The mouse had to be right as well so I set off on a mission to get an optical mouse’s hardware inside an old Macintosh ADB ball mouse.

This is the one mod that was destructive. Every other part of the project could easily be reverted back if needed including the keyboard but this one required grinding away some of the plastic inside and gluing the mouse ball access point shut. I was okay with this as it isn’t really part of the computer and could be (pretty) easily replaced if I wanted to reverse the project.

Here’s the guts of it after the conversion.

I used the original switch which you can see at the top. It’s been hot-glued and wired into it’s original position making the click and overall usage feel exactly the same as the original (aside from no longer needing to clean the rollers every week to keep it rolling smoothly!)

People have asked why I didn’t go with 2 buttons on a rocker or similar. Technically there wasn’t anything stopping me but it wasn’t really part of the experience I was trying to create, which was a balance between modern hardware that made the computer useable again, and a truly authentic feel. I felt the one click was a really big part of staying true to the feel of the original.

I also wanted to use the original cable with the PS/2 connector, again to preserve the original look, so I wired that up to the USB mouse hardware and on the computer end, I took a female PS/2 plug from an old motherboard and wired that with the corresponding connectors on another USB cable which plugs straight into the NB100′s standard usb ports.

Below I’ve lifted the mouse a little so you can see the red light shining through, but when it’s flat on a surface it looks completely original and you wouldn’t know from looking at it or hearing the click that it wasn’t original.

Looking back now, I was completely right about this. I’d set the computer up a number of times with external USB input devices and it was exciting because I knew where it was headed but the first time I used it when it was complete was magical (to quote Steve).

My brain kept telling me this was all wrong and this computer should not be running OS X. Even though I knew it was a hack, aside from what was happening on screen, the whole computer looked and functioned exactly as the Apple designers had originally intended, and that’s what gave it that uncanny feeling.

Okay so how did I make this happen. Well I can’t say it was the easiest thing to do.

First I bought a modern Dell keyboard off eBay and started comparing. Then I pulled it apart, traced and mapped the keys to the board and chucked all the plastic. The photo below is a photocopy of the key ‘wiring’. Modern keyboards don’t use a PCB like the Portable had, they instead have three sheets of plastic. Two have the conductive circuit layouts that lead back to the corresponding pins and the middle one is the separator with holes at each key’s striking point so that the pressure connects the two conductive circuits and makes a keystroke. At the time I was traveling two hours a day on the train so this was the nerd equivalent to Sudoku.

Next up was de-soldering the board off the back of the keyboard. Even though I traced every key on the Dell keyboard, I decided in the end only to do the main keyboard on the Portable as I use a Apple bluetooth keyboard without the numpad everyday for work and have never missed it.

It’s probably a bit hard to see, but to aid soldering and reduce mistakes I labelled all the keys on the back.

Wires everywhere!! Here you can see the board which I pre-soldered to, and then the beginning of the long and drawn out process wiring up each key to the right pin, twice..

Below you can see the finished product. Between that photo and the one above I realised that I was leaving too much slack in the wires, stopping the keyboard from fitting back in the unit, so much of the soldering was done twice to reduce the bulk. You’ll also notice the ribbon cable in between the keyboard and the USB controller. Again I realised there was too much bulk in all the wires, and also there was the risk of the wires pulling away the contact pins on the controller board and ruining the whole project. I used the original size ribbon cable and connectors which made it all fit together quite neatly.

And so there you go!

Will it fit? Toshiba NB100

I’ve been modifying and creating things for years. Back in 2005 I converted a 1920s phone to use Bluetooth for a promotion at work (and I never imagined we’d see widespread commercial success of the old handsets plugged into iPhones otherwise I would have started producing them!) Anyway I spotted the Dockintosh video on YouTube. It’s an old Macintosh with a slot cut into the side so it could house an iPad and looked awesome.

I liked it a lot but I thought it really needed a keyboard to make it useful and it would have to be the original one to be really convincing. There was also anoth project that grabbed me, it was an iPad and Bluetooth keyboard in a Apple G3 iBook Clamkshell.

I’m not discounting the creativity of those projects but if I was going to take on a project like this, I wanted it to be as indistinguishable from the original product as possible. To do that, the original keyboard and mouse conversion were going to be essential to project.

At the same time I’d also discovered the Hackintosh movement and started playing around with my old NB100, getting OS X running on it pretty quickly.

Once that was out of the way I thought “you know what? I reckon I still have a Macintosh Portable in Dad’s shed and I reckon the screen is about the same size. If it is. I can build this project with the keyboard and mouse all done using the the original parts

So… will it fit?

This was the first challenge. If the screen fit, then I didn’t think there would be much stopping the rest of the project. As you can see from the photo it did look like it would fit and in addition I realised that I would also need to line up the motherboard and ensure that the cable that connected the monitor would reach, as I didn’t think I could successfully modify a cable that small.

It all looked good enough to give the project a crack. The screen was, however, slightly smaller than the opening on the Portable and needed a bezel. Having a Macbook Pro, the obvious material for this was glass and the bezel had to be painted black.

Working out where the motherboard and components will fit so I didn’t have to modify the case

Overlaying the Glass

Taping up the screen area, ready for painting.

Here you can see the bezel is painted and the screen is looking pretty convincing as an original

Assembled, but far from finished

Once the screen bezel was finished and mounted, I put the whole thing back together to work out if that cable would make it of if my measurements were out. It’s hard to show so I’m not going to try, but it was simply very lucky the cable between the monitor and motherboard reached as In the Macintosh Portable, there is a significant difference in the distance between the screen and motherboard as compared with the NB100.

Seeing the project like this was incredibly exciting and I was very tempted to post a photo but I knew that getting the details finished, such as the keyboard, mouse, battery, wifi etc, was going to be a very tough process, so I withheld my excitement and pulled it back apart so I could work on the next part, the keyboard.

I took plenty of photos along the way which I’m going to turn into a post a week for the next few weeks. I’ll be covering the main hardware, mounting the screen, optical mouse conversion and the remapping/rewiring of the keyboard – which ended up being fairly involved.

If you’re simply wondering ‘why?’ head to the about page.

Abandoned bike: Soon to be parked outside your favorite local cafe.

2 years ago I had a crisis of identity.

The ideals of hipster culture were becoming ever more attractive with their careful balance of frugality and conscious consumption.

What I loved most was the nonsensical obsession with artefacts and obsolete technology, which defines me.

This works well for dusty, old, single-gear bicycles from Dad’s garage, fairy lights in empty tomato paste jars, cute garden settings from Grandma’s place and clothes from the local op shop. Yet, in one area of my life that was so very important to me, there was no option: my computer.

My take on Apple TV

I’ve dabbled in computers hidden in something old-time (see picture to the right) before but never with something portable.

Like so many these days, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a cafe using a clunky PC. I mean, if someone was to glance my way and I was using ‘that kind’ of laptop… let’s just say, I doubt they would understand that I’m a creative, unique intellectual that’s better than them.

(Plus it doesn’t look good next to my fair-trade, organic, single-estate, Guatemalan long black.)

So I got a Macbook. I mean, what other option was there?

But then here’s where it gets a bit complex. Apple makes the best computers in the world. Even better, they were always behind the PC in sales and sat on the brink of extinction in the 90s!

If you had one, you stood out. You were individual like them.

Their roots are in the counter-culture and that sits well with my values, yet when you look at the modern reality of the situation, they’re no longer struggling and everyone uses their products.

They now define the mainstream – and if you’re sub-35, wear skinny jeans and non-prescription, thick-rimmed glasses, that’s not meant to be cool.

But we’re hostage to Apple’s super-slick, awe-inspiring products right?

Wrong!

Introducing the pinnacle of nonsensical computing: The MacBook Portable. So very awesome… but slightly underpowered, very bulky and unlike any computer you’ve ever used before… unless you had one in ’89.