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Hardwoodware
hamster writes: "Chris Pauli took computer case customizations to a new high: an oak cube. Looks like a lot of work!" I believe this is what happened to Flay's cutting board after he threw it away.
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It seems to me that a wood case would have to have the same kind of shielding as a plastic case, and borrowing some ideas from Apple's beige Macs would probably be worth looking into.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
would be a big jewel bezel indicator light like the kind they use on Fender amplifiers. Let's see, the Diallight 51 series would do. It uses a GE CJ7 bulb. That will give it the Ingersal-Rand look.
The top ould be dressed up with a flower vase sitting on a doilly.Politenessman sez, "Always use a doilly daily."
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
The computer's guts have to be surrounded by a conductive jacket that is grounded, so that no electromagnetic radiation can escape. The FCC, or similar bodies elsewhere, would not approve of an unshielded case.
;)
So if you have a wooden case, it still needs a layer of shielding, either on the inside our outside. So you might as well just make the case out of sheetmetal and dispense with the wood.
Then there is the weight, and the fact that wood is a good thermal insulator.
I think that cost could be an issue for cases made of a quality hardwood. The whole idea here, to me, is to get an esthetic cabinet made of a finer material; making it out of plywood or MDF kind of defeats the purpose, since these materials are inferior to metal or even plastic. (Yet, people *will* buy particleboard garbage if it has veneer---this is the founding principle behind IKEA, for instance). The cost for cranking out pine, plywood or MDF cases in high volumes is probably not much greater than ordinary cases, but once you get into the better hardwoods, it gets more expensive. Never mind oak, how about a case made of bubinga, wenge and other such hardwoods? Why stop at cases? I'd like a keyboard made of zebrawood, with ebony keycaps, either without labels or labels made using mother-of-pearl inlay.
I've got a few early sketches in SVG format at:
http://www.plasticaztec.com/mediacabinet/mcab2fro
http://www.plasticaztec.com/mediacabinet/mcab2fro
The Adobe SVG plugin is available at: www.adobe.com/svg/
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Ok I can't do it any more. I'm afraid I'll summon that energizer bunny.
Sleep time.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
once?
twice?
three times?
four times?
five times?
six times?
or do you want the palm pilot version?
I mean, yeah. You can make cases out of cool stuff. I guess the reason I'm pissed is cuz people are submitting real important items and they're getting rejected.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That's because Flay is a putz. Would you want his dirty feet where you make your dinner? Besides, Morimoto rulz - i think that the tasting panel sided with Flay to keep him from being such a whining baby again...
-r0
Wood burns.
Wood is a thermal insulator.
Wood can be expensive.
Wood does not provide RF shielding.
Wood is more fragile.
It works extremely well. Best part is that my box is *completely* quiet. It's like having a fanless box. I've almost started to get annoyed by the noise my monitor makes. :)
It looks pretty cool too.
-henrik
That case sucks, it's 6 chunks of wood screwed together with a blue LED in it.
What would be really nice, is one made of red stained burled walnut, with about 6 layers of high gloss varnish. Make sure you have a door to cover the unsighly cdroms and floppy drive, and mount an old style VU-meter on the front with some sort of interface device that would make it read CPU usage or something.
Ever seen quality burled walnut? The good stuff will run you a couple hundred bucks per square foot, and a dark red stain makes it look absolutely beautiful, as if it wasn't already...
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Reinforced concrete would be the easiest to do.
You'd to make a formwork for the base and sides. (I'd leave one long side open and put glass on it, or maybe perspex.)
For something the size of a PC case, I doubt you'd require reinforcing, which is generally only required when the concrete may be subjected to tensile forces rather than compressive forces. (spot the civil engineer, huh?)
However, to improve shielding, a chickenwire mesh would serve as adequate reinforcing and as a faraday cage.
Mixing the amount of concrete would be easy, and doable by hand. You'd want to keep the amounts of gravel down to keep it a very smooth mix. It'll take at least seven days to dry and preferable a month before you start attaching things to it. The precise details of attaching motherboards and such to a concrete base, I'll leave to others.
Bristol University in the UK regularly makes concrete canoes as part of their Civil Engineering training, and I think they use the chicken wire mesh to keep the flexibility in the concrete. The real problem with a concrete canone is not the weight but the lack of flexibility.
dave
Techstyle has used wood.
I didn't see any in those pictures. Am I missing something?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
*Yawn* A wood case sounds like filler, I've seen far better wood cases on /. before
Don't cut away the card slot part and you have support for at least one end of the cards, hell who has many full-length cards? The rest hang loose on the other end anyway.
If the cpu fan whine irritates just replace it with a bigger, slower fan that moves as much air - no other fans should be needed, the open box would let convection keep things pretty near room temperature.
Just the thing to show off your new Voodoo XIV or whatever, but be sure to watch out for the Pepsi syndrome.
Velveeta.
Might be good for a server with just power and a network cable coming out of it, but would be a problem for a normal case. Too many cables, going every which way. Sure, you can extend the keyboard, mouse, power, network, modem, but I've never had luck with the video. Too much noise.
I tried painting all of my stuff with that rock paint once. Maybe I should have sealed it, because it didn't do so well. It did look nice for a day or so, but when paint chips start falling into the CD-ROM drive, it is time to cut the losses.
well i think it comes down to the fact that wood is very expensive. all the slashdot geeks would just say "bah, why would i pay for wood when i can just get a big ol' metal case?" :)
but i digress. i heard a while back (while i was living in the Bay Area) of a guy that paid a professional woodworker to exactly replicate the plastic covers of a PowerMac G3 case (the same case they use for the current G4s) out of oak. i guess it cost him hundreds of dollars, but damn that would be a nice looking case. does anybody know this guy? i'd love to see a picture of that case!
- j
This *is* true, but...
I think the author's point should be taken to heart. I have several computers at home right now. I would never do a thing to any of the Mac cases (except for the decommissioned Classic that I'm currently thinking about fishtanking); with the exception of the 4400 and the Q850/9500-style cases I don't think Apple has ever created a really ugly piece of hardware. But I have a boring HP Vectra and a hideous Compaq Prolinea pizzabox that just scream for some kind of flashiness.
Why not a nice wooden case, though? Yes, it would be quite the luxury item (I'd probably expect $300-$400 per case for a plain old ATX minitower enclosure), but it isn't all that bad an idea at all. You might have to rethink some furniture construction norms, though -- it would be significantly bigger than a normal case to enhance airflow, for example, and jointing techniques would probably be vastly different from normal furniture (I'd think some variation on the post-cam construction in some cheap shelves I bought a couple of months ago), but it would definitely sell, if only in smallish numbers.
The big question is who would build it, though. If you're going to do something like this, do it right, right? That means no sawdustboard prefabs, and no cheezy stick-a-case-in-a-cabinet copouts.
/Brian
Curiously - why haven't I seen any commercial hardwood cases? Does wood have evil electrical properties or something? Why not have my computer look like furniture? (Rather why not somebody else have their computer look like furniture, because let's face it that thing is ugly as sin.)
It's cool, but I wonder about "heat" issues. Warm air blowing through something tends to dry it out pretty well.
Nevertheless, a very cool mod.
Equally cool mod done to the virgin webplayer. Go forth and slashdot him. Someone please post a mirror.
He wants to solar power this too.
http://www.unternet.org/~frank/projects/webplay
Some specs:
- sheet metal case (used to be part of an army 2-stroke fuel pack)
- 6 mm polycarbonate ('lexan') 'screen'
- aluminium chassis, doubling as processor cooler
- 2 * IBM Travelstar 20GB drives
- internal 12V->5V converter based on Max724
- external interfaces: USB, power, audio, modem
- IR keyboard
- DOC as 'emergency backup OS', it contains a small GNU/Linux installation.
I might choose to leave out the DOC and the modem, and go for an external USB modem instead. Anyone know a good place in Vancouver to buy stuff like that? I only need the modem when I find myself in the vicinity of a telephone, so I can put some imagery on the website I'll make for the trip.
It will be hosting a webcam which will snap a picture every X seconds and record 'interesting' sound events (hence the two drives, the trip will take about 2.5 months so I need quite a lot of disk space). It runs a slightly modified Debian GNU/Linux 'testing' distribution (currently using the 2.4.4 kernel with some USB patches). Agressive use of APM keeps power consumption down (eg. screen blank after 2 minute, I won't need the screen anyway most of the time. The camera will be mounted on a headband, or just attached to the canoe somewhere, and merrily document the whole trip.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I thought the idea was kind of interesting.
Since he had such nice wood, it might have been better to conceal the drives within, and use one of the solid pieces of oak on a hinge for the front piece. Think of how a small fridge or, in this case, a cabinet opens.
One other thought is more vents. He could have easily made a few slats to allow more cooling, and probably thrown in a couple more fans while he was at it. All in all nice. After all, I don't have an oak PC case.
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles154/
about wood computer cases by TechStyle Computers
There was this Ask Slashdot story on the EMF questions as well.
And Tech Style was featured in a slash story here
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Whoa, stone would be a *real* bitch to drag around to LAN parties.
--
Check out crippl3.net.
Booyah
What I would really like is a monitor with an oiled Victorian style wooden case, an ornate, Victorian style wooden box, and a keyboard made out of wood with metal keys from a really really early typewriter (those round button style keys) used in place of the plastic cubey keys... with very thick braided old telephone switchboard cable housing for the cables. Victorian lettering on the front, and big ass brass switches throughout.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I've seen about a hundred each wood and clear acrylic cases on various sites. Nothing new, and nothing that great, IMHO.
On the other hand, I'd kill (or pay $$$) for a STONE case. Any kind. Black marble or onyx or maybe granite or even just reinforced concrete. Something very heavy, very primitive and very ageless-looking. No LEDs showing, hidable drive bays... So that most of the time, it's just a stone cube, sitting in the corner, being heavy.
Oh, the romance...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
and a Sol II.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I think that he should have had "This case was slashdotted" burned into the side of the case. It would make a nice finishing touch.
On an unrelated note, Flay still managed to annoy Morimoto even after he removed the cutting board.
I like this from the top of his page: Things do do:
:)
Own my own computer (checked off early 1996)
Build my own computer (checked off late 1996)
Custom build my own computer case (checked off May 28, 2001)
Make millions in computer industry (unchecked)
Note that last goal. He's about 1 president too late for that one.
He does state that "Temperatures are a bit higher then they were in my [other case]".
So I thought I'd go into it. Since its 1:30am, and heck, its not like I really need the sleep. =)
(1) I noticed that on this Oak case, I didn't see and vents of the sort. Just an extra fan. Vents are good.
(2)There is a reason that cases are metal. Besides the obvious fact that its easy to produce and its cheaper. This being that the Thermal conductivity of Aluminum is 240 W/(m*Celcius), but for Oak, this is sooo much less, ranking in at just 0.15 W/(m*Celsius).
Conduction of heat through a material is = (Thermal Conductivity)*(Cross sectional Area)*(Change in temp between the outside and the inside of the box)*(time) / (width of the wood)
So one can see that having a larger value of Thermal Conductivity allows alot more heat to transfer through. And visa versa for a smaller.
Case in point, a metal case will allow alot more heat to flow through it than a wooden case.
Hey!!! We should build houses from Wood!!! Ummm, oh ya...nevermind. =)
Much better would be to do the job properly and use a dovetail joint.
I know the guy is living off welfare and had to save up for the case by collecting empty bottles and selling a kidney but I don't see why the result should be held up as an example to the rest of us. If we are going to have designer cases they should look better than standard ones. That case looks worse than the average homebrew of the 70s.
If we are going to do non-standard case stories lets at least see pretty ones.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Cool article. And the page isn't slashdoted yet. But I have a feeling we're going to bring this guy's server to it's knees. Or cost him a few $100 in bandwidth. Slashdot should cache the page and link to the cached page, if the whole point of the article is to look at pretty pictures. Yeah, I know this is off topic, but this guy is going to regret showing off his groovy wooden box in.. oh, about 5 more mins? :(
Once upon a time there were three little programmers. Each set about to make a case for their computer to live in, so that all their important open source software (or was that free software? I forget, never mind) would have a safe home. The first little programmer made his computer case from straw.
But when Mr. Badday.mpg threw a temper tantrum in the next cube, he huffed and he puffed and came over and kicked the little programmer's computer, and the straw case crumbled and the little programmer's work was all lost - oh, no! And Mr. Badday.mpg was moved to another cube by a sweet little HR princess. And this cube was farther away from the boss who didn't like to hear temper tantrums, but right next to the second little programmer.
The next little programmer was a little smarter. In addition to not using goto's every ten lines in his code, he built his computer case out of wood. But when the Mr Badday.mpg threw another, bigger temper tantrum in his new cube, he huffed and he puffed and he came next door and picked up the little programmer's wood-case computer and smashed it against the wall. Oh no, oh no! There was a hole in the drywall and the computer was ruined! And the little programmer had to download all his Britney Spears mp3's again! And Mr Badday.mpg was moved to another floor, so that his rage could be ignored by management. Of course, he wound up next to our third programmer.
Now, this little programmer was smarter than all the rest. He built his computer case out of bricks (he was a big fan of the song "Brick House" by the Commodores; also "Word Up" by Cameo, but I digress). Oh, his computer case was a strong one! And when Mr. Badday.mpg blew not one, not two, but three full gaskets one Monday morning (sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!), he came over to the third little programmer's cube because he had destroyed his own PC but had lots of nasty old rage left in him. He kicked and kicked the brick PC, but it didn't budge. He took his keyboard and smashed it on the brick PC, all the while the little programmer's work was safe. So Mr. Badday.mpg bent over and grasped the brick PC, but when he tried to lift it, he threw out his back and had to go on workman's comp.
Epilogue:
The brick PC was safe after its beating, and the third little programmer finished his open-source Linux DVD player, but then Big Bad Mr. Jack Valenti had the Army Corps of Engineers dynamite the brick PC. Sorry, that's how these things end up. In real life, the wolf always wins.
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya
first, MABRUK for a very nice looking case
what about heat conductance ? wood is a good insualtor, I would guess this case is actually a very BAD engineering solution.
not to say that hardware can't be aesthetic.
Working for necessity's mother.
Now I guess I'm going to have to make that case out of chicken wire, coat hangers, and packing foam.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
If these things ever take off in terms of popularity, every time someone's fan dies there will be a smoldering box of wood ash, molten plastic, and copper lying in an office building, den or bedroom somewhere.
Insurance companies will HATE these things.
"Before we can insure you Mr. Goldstein, I have a few questions. Do you use tobacco? No. Good. Do you have any of those silly flamable wooden computers? Ok, then you monthly premium is...DAMN, I pay this much per year, um,,,"
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
I had a thought: Instead of going to all trouble of building a complete custom case with mounting brackets etc., why not just do this: :-)) "case" big enough for the real case to fit it. The front should have gaps for the drives and buttons, and the rear should be mostly open, for cooling. Just put smaller (say 3-inch) wood flaps attached to locking hinges on the back so that you can put the real case inside and its secure, but you can remove it if you wish.
1. Build your computer in a regular, ugly case. 2. Build a wood (or stone or plastic or lead crystal, whatever
3. The end result is a wood "case" that covers everything but most of the back of the real computer case, where most of the cooling happens, as well as all the ports. Quicker, more efficient than a real pc case made of wood, and much easier. Thoughts?
I'm the stranger...posting to