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PiZeroWed Mac mini

macmpi edited this page May 28, 2020 · 8 revisions



Our venerable Late 2005 G4 Mac mini died in a thunderstorm, but by chance internal CD/DVD drive was fine:
what a great opportunity to have a perfect housing for a first tiny-radioCD build!

Let's take it all apart, remove motherboard and stuff, just keep DVD Drive, plastic bezel mount, and stuck-in a tiny PiZeroW as its new mainboard. We just need:

  • PATA to USB board to convert DVD drive interface to USB (or slim SATA to USB depending on your drive)
  • USB OTG Y cable to connect PI with the now-USB DVD drive, and power source
  • 2 pairs of wires to refactor Power ON/OFF button (green), and unit's front activity LED (red/black)
  • a decent 2.1A/5v power source with micro USB cable (cable must be capable to carry over 2A for CD drive operations!...)


    open view Despite all internal metal frames (could be removed eventually), PizeroW Bluetooth & wifi antenna offer quite decent performance.


Adding the following to usercfg.txt enables PowerON/OFF button and external Activity LED:

# ON/OFF button on GPIO3
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown
# External activity LED on GPIO 21
dtparam=act_led_gpio=21


Pairing a cheap Bluetooth remote such as original Amazon FireTV (or clones) makes a very compelling overall tiny-radioCD unit.
If Wifi is available, a mpc client such as MaximumMPD on iOS adds-in fine complementary UI to the mix!

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