Tool Box PC

Mr. Red Baron writes "A resident geek at Ars Technica has turned his toolbox into a nice little computer. Looks more portable than most LAN party designs I've seen." His webpage has a few more pictures.

Comments

Nice indeed

[tuoppi]

Those toolboxes are rather cheap to buy. Pity they don't offer too much EMI protection as metal cases do. Those computers are rather noisy thingies what comes to radio frequencies..

Anyway, that case seems rather well built and easy to carry around. Optimum would be that everything including game controllers and flat screen display would fit into box.

This is much nicer solution than the urethane foam mess which was admired here a little time ago. (Hey, you can cast your computer in concrete and it still might work - it is not too smart though.)

Re:Pretty Slick

[Anonymous Coward]

Quiet Riot writes:

Dual 12V battery pack with inverter could go in there too.

I've been wondering if you really need an inverter. From my inspection of power supplies, the typical design seems to rectify the mains voltage, then "chops" it through a small isolation step-down transformer, and rectifies it to about 25 volts. Then I think this DC voltage is used to drive the voltage regulators for your 5, 12, and 3.3 volts, etc. My guess is that maybe you could disconnect the mains circuitry and the isolation transformer, and apply battery power directly to 25 volt supply node.

All PC power supplies are pretty much the same; I wonder if there is a schematic posted anywhere on the net. There has to be more efficient way of doing this than stepping up a battery voltage through an inverter, and then immeadiatlely stepping it down again. Driving the voltage regulators directly from a DC supply would be much more efficient, and of course much cooler with regard to temperature.

Re:Best "case mod" ever

[Anonymous Coward]

and only three times expensive as a comparable laptop! (after labor costs)