Thread: Tutorial: Easily Power a Mac Mini without an inverter or speical power supply

Originally Posted by iKenndac

Today, I finally got my Mac mini powered in my car.

I've placed a connector in the wire that lets me quickly and easily transfer my Mac mini between my car and house by unplugging the connector from the car and plugging it into the Mini's power supply.

You don't need an inverter or a special power supply... just a laptop car adapter that gives out 18v (link on the page) and a couple of other of little, easy to get bits.

I've put photos and a walkthrough on my site: http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/astramac/power/

Hope it's interesting and/or helpful to you all.

Awesome...this is exactly what I was looking for to replace to aging ibook....btw, as far as why Apple didn't combine the negative and the ground on the same wire....this is due to the fact that the only source for a ground/earth connection when using the power brick is the house's earth ground. This means that it needs to have a seperate ground wire that passes from the metal chassis of the mac mini through the power brick and to the house's ground. In automotive applications, the chassis of the car is ground, however to ease wiring, they use this ground/chassis as a the negative side of the electrical system via a short cable connecting the negative side of your battery directly to the chassis. Due to this, by seperating the ground and the negative on the power going to the mac mini while in the vehicle, you are just duplicating work since both the "negative" power going to the mac mini as well as the chassis ground for the vehicle are connected together. Although you can combine them, since the other side of the connection (the side of the cable going to the mac mini) has it seperated, you will have to have a jumper going from the ground to the negative similar to the way the control wire is wired with the resister, however for the ground, we just want a straight wire.