight up, thank you!
    2. Re:Unix built into a wall at ISCA by DoktorTomoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is an urban legend common to several academic institutions all over the northern hemisphere. I've heard those in the University of Munich/Germany, in Kyoto, in several educational institutions in the States and Canada. And of course, always it was the router of that specific institution...

  2. Wow, slashdotted already... by motbob · · Score: 4, Funny

    The submitter really asked for it, didn't he?

  3. I did the same with my Dell. by AtariAmarok · · Score: 5, Funny
    I did the same sort of thing with my Dell running Windoes ME. Only it was my office, not my kitchen. It did not take much effort or thought. It was really more of a spur of the moment thing. That final blue creen was the last straw. Seconds later, the Dell was embedded in the drywall halfway up on the other side of the room.

    Also, a hint: If you have a G4 Cube you wish to hide in your kitchen, merely replace the current heating elements in your oven with the ol G4 Cube. It is both sightly and functional this way.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  4. And I... by felipin-sioux · · Score: 4, Funny

    have just completed a copy of SpaceShipOne built entirely in Lego... It is hidden, but I tell you that everything works perfectly..

    --
    Sorry, this sig is beneath your current threshold
  5. Re:Real Estate Sure is Expensive these days by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He couldn't find space for an Mac mini? It's only 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall.

    Two things:

    1- there's more to space-taking than just the size of an object: put a 6.5 wide object in the middle of a desk, and you may well find it cumbersome, either because you work with large objects on the desk anymore, or because it gets in your way, or whatever. There's also the clutter of cables going to/from it that, in my experience, is much much more anoying than the space taken by the computer.

    2 - the guy may have wanted a neat, out-of-sight installation. Sticking your computer into the wall is the definite way of hiding your computer :-)

    Just so you know, my computer is hidden in a cupboard, and I have extra-long VGA, keyboard, mouse... cables going to my desk. It really is much cleaner visually, not to mention the lack of noise.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  6. Arrrrrrrg by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here [Next] is [Next] my [Next] Mac [Next] Mini [Next] in [Next] a [Next] wall.

    For everyone who just wants to skip to the chase and see "a Mac Mini in someone's kitchen wall", which is what I wanted to see (not pictures of an effing butter knife)...completed Mini in the wall.

    Also, I think the entire W3C group has a simultaneous conniption with the author's use of "Clicky" to note an image that is also a link. That's the purpose, astoundingly, of a BLUE BORDER around an image...along with the cursor change, the tool tip, AND the display of a URL in the bottom of the browser window. I think it's probably worse than the usual "to see a picture of me and a llama, click here. To find out more about llamas, click here."

    I know I had a conniption, thanks to the atrocious grammar....

    1. Re:Arrrrrrrg by suitepotato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And does it come under the heading ironic that this site boasts of W3C compliance, arrogantly stops IE users with some insult warning screen despite the site rendering just fine when you get past it, and violates probably a dozen of the rules laid down in the very first incarnation of Vincent Flanders' Webpages That Suck?.

      Wrapping yourself in anti-MS/anti-IE leetness and promptly do the website wrong anyhow seems to be getting alarmingly common.

      --
      If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  7. Mac Mini Built Into Wall by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's nothing - I used to use a VAX 9000 as a wall. And a furnace.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  8. Another use of a mac mini: in the bathroom! by tranquillity · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's another nice use of a mac mini, it's even easier to install:

    http://www.w3sh.com/archives/2005/05/enfin_un_bon_ us.html

  9. IBM maintains a nice "legends" page by Shivetya · · Score: 4, Informative

    about their iSeries and such

    http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/legen ds/index_flat.html

    It also includes the "server" lost behind the wall. The reenactments are cute and somewhat based on "true" stories.

    Another set of stories is at...
    http://www.iseriesnetwork.com/nodeuk/ukarchive/ind ex.cfm?fuseaction=viewarticle&CO_ContentID=13885

    --
    * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
  10. Amiga Lore - Embedded Machinery by Chordonblue · · Score: 4, Funny

    That funny comment reminded me of something I saw years ago touring the old Commodore plant in West Chester, PA.

    Somewhere in the piles of stuff I have accumulated over the years I have a picture. It's a picture of a picture frame encompassing an internal floppy drive embedded in the drywall behind it.

    The story goes that an engineer was up all hours of the night trying to debug a problem with his new floppy drive circuitry. After hours and hours of fruitless troubleshooting, he discovered that the problem wasn't with the circuitry, it was with the drive itself. The frustrated engineer picked up said floppy drive and whipped it at the wall - where it became one with it. The picture frame was later added for decoration.

    --
    "...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
  11. Re:It's not built into the kitchen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just the wires are. The MAC is under the cabinent.

    Actually, the MAC is inside the case, on the network card. The Mac is under the cabinet. (Well, OK, technically the MAC is inside the Mac, so the MAC is also under the cabinet, but still.)

  12. Why not just buy an iMac? by sdpinpdx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Didn't the current iMac design appear before or at the same time as the mini? Seems like that's exactly what he was looking for.

    He could have taped one of the firewire TV tuners to the back of it for the TV function (or streamed it over the LAN from some location with better reception than the kitchen).

  13. What makes it all very funny... by Cloud+K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    - That he was so obsessed with the goal of hiding a computer in a wall that he went out and bought a computer that's so small there's absolutely no point in hiding it in the wall. And to make matters funnier, he didn't make the CD drive accessible and had to buy an external one... about the same size as a Mac Mini and a lot uglier.

    - This quote: "Since the Mac is designed in america, it's most convenient to measure it in their units, Imperial units, goodness knows why they can't use SI units like the rest of the world, probably their bias against the french."
    (Hahaha. He has a point.)

    - This picture: http://www.caffeine-junkies.com/images/articles/ik itchen/cut5.jpg
    Just screams out 'M-m-m-mac mini!'
    He should've scrawled labels on it with black marker pen...

    - The whole "I'm so cool, I own a computer made by Apple Macintosh" (it's Apple, retard), "and I openly show how much I hate IE" (annoying) and "Let's deliberately get to a stage where I have to test it's still working as an excuse to show an Apple desktop" thing he has going.

    - This unnecessary comment: "NOTE FOR LAYMEN: it's imperitive that the wires for the LED are kept the same way around, because an LED is just that, a DIODE, and thus it will only work if the current is going one way."
    Well, no shit Sherlock! I'm glad your university degree taught you *something*. Personally I learned that in Science class at about age 12.

    - The excessive use of CAT5 for everything just to look cool to a Slashdot audience. Ironically, ends up looking a complete pratt by using a patch cable *outside* of the wall. I have no words!

    - At the end of the day, all he did was plonk the Mini on the floor and create a wall-mounted port replicator, and even end up wasting money on an external optical drive!

    Got to love it. You have to be sorry for him, he's obviously just trying to look cool. He's also fallen for the old pitfall of obsessing so much about solving a challenge that didn't even exist, he ended up creating more problems and overcomplicating the whole thing. But it's so funny.