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Modern Retro computing
Sebby writes "This is pretty neat - the folks over at retrosystem rebuild old computers/consoles with new guts inside. They have Amiga 1000, Atari 2600, and also NES systems, with lots of options for configuration. If they only made a Sinclair ZX81 with the same specs, I'd be sold!" I mean, who wouldn't want a PC in an
NES box ;)
Putting a PC into an Xbox case! Oh, wait..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I just picked up a mini-itx board for a mp3/divx player in my car. These things are really tiny. I saw one project where they stuffed one of these boards into a playstation, old sparcstations, and lots of other strange places. Not a gaming board, but those are starting to happen too - take a look at the small Shuttle boards that have a bit more kick (and heat) to them.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
"We are patenting this process of customizing old computer and game console cabinets to be Windows, Linux or other contemporary operating systems based on x86 systems. Contact us if you are interested in licensing from us."
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this a bit disturbing?
I think the NES/Atari Boxes look great, but I'm curious as to how well they do airflow-wise with a 800Mhz processor inside??
I seem to recall my those systems could get a little warm just playing their cartridges.
Cool idea, though.
It's a safe and sane way of expressing nostalgia (as opposed to killing yourself while attempting to use a time travel device made from thirty yards of string and two protracters held together with a rubber band).
Oh, and if you aren't familiar with the concept, here's a link.
The speed of time is one second per second.
turning a VAX into a keg dispenser with webmonitoring
or maybe just a bar or how about a fridge
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Anyone wanna put an Atari 2600 in a PC case?
It's just for the sake of cosmic karma balance.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I totally agree. There are some situations when it is acceptable. If you come across a chassis that has been completely stripped of all its original hardware (or enough that there is no hope of ever getting it working in its original form), I guess shoehorning PC parts into it is a better fate than letting it be thrown away. But the thought that someone would take a working original Amiga, or next cube, or other funky old system, and knowingly replace the original hardware with commodity PC junk, makes me shudder.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I don't understand why someone just doesn't do this mod themselves.
Their pricing is quite expensive @ $999-1099+
I'd recommend getting a mini ITX form factor motherboard like VIA's eden. (Go check the specs on the motherboards vs. the console boxes because I'm not sure if they'll fit exactly)
So for ~$150 for the motherboard
~$60 for the VIA CPU
~$5-10 for an old NES / Atari system
~Old PC Components
You'd have a pretty decent setup. (Not to mention you'd be saving around $700!)
If you need some motivation look at Project Jellybean:
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=120
The computers in the article are just glorified case mods. When you plug a modern keyboard monitor and mouse into those old cases and boot Windows 2000, you totally lack the retro look and feel. The coolest artifacts from the old days are green-screen monitors and heavy, loud keyboards. They are what create the retro look-and-feel that we remember from the old days.
In middle school, we had these Apple IIe computers with green-screen monitors that tilted up and down in a stationary case. Those were sweet. At the time, we had a computer at home with a color screen (CGA graphics, baby). Even though the CGA screen was technically superior to the Apple's, I thought the Apple monitor was way cooler. Now I have a 19 inch Viewsonic monitor and its infinitely more useful than the old Apple screen -- but the Apple monitor is still cooler.
Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type. These flimsy, wussy keyboards that come with modern PCs are terrible! My favorite keyboard was an old IBM AT keyboard from 1984. My dad found it at work, and I used it for several years. The keys are covered with plastic caps, which are what the letters are printed on -- if you want remap your keyboard to Dvorak, you can reposition the printed letters by removing and rearranging the little caps. Pretty sweet. I had to retire it when, while moving from one dorm room to another, I broke off some of the caps that cover the keys. I've still got it in my closet, though.
I guess my point is that, while this is a cool idea, it's somewhat misguided. Creating a retro look and feel is much more important than having a retro case, which you're just going to shove under your desk anyway. And to have the retro look-and-feel, you need cool-looking screens and clicky keyboards.
Steve
Addendum: there is nothing wrong with taking an older commodity PC and modifying it to run newer hardware. I have a couple of very solidly built full-AT desktop cases that I can't wait to put to use with newer guts (perhaps after some modifications, or finding decent AT mainboards). There is no historical loss in discarding the original 286 or whatever was in it before, that stuff is still very widely available and basically worthless.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Yes, I know we always talk about trying to get linux to run on an older computer, but gutting the case and replacing the innards is cheating. :)
As far as appeal goes, consider you're intentionally purchasing a machine with limited upgrade options. In order to minimize the footprint, the boards won't have many PCI slots, and its debatable if they could be used anyway in that case. While old computer cases can probably be picked up for free, or very very cheap, there's still the labor cost of adapting them to fit modern components. That's going to jack the price a bit, not to mention a power supply will still be required, which is typically a good percentage of the case cost.
Of course, people buying one of these are probably doing it for the novelty purposes and not because they're concerned about cost or usability.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Thaat's a great way to celebrate maybe the single greatest personal computer ever designed (top 3, at the very least). Give it a piece of shit celeron, the shittiest cpu ever, made by the shittiest cpu manufacturer ever. Way to pay homage to the 68k, a paragon of simplicity and power. What better way to honor the first color GUI, a gui that fit on a single 880k floppy, than to put the cruddiest OS ever invented? They did put windows on it, right? It's some kind of sarcastic performance art, and the only thing that could contrast beautiful Workbench would be XP, which is lean if it installs in what, less than 300 megs?
Now, I'm hardly a purist. Things don't have to have original condition. I'm fine with PPC's in a1000's, linux on amigas, someone doing a messy hack that gives it more ram. If you want to see a real A1000 hack, ask for pictures of the FrankenThousand on comp.sys.amiga.hardware. But don't pull this shit. This isn't retro-computing, it's vivisectiony at its most sociopathic.
Go ahead, mod me down. Claim I don't know what I'm talking about. But don't come begging when you want to buy a 20mhz overclocking kit for your sinclair 1000.
They only have inside pictures for the Amiga case. Well duh, big deal there are plenty of low profile commercial cases already out there. Nothing interesting to see there.
I was really disapointed that there were no photo galleries for the Atari and NES cases. I mean for all we know those are just mockups and there are no pc parts inside.
You also got to be kidding me with those systems specs. What brand of cpu is it? What speed is the Hard drive? What kind of Ram is that? What video card is in there and how much ram does it have? What type of warranty does it have?
There is no way I would drop $1,200 with so little info, especially via Paypal.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You're covered.
Gamecube, PS2, NES, Atari 2600, PC and an Xbox all in a big ass Lian Li case.
SIGFEH