14 DAY TRIAL // With all the “brick” rumors floating around, we figured it wouldn't ruin to throw in a story about not one brick, but 2,588 of them. It is the case of a Mac Pro... No, that's not it. This story really is about the “casing” of a Mac Pro.
A few ambitious students at the San Francisco Art Institute came up with an idea, and decided it was doable. Three "Lego engineering catastrophes" had to be endured, but in the end, the project was a success (video below). While the 2,588 Lego bricks made up the case, a Mac Mini linked to a PC Hackintosh via FireWire constituted the "bricked" Mac Pro's insides.
“I was reunited with Lego bricks with a recent trip to Legoland California,” said Chris Tangora, who came up with the idea of crafting a Mac Pro case entirely out of Lego bricks. “I fell in love all over again and began searching for ‘the’ project to really get myself back into Lego building. After some quick searches, I found that there have been many Lego PCs built, most notably Nathan Sawaya with his Maximum Lego PC, and more recently Luke Andersen’s Black Linux Box. The only Lego Mac I could find was this tiny Powerbook 5300 powered machine. I felt it was time for a ‘real’ Lego Mac, one that would strike fear in all the Lego PCs & Macs before it." Tangora says about the motivation that drove the project to becoming a reality.
“The plan was then hatched to shove a Mac mini and a Hackintosh into a Lego replica of a Power Mac G5/Mac Pro case,” he added. According to the modder, the Mac mini had previously undergone some changes to accept the eSata drive, “while the Hackintosh was already humming along in its drab enclosure from the Athlon XP days.”
The final result...
- 2,588 Lego Bricks + Steve Jobs Minifig complete with black turtleneck and jeans. - Design based on PowerMac G5/Mac Pro with nearly identical dimensions. - 1.66Ghz Core Duo Mac Mini with 1GB Ram, 400GB Hard Drive. - 2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad Hackintosh running Mac OS X 10.5.4 with 2GB Ram, 750GB HDD. - Both computers linked over Firewire.
Some of the most noteworthy parts and supplies used included the Mac Mini with external SATA drive modification, a Nexstar USB + ESATA Enclosure, the Hackintosh (Kalyway 10.5.2 + .3 + .4), a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L Motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor, an Emprex DVD+-RW Drive, a Generic Firewire 400 & 800 PCI Card, and “Lego Bricks… A lot of bricks.”
Bricked Mac - Time-Lapse from RP Cuenco on Vimeo