eXPerience

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Clamshell modding part 2

Part 1

Whenever I wanted to change the hard drive in my modded Graphite Clamshell, I would’ve had to disassemble the computer. Everyone who has done it once knows that it is a tedious and intensive task. Well, I thought of how the quick-swap storage bays work, and set out to modify the caddy to allow swapping the hard drive through the tray window instead.

I also came up with an idea of installing an LED in the bezel to replace the missing force-eject button. This is what the red and white wires are for -- soldered on to LED pads on the HDD board. Next up was modifying the bezel itself. Finding a suitable sized LED wasn’t difficult, and by chance it has also the sweet green color as the charging port. Nice!

It’s kind of janky set up, but it should work just fine. I just don’t know what to do with the main button. Switch off the hard drive? I get the feeling it doesn’t want to be hotswapped, especially through IDE connectors...

But anyways, there it is, a Graphite Clamshell with swappable hard drive + LED mod!

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Clamshell modding part 1

A while ago, I received a Graphite Clamshell in excellent condition, except that the drive bezel was torn apart. I quickly figured out it was because the latch opening mechanism was broken, and so presumably, the owner had forcibly pulled it apart to get the CD and made an attempt at gluing things back.

Because the DVD drive didn’t work, I decided to replace it with one of the cheap chinese hard drive caddies for laptops that should theoretically fit in this optical bay slot, as Apple only fitted a metal sleeve around it for the Clamshell.

Turns out, I was right, and the Clamshell picked up the new hard drive without any problems.

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