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DIY Apple Chime Tutorial for Hackintosh

Note: this tutorial was written before RPi and other inexpensive embedded systems were available. These days I would recommend doing this with one of those micro boards.

Ok so for those of you who have been around the hackintosh scene for a little while, you will all know that the question “How do I get the Apple Chime on my hackintosh” has been asked about a million times already. The only solutions I have seen so far are software based, using Automator to play the chime upon OS load-up, which I am sure works for some. But not for me! At around 3AM the other morning, I came up with the answer (many props go to MiniHack at TonymacX86 for finding the part I needed)!

What I am using is an audio chip that will record, store and play the chime upon startup! It really is quite simple – the electronics are all taken care of, all you need to do is record the Chime onto the flash chip (which remembers it even when without power), hook up the play button to your on/off momentary switch, and finally have a 5V power line coming from the power supply.

**NOTE** I am not an experienced electronics tech, I learned how to solder from a book and know little more than that the + goes with the + and the – goes with the -….that’s about it. So, please mod at your own risk, and see the red text of the tutorial for important safety tips courtesy of MiniHack!

The following is a video of your end product:

YOU WILL NEED:

- 1 x Recorder Module and Speaker Bundle

- A Soldering Iron, solder, heatshrink

- Two standard motherboard headers

- Female molex connector

First let’s take a look at the recorder/playback module itself. I have clearly marked everything so you can see exactly where everything goes. The module itself comes with instructions, but we will visit that later! I can’t recommend electronics123 highly enough! One of the modules they sent me was defective, and after leaving a message on Sunday evening, I got a call first thing the next day with a huge apology and a replacement in the mail free of charge. Granted they are only 3 hours from my house, but the module arrived next day, had been clearly tested and well packaged! Awesome place!

And here is a rough diagram of how everything will hook up:

STEP 1: POWER

Let’s start here shall we? This is super simple, what you are going to want to do, is solder a female molex connector to one of your motherboard headers. I took an old reset switch motherboard header, chopped off the switch, and stripped the wires about an inch from the end. Now you want to take your molex connector, remove the yellow pin and adjacent black pin, this way the 12V line isn’t running through anything. Now, cut the wire down on the red and black molex wires so that you can splice in your wire connecting to the motherboard header. Now you should have a live and ground wires going from molex to motherboard header! Don’t forget to heatshrink/electrical tape it all up!

**NOTE** If you don’t have the 5V and ground molex lines going to the correct terminals on the module, you WILL fry the board and possibly damage your computer. Triple check that everything is going to the correct place, as clearly marked on the module!

STEP 2: AUDIO

Now the easiest way to do this, is to solder your other motherboard header wires right onto the speaker contacts (nicely marked + – for you!). Please excuse the quality, it is a screen capture from the video tutorial I am making.

From there, all you have to do is plug the motherboard header right onto the clearly marked speaker pins. I don’t believe that there is a “right” way to plug in the speaker (polarity)…correct me if I’m wrong? This is what your module should look like now:

STEP 3: POWER BUTTON

This gets a little tricky, not in difficulty but just in working with small wires and parts. The first thing you want to do is solder two small wires to the contact points of the board’s momentary switched as marked above and shown below.

Now what you want to do is splice these wires into the ON/OFF switch of your case, so that when you push your power button, it will not only activate your motherboard, but also the sound module. Like this:

**NOTE** I tested the polarity using my multimeter to figure out which was positive and negative. While this worked for me, I would HIGHLY SUGGEST that you double check it for yourself. With cheap parts like this, you never know when a manufacturer may decide to change things up. Follow this step at your own risk, I can’t be responsible for any damage!

Also, don’t forget to heatshrink everything so it’s all nice and isolated. Since I was taking this right off after the tutorial I didn’t bother! Another good idea is sleeving everything so it looks nice. For those of you who have a G5 case the FlexoPet Grey sleeving is a FANTASTIC fit for it. It can be found cheaply here. here.

STEP 4: RECORDING.

The sound module comes with its own instructions, but basically with the built in microphone, you just hold it near a real Apple computer (or the program MacTracker like I did), record the audio, flip the switch from “record” to “play” and you are done! To really be like a mac, I recorded about 3 seconds of silence before playing the Chime, to emulate how on a real mac the sound isn’t instant.

STEP 5: ATTACHING IT

This really is up to you and what case you have. The back of the case speaker can be glued somewhere, perhaps to a piece of plastic you screw into your case. As for me, I am still thinking about how this will go in my G5 case mod, but I will let you know as soon as I have figured it out! That’s about it. I will be adding more pictures, but I think you get the general idea! Here is a video of it at work!

Enjoy! A complete video tutorial will be coming next week!

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS:

I think in lists, so here we go:

1) This is an easy project. If you can use a soldering iron you can do this project. If you have no soldering skills, jump on youtube. It’s how I learned.

2) The sound quality is not at all bad for a condenser mic the size of a peanut and a $2 speaker. Not AS good as a true mac, but passable for sure.

3) The 1W speaker I got in the bundle has quite enough power for this application, although on some well sound-proofed cases, you might want to route to your line out. For a G5 (holes in the front) this is perfect.

4) Is it worth $20 and an afternoon? To me it is…that’s up to you to decide for yourself.

5) I know for a fact this is available in other countries (minihack first linked me to a UK store), just search for a recordable sound module or something like that…