MAKING A MACSWAGEN
ADDING A MAC MINI TO A VW: A PRO TELLS US HOW HE DID IT.
BY PHILLIP TORRONE
Matt Turner is a professional fabricator and installer of mobile electronics. He’s been working in the industry for 12 years and has built numerous award-winning show vehicles. His latest project, outfitting a 2001 VW GTi with Apple’s Mac mini, brings hope to all car owners looking to Macify their ride.
When the Mac mini was announced, along with its form-factor dimension, Turner spent two weeks planning how he would install the mini into his car. Through careful planning and examination of his VW GTi, he selected over a dozen off-the-shelf parts that would provide a driver/user with the best in-car computer experience from a variety of standpoints.
In car computer systems, the first challenge is power. The Mac mini presented a new puzzle. The power button is located on the back of the enclosure — great for homes, but not so great when it’s inside a car. You can’t let the mini stay in sleep mode all the time (it’ll take it’s toll on the car’s battery), so Turner first contemplated a secondary battery bank with a relay, but “that didn’t really seem to me to fall in line with the inherent simplicity of Apple’s computers,” he says. After taking apart the mini, he discovered a simple, two-conductor momentary pushbutton switch that tells the hardware to fire up, and this actually made the process of relocating it (electrically, at least) pretty simple. “The wiring for the button actually terminates in a connector that it up, and pushing that button to be greeted with plugs into the main board, so I simply unplugged the signature Apple startup sound.” it and cut the original wires, extended them with a Turner’s initial power setup took the electrical Monster Cable 2-channel 3-meter RCA cable and system’s output (which varies between 12V and 14V soldered this cable to both ends of the cut switch DC), converted it to 110V AC, and then stepped it wires,” says Turner. A drilled hole and button reloca- back down to 18V DC through the Mac mini’s power tion solved the problem. Turner proclaims, “There’s supply brick. But the Monster Cable inverter he really nothing quite like hopping in the car, starting used would sometimes go into a protection mode
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