There are a few brilliant engineers on the web who have built their own Mac Mini Docks. The most impressive one I’ve seen is available from Japan, and it costs over $500. Since I can buy a new Mac Mini for $500, spending that much on a dock just doesn’t make sense. The Japanese dock also covers up the Ethernet and modem ports, and since I was going to be using both of those, I had to fabricate something of my own design.
Fiberglass Mac Mini Dock
That is where I built my custom “boot port.” Digging through my crap, I found an old micro headphone jack (I think it was a 3/32” mono input jack like they have on cellphones nowadays).
I had to crack open the Mini to do the RAM upgrade, so I used that opportunity to unscrew the CD-ROM and hard drive assembly from the motherboard. Inside, I ran two wires from the modem hole area to the boot button area. Thanks to MP3Car.com for providing me with the tiny y-cable. This Y-cable goes between the built-in boot button and the motherboard, and provides a second set of wire leads, allowing you to add a second boot button to the Mac Mini. I soldered the wires to the Boot Port, then used JB-Weld to mount the boot port jack in the modem hole. Now I have a semi-permanent boot port in the back of the mini that can plug and unplug with the rest of the cables seamlessly.
The goal of a dock is simultaneous plugging and unplugging of all the connections. This means all the connectors need to be firmly and precisely mounted in relation to one another. The solution was to cover the Mini in six-mil plastic; razor-out the plastic covering the ports; plug the cables into the ports; and then fiberglass over the wad of cables to hold them in position. The plastic protects the Mini from bonding to the fiberglass. The cables just bond to each other and become a pluggable wad.
When I saw the tutorial on how to hack a Mac Mini boot button, I knew I had to do a similar modification, because it is just so cool to be able to hit that Boot button from the driver’s seat and hear the boot chime. Trouble is, the Mac Mini was never designed to have a remote boot button, so whatever I rigged up would require a custom, unique plug and be disconnected separately. For a long while, remote booting and dockability seemed to be mutually exclusive. (“Oh yea, it docks, except for this one cable that dangles out the ventilation hole!”) Eventually, I figured out a way to have both. I got my Mini without a modem, so instead of an RJ-11 jack, there was just a little grey square acting as a cover.
Mac Mini Specifications
•1.5 GHz Mac Mini G4, 1 Gig RAM, 80GB, Combo Drive, No Modem
• Bluetooth and Wifi Enabled
•Custom dockable “Boot Port”
• Apple Bluetooth Keyboard
• Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse
