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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.
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The yearly nude pinup calender for that complete workshop feel :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
I've seen a lot of "case mods", but this has to be by-far the most practical of them all. It's portable, it has a handle, and the insides are very easily accessible. Find a toolbox that has a bit more protection for ruggedness (rubber corners maybe?) and maybe a little deeper to provide room for cables, mouse, and a small keyboard and you have the perfect LAN party box :)
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From the first page referenced:
The machine has a Biostar M7VKQ motherboard with integrated sound, video and LAN, and a Duron 750 is the CPU
Date posted?
posted December 31, 1969 06:00 PM
Damn, there goes that 640k is enough thing if they had Durons back then...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
This would make a pretty nice addition to my collection of toolboxen. I have a couple different tool sets configured for working on a different variety of things (boxes I take to my friends' houses when they have this kind of trouble or that...). Sometimes I end up taking along multiple boxes because I just don't feel like switching things around (and it's good to have more tools at your disposal anyway - you never know!) But someone with a computer problem - just throw this baby in the trunk and go!
Ok, well don't 'throw' it. If (not 'if' but 'when') I build one of these, I'll be sure to add some shock protection to the mobo and CD drive. A keyboard holder inside the unit would be pretty nice too. Carry it all in one go. Fit an inexpensive flatscreen inside the cover case you've no CRT to hook up to and you're good to go.
Dual 12V battery pack with inverter could go in there too...
Anyone else notice the bottle of lotion next to the monitor in the 5th picture? Is it any wonder he had time to make this thing? :)
Very cool idea/design. Me thinks I want to make one myself just for fun.
You asked for it.
Thanks all; I'm glad so many of you like the box. And for those who think it's ugly: be glad I didn't use the yellow version of the toolbox. As I said on the page, it's meant for my daughter. If it was meant to be more high-performance I would have chosen a different mobo with more appropriate specs. Even now it would would do great for LAN parties if I dropped in a decent vid card.
;)
/. AOL for a little while!
About balance: yes, it is a little heavier on one side than the other, but not overly so. It's easy to carry from either direction, because the PSU is still fairly central.
About the size of the box: I would have loved to get a toolbox big enough for peripherals, but I just couldn't find one. I looked all over town and this was the best I could do. Virtually every toolbox I found was too narrow to hold a motherboard. There were plenty wider and taller, but most toolboxes were less than 8" deep, front to back.
As for why the page is hosted on AOL; I've explained it before when I catch flak at Ars about my AOL-ness, but I won't go into it all. Suffice it to say that my main connection is cable. I pay $0 for the AOL, so why not use it?
Yes, I am a lowly user of Win98. It does what I want it to do. My wife is OK with it, too. Sorry if it bugs you.
As for the Jergens... take a look at the pic. Wolf mousepad, turtles and wolves on top of the monitor. What does it add up to? I'll tell you: it's my wife's desk in the living room. It was much easier to plug it all in there since her machine was already down with a bad mobo.
Frankly, anyone who could recognize that bottle as Jergens specifically, must have some of their own...
Congrats to you all: you even managed to
There's just one problem here...
what's he gonna put all his tools??
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I plonked it down onto my bathroom scale just now. It's roughly 17 pounds.