Hackintosh-Experiments in Soldering

I am not skilled at soldering.

I did some this weekend, though. And it’s passable, if not amazing.

The switch I wanted to use is a 5 pin switch. (The link goes to a similar but not identical switch. I found a 5 pack in various colors on Amazon and sued the red one.) It has the following pins:

• –
• NC
• NO
• C

I also picked up two sets of generic power leads for motherboard pins. They have the small connector in a 2-pin block to save a couple steps.

The +/- leads are for the power light. You could also use this for a drive activity light if you prefer. I don’t judge. Thanks to a kind Reddit user, I now know that NC and NO stat for Normally Closed and Normally Open, with C standing for Common. In my case, the power leads connect to Normally Open and Common. NC/Common would (presumably) be used for a button to interrupt a circuit, like perhaps a button to temporarily interrupt a circuit powering a light or similar.

Soldering is not something I do often, so I kind of learned as I go. Still, I think these will work adequately, if not as professional as someone more experienced would do.

My biggest mistake was messing up the heat shrink on the first lead (for power). I didn’t separate the wires as much as I should have, so the prepared heat shrink tubing was shrunk early. They’re separate, and I put a larger piece on to help protect them.

Update: Still working great over a year later! Need to do a bunch of other stuff for this project when time permits, but “Mac Plus” is my high-end Mac OS X box at home these days. I don’t leave it on when I’m not there, though.