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Build a PC Inside of a Mac
jherro writes: "Looking for the coolest case on the block? Already have enough fish tanks? Then might just want to build a PC inside of your old classic mac. Makes a great little mp3 server. Sadly, the mirror at angelfire
will probably be faster than the original at Smuniverse." Finding a cheap 9" monitor would be a nice trick, too.
Then might just want to build a PC inside of your old classic mac.
"What's that steaming puddle of plastic for?"
"It's my new Athlon Mac SE. You like it?"
--saint
Sorta like hiding manure inside a bouquet of flowers -- what a great evil trick to pull on someone!
People who butcher vintage computers make me sick. It's like chopping up a Model T, or 50's Tbird, and using the pieces of sheet metal to patch your AMC Gremlin.
Besides, I just got a decent 9" (monochrome) SVGA monitor for $5. Just gotta know where to look...
Then you can run the Basilisk II Mac emulator and have the fastest compact Mac.
Cupertino CA - Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson, members of the original Macintosh team committed mass seppuku today on DeAnza Blvd. When asked why, they replied "we'd read this article on slashdot about stuffing a PeeCee into a classic Mac, and we thought someone must be rolling over in their grave. But then we remebered we're not dead yet, so we had to push the project along..."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This case sounds (or better looks) like fun.
But isn't there some solution to set up your vast song database on your main server in another room and tell 'em to server your AUX-input of your normal Hifi Equip. by a (obviosly non IR) remote controller?
Anyone any experience?
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never said why he wanted to replace his laptop with the Mac...errrr...pc. I think a laptop works just fine for taking up little space and serving mp3's. (Plus you can save your wire and duct tape for other uses.)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Isn't there enough room around the edges to bolt a 10" LCD panel in, then just configure to use the visible part?
You don't really need to go out of your way to find a 9" PC monitor. There's a place called Earth LCD that has loads of surplus and overstock LCDs available, including touch screens. Some surfing around will come up with a good 8.5-9" color LCD with a VGA input.
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
/me wants one :)
Why on earth would you use mobile Athlons? For the same price you would get much more powerful ordinary Athlon XPs. Furthermore, are you sure that standard motherboards like the Aopen AK77 will even support mobile Athlons?
.. how the guy got through it without getting any nasty shocks from the monitor HV, not sure about the cat though.
I saw another one of these a couple days ago, don't remember where I got the link, but I think this one is much nicer, with an lcd screen and all. I think he is using the mac mouse and keyboard too... (not sure)
This is insane. There are far more interesting things to do with old computers, I read recently that someone built an Amiga laptop. Which is odd because Amiga never built anything other than desktops and they were converting the A600 consumer model. OK, obscure example. But...
Why not try something similarly imaginitive with old Macs? It would be interesting to see what a machine code programmer and some control outputs could do. Certainly automate a bedroom at least. Replacing it with a PC is dull and an old Mac is far cheaper than a 68000 based embedded development board and better documented than a lot of embedded developement boards. Re-program, skew, take out of context but don't ditch the heart and soul of the machine.
If you want a wacky case take up shop lessons and learn to work metal, don't destroy the past (with some effort and time spent).
e4 e5
You are one limber and intelligent cat my friend! All cats should strive to be like you.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
quick search on google only finds 9 inch monitors in monochrome, and ten inch color. He uses a ViewMagic, which currently only shows a 10" color available as new product.
odd fish indeed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...To fool the Mac Zealots club into thinking I had defected to the dark side or something...
"Ah HA! Is that a Mac I see on your Desk!? FINALLY saw the light, did you?"
"Oh, yes indeed I did, now go away while I play some Dungeon Siege on it".
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
This is the ultimate in putting form over function...
Although, I don't find the old Mac case all that beautiful. Interesting, yes, and certainly innovating at the time, but I wouldn't want one on my desk.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Sadly, Angelfire has killed the mirror.
Anybody have a good mirror?
What I would really like is a PC inside of a Power Mac case. Starting with the G3 Yosemites, Apple's cases got incredibly sexy. I'd been laboring under the impression that cases of the same quality as the Power Mac could be purchased, but after I dropped $100 on my first PC case a couple of months ago, I've learned that even some of the nicer ones are for shit compared to Apple's near-perfect Power Mac case.
:)
Has anybody managed to convert a PowerMac case into a case accepting any standard-sized PC motherboard and related internal parts? This PC inside of an LC is kind of neat, but what we all really want is a Power Mac case.
-Waldo Jaquith
I am planning to do something like this to one of the original iMacs. I just happen to have one that was never used but missing the logic board, CD and hard drives.
I expect it'll be a much, much easier mod than a classic Mac conversion, but it'll also be more useful when I'm done.
Great mod for those who want to create something unusual, but if you are attempting such a project please try to find a non-working classic Mac first.
There are probably a few to be found on eBay, but there are many Mac users (like myself) who love collecting classic Macs. They are getting harder and harder to find, and the prices keep increasing, so please check around first for one that no longer works. It'd be a shame destroying a piece of history.
example of style over substance. Although, in typical PC fashion, they used a beige-colored case!
Wouldn't it be more fun with a grape colored iMac???
Why would you use inferior products from Intel or AMD. Jeesh, at least go with a PPC or Sparc. Oh, you're one of those "bigger numbers MUST be better" people.
/.?
Can anyone tell me at what exact point the brainwashed overtook
This would be a nice way of hiding stolen traffic control pcs :)
b) Can you use ordinary PCI cards in PPC and Sparc systems. I know that a SCSI controller for Sparc costs you at least 10 times more than a corresponding PC card.
c) What is the power/price ratio for PPC and Sparc? I bet the PPC and Sparc will lose this one too.
Wow - a setup like this will be perfect for when Apple brings out MacOS X on Intel!
[just after hell freezes over and Microsoft GPL Windows]
You know, I'm still looking for a place that sells a PC case that looks similar to the PowerMac G4 tower case. You know, the translucent one. I especially like the flip-down side that lets you upgrade stuff. I know there's a site that explains how to squeeze a PC into a mac case, but I'm looking for one DESIGNED for a PC. :)
ANyway, though: what i would be very interested to see is this: There was a product available for the very early macintoshes-- the classic nine-inch one-piece ones that the current discussion is about-- that looked WIERD but was really just about the ultimate case mod.
Here is a link to a picture taken out of the Macintosh Bible edition i originally heard of this thing in.. just look at it. It was called the MacChimney, or something, and as the name suggests it was basically a chimney for your macintosh. You'd go in with some tools and install this thing, and your macintosh would suddenly be about twice as tall and have this cone-like thing sticking off the top with a big stovepipe at the top.
The advantage to this was, the product had been designed in such a way that between the chinmey and the way it affected the air circulation inside the case, once the chimney was installed you no longer needed a fan. At all. So you'd remove the fan and get a literally totally silently-running macintosh.
So, basically, since we are talking about putting a PC inside of a classic macintosh, my question is this:
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I mean, what kind of guy calls his personal site smuniverse? Sounds like some black-leather-and-lots-of-pain pr0n site...
..why would you want people to think that you actually own a mac???
The Truth: There is no string:)
/. authors should know better than to never link to anything on Angelfire. 10 people hit the site and drove the poor guy over his daily bandwidth limit.
It's a useless mirror now...
The site is slashdotted so I can't get the specs on the hardware, but I bet you could make a pretty nice Linux Workgroup server out of one, and it'd be cuter than the Sun Cobalt Qube or even the Green Computer PowerElf. And you would have a display/keyboard/mouse locally at the machine. Sounds cool to me.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
No puzzle. Find an old iBook and break it out of the case. Duct tape the LCD to the outside the Mac Classic case and re-gut the pc/mac with your iBook mothaboard. Big plus: if you use 3" wide tape your server will look like a PC but have Mac guts >remember bigger numbers are better, don't use 2" tape on your diguised Mac or you will be undonenote: observe proper environmental protocols when dumping the PCs
I remember the MacChimney. Actually, it was used because the original Macs up to the Mac Plus never had a fan at all. They were intended to be cooled by convection, but because the original Macs had a notoriously unstable power supply, people resorted to odd measures to keep cool.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Wired had this great story about compact macs in Japan which, among other things, showed a G3 powerbook's innards ported to a Mac 128K enclosure, running OS X on the original 9" b/w 512.384 screen.
Kevin Fox
Just get an old Macintosh SE/30, upgrade the RAM and the hard drive and install m68klinux or NetBSD (of course it runs NetBSD!). I did and I'm currently running a webserver on it (well, at least until the end of the semester) here. Yeah, it's slow. But nothing beats running X on a 512x384 black and white screen.
...the mirror at angelfire sucks ass and smuniverse is fine.
Something like this would make a great semi-portable for gaming with friends. Put a decently quick system in it with a decent video card, and make fun of your friends that have their tricked out cases with handles on 'em. You can get your system to a friend's place with less weight AND have the monitor built in.
Still not as portable as a laptop, but a hell of a lot better than a tower case and a 17" monitor for LAN parties and the like.
-l
In it's time, the SE/30 was pure brilliance. Mac had two lines, the little all-in-ones, and the Mac II line wiht the faster processors. The SE/30 was, essentially, the Mac IIx (top of the line) in an SE (bottom or near bottom) of the line case. It cost about $1000 more than the base SE, and only had the single expansion slot, but it was actually marginally *faster* than the IIx as it didn't have to deal with the nuBus.
I bought one in late 1989, and it was more than sufficient to run my law office from late '89 until it got replaced with a powerbook in Fall '93.
[Note that the replacement wasn't because it was no longer adequate, but because of stability problems from putting Chip Merchant memory in the second bank--at the time they had a (deserved) reputation for sloppy manufacture: the SIMM was a mm or two two wide, and cracked the slot. It's really amazing it lasted as long as it did with rubber cement holding the socket together . .
Anyway, the point is that Apple offered all of the horsepower of the very top of the line in the base system for a cost that was a fraction of the price differential--at a cost of the exandability that very few would need. Let's face it: how often do you add more than one card after you buy a system instead of replacing it outright (yes, I have, too, but it's still the exception).
I put in a controller for a 19" 1024x768 1 bit monitor--amazing for it's time, if nothing today.
anyway, an Imac/30 is an idea that should be *constantly* running around apple--keep the basic unit, with it's display, but offer a faster processor.
hawk, who still has a couple of pieces and the ROM's from Damien [1]
[1] hey, I *didn't* say we got along--the first tome the monitor swiveled 720 degrees in it's mount, it was named . .
Amost any 8 bit (save for post-Pet Commodore [VIC-20, C64]) would be vintage micro,the handful of Z-8000 and 68000 (not 68020 or later), and non-pc-compatible 8086 (generally *not* 8088) would really be the *later* limit for what might be vintage. You could stretch by arguing for the original (pre-XT) IBM PC as a transition from classic to commodity, but htat's as late as you can possibly get.
hawk
The reason they're rounded on a Mac is so that the Mac Users don't poke themselves on the sharp edges.
Any UK folk wanting 9 and 10 inch monitors can get one here; you have to click on the text CLICK HERE FOR MORE COMPONENT OFFERS on the scrolly at the top of the page to get to the Offers List (URL changes a lot).
They do them for £10, and the monitors are great. From old POS terminals, but they're very clean with no burn and can handle 800x600 at 24bpp!
They also throw in cool telescopic stands; I have two flanking my main 19" CRT like mickey mouse ears. Perfect for throwing debug windows etc out onto... and a 3-monitor setup for £30 (including a tenner for a PCI dual-head Matrox card) really ain't bad.
Last time I was down there they had hundreds left in the warehouse so if they're not on the list anymore give 'em a call.
You could do what I have done, add a window to my SE/30. Yeah, I know, your saying "eeeeAaAGH! You hacked up a Mac!", or "Why?!?!?" Well tough, I like the idea of adding a little coolness to it. I might even cram a PC in there if I can ever afford an lCD screen for it. My SE/30 Case Mod Page. Its far from done but what the heck, go take a look. (forgive me if the site is slow, I'm hosted on SiteTurn and they are not the best at keeping things running smoothly. Well maybe they are, but they never answer their email. This will prob. kill a server or two. ;-) )
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LOL.... another one slashdoted:))))
oh, monitor ...
nevermind.
some guy did this too at http://www.beanos.com/mac_classic.php. Heis using a slow-ass motherboard but the screen is an LCD flatpanel at least.
oops. the link was http://www.beanos.com/~tsoutij/mac_classic.php.
C'mon, I thought the "Beowulf cluster" joke was obligatory?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
nuff said...
I'd be more impressed if he'd done this with 'the lamp'.
Want a PeeCee in a Mac case? How about the best of both worlds (no emulation involved)? Apple producted a 486 expansion card for the original PowerMacs. Sweet little Cyrix chip on a NuBus card that allowed you to run DOS and Windows natively. Had some compatibility issues, but it was pretty neat at the time. They also later built a card for PCI macs based off the Pentium line of Intel processors. http://www.bme.unc.edu/~hope/linx/mac/dosmac.html
I must say, there are more people out there with the idea. I have turned the idea over in my head several times. Although the innards I have thought of putting in are XT based. 8088 or 8086. Then I could raid an older luggable for the screen. Hmmmm....I have an XT mobo sitting around....