Battery powered Mac Mini

brj · « **on:** 18 May 2005, 05:58 pm »

For those of you on a battery powered kick... check out this guy's mod to a Mac Mini to accept to Li-ion batteries!

Also note that the current Apple rumor mills indicate that the next rev of the Mac Mini (summer release?) will have a digital optical output.

Interesting possibilities!

brj · « **Reply #1 on:** 18 May 2005, 10:41 pm »

I forgot to mention that the hard drive was removed and replaced with a 4 GB (or 6 GB) micro drive. The Hitachi microdrive is a Compact Flash II media device, so with the removal of the CDROM drive to make room for the batteries, the entire machine is now solid state. The only moving part left is the case fan.

6 GB may not be enough for your entire music collection in WAV format, but capacities will only go up. This option gives you an almost silent device (minimal, sporadic fan noise only) with no AC hash and (probably with the next rev of the Mac Mini) bit perfect digital output. Toss in fast boot times due to the solid state disk, and you have quite a bit of potential as a media PC...

Jay S · « **Reply #2 on:** 18 May 2005, 10:48 pm »

Next gen of Hitachi microdrives will have a capacity of 20 Gb. They will be available in 2006/2007.

JLM · « **Reply #3 on:** 18 May 2005, 11:41 pm »

My PC audio priorities:

Audiophile sound with digital output

Crash proof

Simple interface

Easy to use (like automatic download of album/jacket information)

Silent running

Store at least 1000 albums with something like FLAC with full back up

Priced under $1000

Internet downloads of audiophile quality music would be nice

Wake me up when you have all that, I'd be most interested.

thanks

brj · « **Reply #4 on:** 19 May 2005, 02:09 am »

Quote from: JLM

Store at least 1000 albums with something like FLAC with full back up

Priced under $1000

You were doing fine until you asked for that combination... which pretty much kills off any PC audio product for the forseeable future according to your requirements.

The math:

JDUBS · « **Reply #5 on:** 19 May 2005, 02:17 am »

Isn't that 738 gigabytes? Which, given the current falling prices of HDDs, shouldn't cost all that much. You can get a 300 gig Seagate (the best in my opinion) for $129.

-Jim

Quote from: brj

You were doing fine until you asked for that combination... which pretty much kills off any PC audio product for the forseeable future according to your requirements.

The math:
1000 albums *
700 MB typical WAV formatted album size *
0.54 average FLAC compression rate *
2 for full backup /
1024 MB per TB =
738 terabytes!!![/list:u]
Let's be generous and split your $1000 cost equally between storage and the media PC itself.... so you basically want 0.75 Petabytes for $500!

Enjoy ...

brj · « **Reply #6 on:** 19 May 2005, 02:49 am »

Corrected above - thanks to Jim for catching it.

John Ashman · « **Reply #7 on:** 19 May 2005, 05:03 am »

Actually, it's more like half that size. 1000 CDs would typically fit in about 350GB with lossless compression. Most CDs are only about 350MB compressed, about 3/GB. Remember that a CD is 650MB, but not all of that is music and compression is about 3:2 (ish). I was going to comment on that earlier that it would be too costly to do for $1000 unless you used lossy compression. As an example, I have just over 600 CDs in about 180GB.

Oh, doh, just saw the back up drive. That's what they make CD-Rs for. At least until drives get bigger and cheaper. Or you could use DVD-Rs for backup and keep the files compressed. That would get you about 15 CDs per disc.

brj · « **Reply #8 on:** 19 May 2005, 05:33 am »

Quote from: John Ashman

Actually, it's more like half that size. 1000 CDs would typically fit in about 350GB with lossless compression. Most CDs are only about 350MB compressed, about 3/GB.

He specified FLAC as his codec of choice, so I went with its average compression rate.

Quote from: John Ashman

Remember that a CD is 650MB, but not all of that is music and compression is about 3:2 (ish).

Yeah, I rounded up there.

Quote from: John Ashman

I was going to comment on that earlier that it would be too costly to do for $1000 unless you used lossy compression. As an example, I have just over 600 CDs in about 180GB.

Compressed with?

Quote from: John Ashman

Oh, doh, just saw the back up drive. That's what they make CD-Rs for At least until drives get bigger and cheaper. Or you could use DVD-Rs for backup and keep the files compressed. That would get you about 15 CDs per disc.

With drive prices falling all of the time, and to avoid the hassle of duplicate disks, I'd probably just create a RAID 1 or RAID 5 configuration - assuming, of course, that I wasn't happy enough just owning the original CD from which I grabbed the music files in the first place.

You know, I almost put this thread in the Square Circle, but I figured that the battery powered part would be the interesting aspect... oops!

BillyM · « **Reply #9 on:** 19 May 2005, 05:13 pm »

Quote from: JLM

My PC audio priorities:

Audiophile sound with digital output

Crash proof

Simple interface

Easy to use (like automatic download of album/jacket information)

Silent running

Store at least 1000 albums with something like FLAC with full back up

Priced under $1000

Internet downloads of audiophile quality music would be nice

Wake me up when you have all that, I'd be most interested.

thanks

EpiaM (can even be 12v powered on select versions) had up to 700mhz fanless, accepts DDR (512 should do nicely) running XP media center, onboard SPDIF output, pcmcia slot built in for wifi card, boot from a 4gb USB2.0 flashdrive. Toss a wireless card in your main box and a couple of those seagate 300GB drives. That's doable for just under 1k.

"Internet download of audiophile quality"? I wouldn't trust anyone on the internet to know how to wipe their own rear's much less rip and encode music to my standards, maybe yours are lower...

--BillyM

dwk · « **Reply #10 on:** 19 May 2005, 05:33 pm »

Quote from: BillyM

EpiaM (can even be 12v powered on select versions) had up to 700mhz fanless,

--BillyM

The new SP boards are now available, including a 1GHz fanless version. Very tempting for a linux output device. Boot from CF, and have no moving parts whatsoever....

JLM · « **Reply #11 on:** 20 May 2005, 01:35 am »

I'm so computer dumb...

But it sounds like we're getting close to my next purchase, if it can be made "user" (dummy) friendly. I was just picking numbers and FLAC out of the air (have seen plenty of others writing about it).

Seems to me that the downloading of files off the web may end up being the only way we get material in the not so distant future. CDs and their players are going the way of vinyl and 8-tracks. So I hope a high quality format gets developed before all that's available is MP3.

Bemopti123 · « **Reply #12 on:** 20 May 2005, 03:33 am »

And then, JLM, will the commercial extinction of CD lead to a market for used CDs and their players, a la Vinyl? Guess that means that instead of dumping my CD and transport, as some vinyl owners have done, I would rather keep the collection and keep it in tip top shape.

Hummmmm, how much will I be able to charge for that CD that will be out print in Ebay? $50? $75?

It will be an interesting scenario to go through.

Regardless, unless the record companies are able to get the liner notes and the art work, the way we have with purchased, physical CDs....as it was the case with LP covers, some people like me would not want to download
a "ghost" track.

Then, perhaps, printing technology will be affordable and so convenient that we might be able to have a mini press under our fingers.

But, how to accompany the tracks with the liners? Maybe a sort of player that will give us really clear screen shots of this virtual liner and also playlist? I do not think this will be sooo far into the future.

The next 5-10 years will be interesting.

Maybe stores will have virtual listening boots. Instead of having shelves occupied with physical CDs, more and more listening boots and also some sort of virtual playlist with the actual physical liner notes that customers can take, for a listening in their virtual boots.

Who knows?