A Color Classic for the 21st Century

[SpinEcho]

A small number of you may remember a post on this forum a while back when I first started this project using empty or non-functional vintage Mac components purchased on eBay. Well it's slowly made its way to completion, and I thought I'd post again just in case this interests anyone. If someone has done something similar, please post as I'd love to see it.

This is a fully functional "Mac Color Classic," (at least on the outside) which I have hooked up to a 55" Samsung HDTV (not pictured).

Components include:

1. Empty Color Classic case housing a late 2012 Mac Mini w/ 16GB RAM running OS X El Capitan. Also running a Win 10 virtual machine on the HDTV using VMware Fusion (not pictured).
2. Screen is a Century LCD-8000U2 Black SVGA 800*600 Plus One, 8 inch USB LCD. 
3. Empty Macintosh HD 20SC case housing a 1 TB 7200 RPM Seagate external USB drive.
   
4. Two AppleCD 300s with CD-ROM drives replaced with two Sony Optiarc AD-7240S DVD/CD re-writable internal drives (yes both come in handy in my line of work).  The drives connect to the Mac Mini through two Sabrent USB 3.0 SATA/IDE Hard Drive Converters USB-DSC9 (available on Amazon).
5. Apple Adjustable Keyboard M1242 with Split Numeric Keypad. These keyboards as well as the ADB mouse connect to the Mac Mini through a Griffin iMate ADB to USB adapter (available on Amazon or eBay). The only inconvenience of the setup is the absence of a right mouse button, requiring "Control + mouse click" in its place. Otherwise all keys are functional and the mouse works well.
   
6. Apple M6082 AppleDesign Powered Speakers. Fully functional through the Mac Mini's headphone jack but rarely used as sound in my setup goes through HDMI to a Denon AVR-x1000 receiver and out to 5.1 surround.
7. Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, 1080p Widescreen. Really made for a PC but works fine for basic teleconferencing on a Mac. Also not beige, but no real options other than black here.
8. Andrea Electronics C1-1022600-1 model NC-185 VM USB High Fidelity Stereo USB Computer Headset with Noise Canceling Microphone and Volume/Mute Controls. Perfect for Google Voice or other VOIP calls.
9. Apple floppy carousel. No idea if this is a genuine Apple product, but some guy was selling it as such on eBay.
10. iPhone 6 and iPad 2. 

The only non-functional component is the small round Apple Microphone on the right. Inserting it into the Mac Mini Audio In jack seems to have no effect.

Thanks for stopping by... Comments or critiques welcome.

 

[Bolle]

Sweet setup.

Those microphones need power to be supplied to them and only worked on certain Macs that are equipped with that special microphone port.

-> http://www.apple2.org/Ports/#Microphone

 

[bibilit]

A very cool setup, the fact that most of it were empty shells is a good point.

 

[Bunsen]

This is very awesome.  I'm glad you came back to update us on your inspiring work here.
 

The only inconvenience of the setup is the absence of a right mouse button

Turns out it is possible to add a second button to many Apple ADB mice.  Depending how you feel about the look, you could split the top clicker plastic in two like the guy at the link, or maybe come up with somewhere more discreet to hide it, like along one side.

Whether the iMate will pick that up or not is another question, but I suspect it will, as multi-button ADB mice exist.  I used to use a four button Kensington ADB trackball with an iMate. iMate stopped issuing new drivers around OS X 10.4, and I don't remember whether second buttons were translated correctly after that or not.

Alternatively you could gut a USB optical mouse and add its components to the ADB shell.  There's a few hacks around on the web like that.

 

[Cory5412]

Wow, this looks great!

In Mac OS X, even on desktops, you should be able to right-click by holding down the control key on the keyboard, as well.

The only change I can think of (and this might hamper usability, not sure) is that you may be able to replace that web cam with an Apple QuickTime Conferencing Camera 100. It was a pretty simple NTSC camera, so you'd need some sort of NTSC input rig, and it gets power from, if I remember correctly, a pretty normal DC 12V jack, which Apple recommended plugging into the S-Video port of one of their Macs, but you could of course just replace the cable with one from a dead external hard disk.

 

[Bunsen]

Or find something beige-looking and transplant the Logitech cam into it.

 

[SpinEcho]

Bolle, thanks for the link. I did discover this about the round Apple Mic after it failed to work. It's amazing how frequently you find these up for auction on eBay. No big deal since  the USB Headset-Mic I have is great, albeit not very vintage looking. I used to have a set of vintage Apple headphones (they were black with a white apple logo on each earpiece, sans mic). Impossible to find on eBay after trolling for months and months. 
 
Bibilit, glad you approve. You'd be surprised how much some of these empty or non-functional components still cost. Think I paid over $50 for the empty HD20SC case on eBay.
 
Bunsen, thanks for the Stupid ADB Tricks link. Wish I had the manual dexterity to alter hardware like that. Not sure I can even solder competently. One thing about this Color Classic "mod" is that it can be done by pretty much anyone. No real modding skills needed. A dremel might as well be a jack hammer as far as I'm concerned... 
 
Cory5412, thanks for the info on the Apple QuickTime Conferencing Camera 100. I don't know how I overlooked this option but it does sound like some work might be involved to get it to work with a Mac Mini. How would the cable from a dead external hard drive work? I see one of these on eBay right now.
 
Thanks for all the feedback! Glad there are others who can appreciate this little beauty.