Chapter 15. Hack Some Hardware
Hardware hacks are my favorite kind of hack; want to integrate a Mac into the real world? This chapter covers what you need to know, from putting a Mac in your car to turning your Mac into a weather-monitoring beast. Tired of losing the Internet when the power goes out? Run your modem off batteries! You’ll find all that and then some in this chapter.
HACK 124: Awesome Mini in a Car Hack!
How cool would it be to have a Mac in your car? Not just a MacBook lying open on the seat next to you, but a complete built-in solution that can run your iTunes or other programs without a hitch. Talk about amazing your friends! Explore one method of installing a Mac mini in your car with this very slick hack.
When the dimensions for the Mac mini were announced, I immediately got to work figuring out what would be the best way to integrate one into my own car. If I was going to put a Mac in my car, I wanted to make sure it had all of the functionality it would have in a home environment while still maintaining an easy-to-operate interface so that distractions could be kept to a minimum. So the researching, planning, sketching and disassembly of my car’s interior (to see what would fit where) began.
Choosing the Equipment
After taking the thought process to every extreme imaginable, I decided on the following equipment list:
1.42 GHz Mac mini with 512 MB RAM, SuperDrive, Bluetooth, ...
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