Half-Height Floppy computer
Concept
Build a full working computer with slot-load optical drive inside a half-height 5.25 Floppy Drive (everything a laptop has except KB, trackpad, and screen). I have an old Apple MacBook A1181 with a broken screen. Its been laying around for years, waiting to be turned into something useful. Since I had previously done an Apple ][ Floppy drive Hackintosh (full height 5.25 drive), I though I could go smaller with a half-height drive. I located a suitable drive at my local FreeGeek, a Procom PXF360 model. It is longer than I anticipated, and I considered shortening the case, but as you will see, I needed all the room after all.
Stripping the Drive
Disassemble everything, throw nothing away. I won't need any of the controller boards, motors, or anything else but the physical drive. I mapped out how I thought the slot-load optical drive would fit and started cutting with a jigsaw. I still wanted the drive closure mechanism to function, so I stripped that down as small as possible as well.
The Heart Donor
The old MacBook5,2 A1181 (2009) will run Catalina with the help of a patcher from DosDude1.com. After looking at the components for some time, I noticed there is enough space inside the new enclosure to actually house the battery as well. But, I do not have a battery for this old laptop. What I did have was another laptop with screen issues: A MacBookPro 8,1 (2011) with a backlight issue. Since I did could not repair it myself, and not wanting to pay for a motherboard repair, it became the new donor. 2.8Ghz dual-core, 16Gb RAM, 256Gb SSD.
Rearrange the Guts
I removed all the components from the aluminum shell of the MacBookPro, and started conceptualizing their locations inside the new enclosure. Of course, the motherboard needs mounts, so I designed a couple small boards to 3D print as a base. One end is the new faceplate of the motherboard with all the ports that will actually be the back of the drive enclosure. After mounting the motherboard to my sleds (STL files here 1 and 2), I fired it all up to make sure all the components were still working. Yikes, high fan speed! Google told me it was either a battery problem or the temp sensor in the trackpad. The trackpad was not something I intended to install in the new enclosure, so I removed it from the laptop case and added it to the build and it cured the high fan speed issue.
Battery Included
The motherboard is located above the optical drive, so the space below the optical drive is just enough to place the original laptop battery. I drilled and tapped one hole, and used the existing board mounts and a piece of metal to hold the battery down. The wires coming out of the original battery are quite short. Having the battery on the bottom and the motherboard on the top meant I would have to extend the wires. I noticed the wires coming out of the battery are not firmly attached, so a little probing (dangerous) and prying I managed to excavate enough battery case to get some extra wire from the inside.
Interfacing
Power button and wifi antennas mounted on the back, covering the hole from the original 37pin DIN connector. The motherboard sleds have a spot for the wifi module to mount and the center bass speaker. The back side of the motherboard features the power-on pads, that have to be soldered to the main power switch on the back.
Ventilation
I can't really move the motherboard CPU cooler, so I have to put some ventilation holes in the left side of the case. I clamped on the bottom face plate of a G4 cube case, and used it as the pattern for my hole drilling.
Appearance
The 5-1/4" drive will slot load optical media and eject just like a regular Mac. If the drive activator (used to lock in a floppy and connect the heads to the media) is closed, the disc should re-insert without damage. The drive light does not light up with disk activity, but is replaced by the apple power light. It will turn on during initial power up, and glow when the computer is sleeping. I had to do some carving with an Xacto knife to fine tune the fitting. I also put a slot next to the activity LED for the IR sensor. You can use an Apple IR remote to control sound volume and pop up iTunes. Catalina has limited IR support, so to use the IR remote to control something like KODI, you have to boot into any OS other than Catalina, which I happen to have as High Sierra. IR remote works fine with KODI there.
All Done!
Concept
Build a full working computer with slot-load optical drive inside a half-height 5.25 Floppy Drive (everything a laptop has except KB, trackpad, and screen). I have an old Apple MacBook A1181 with a broken screen. Its been laying around for years, waiting to be turned into something useful. Since I had previously done an Apple ][ Floppy drive Hackintosh (full height 5.25 drive), I though I could go smaller with a half-height drive. I located a suitable drive at my local FreeGeek, a Procom PXF360 model. It is longer than I anticipated, and I considered shortening the case, but as you will see, I needed all the room after all.
Stripping the Drive
Disassemble everything, throw nothing away. I won't need any of the controller boards, motors, or anything else but the physical drive. I mapped out how I thought the slot-load optical drive would fit and started cutting with a jigsaw. I still wanted the drive closure mechanism to function, so I stripped that down as small as possible as well.
The Heart Donor
The old MacBook5,2 A1181 (2009) will run Catalina with the help of a patcher from DosDude1.com. After looking at the components for some time, I noticed there is enough space inside the new enclosure to actually house the battery as well. But, I do not have a battery for this old laptop. What I did have was another laptop with screen issues: A MacBookPro 8,1 (2011) with a backlight issue. Since I did could not repair it myself, and not wanting to pay for a motherboard repair, it became the new donor. 2.8Ghz dual-core, 16Gb RAM, 256Gb SSD.
Rearrange the Guts
I removed all the components from the aluminum shell of the MacBookPro, and started conceptualizing their locations inside the new enclosure. Of course, the motherboard needs mounts, so I designed a couple small boards to 3D print as a base. One end is the new faceplate of the motherboard with all the ports that will actually be the back of the drive enclosure. After mounting the motherboard to my sleds (STL files here 1 and 2), I fired it all up to make sure all the components were still working. Yikes, high fan speed! Google told me it was either a battery problem or the temp sensor in the trackpad. The trackpad was not something I intended to install in the new enclosure, so I removed it from the laptop case and added it to the build and it cured the high fan speed issue.
Battery Included
The motherboard is located above the optical drive, so the space below the optical drive is just enough to place the original laptop battery. I drilled and tapped one hole, and used the existing board mounts and a piece of metal to hold the battery down. The wires coming out of the original battery are quite short. Having the battery on the bottom and the motherboard on the top meant I would have to extend the wires. I noticed the wires coming out of the battery are not firmly attached, so a little probing (dangerous) and prying I managed to excavate enough battery case to get some extra wire from the inside.
Interfacing
Power button and wifi antennas mounted on the back, covering the hole from the original 37pin DIN connector. The motherboard sleds have a spot for the wifi module to mount and the center bass speaker. The back side of the motherboard features the power-on pads, that have to be soldered to the main power switch on the back.
Ventilation
I can't really move the motherboard CPU cooler, so I have to put some ventilation holes in the left side of the case. I clamped on the bottom face plate of a G4 cube case, and used it as the pattern for my hole drilling.
Appearance
The 5-1/4" drive will slot load optical media and eject just like a regular Mac. If the drive activator (used to lock in a floppy and connect the heads to the media) is closed, the disc should re-insert without damage. The drive light does not light up with disk activity, but is replaced by the apple power light. It will turn on during initial power up, and glow when the computer is sleeping. I had to do some carving with an Xacto knife to fine tune the fitting. I also put a slot next to the activity LED for the IR sensor. You can use an Apple IR remote to control sound volume and pop up iTunes. Catalina has limited IR support, so to use the IR remote to control something like KODI, you have to boot into any OS other than Catalina, which I happen to have as High Sierra. IR remote works fine with KODI there.
All Done!
