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Case Modders - Think Small
sysadmn writes "Mini-ITX is a relatively new form factor for PC motherboards measuring only 170 mm x 170 mm. The folks at Mini-ITX.com have this page of interesting projects, including full systems built into 1/10 scale models of a Ford Focus Rally car and a VW Beetle. Another project recycles a SparcStation IPX from 40 Mhz Sparc to 800 Mhz Via C3. Not to be outdone, motherboard maker Via has its own Mini-ITX project page, with several cool automobile systems."
Now what would be really useful would be a car that would drive people home safely after a night of safely killing of excess and troublesome brain cells.
A smal system like this would be a good first start.
You could use a doom or quake game engine loaded with a map of the local streets as a nav aid for the car.
I tell you, this could work.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
they are great for settings where you dont need much. My school library has some small cases for the computers running the card catalog, unfortinately the card catalog computers are running fullpower P4's with tons of ram and all the goodies, while the computers used to do internet research etc. (and not nice small cases) are 1st generation p3s
in my head I dont see why you need more power to look at card catalog text (thin clients would be the ultimate space saver, stick a server somewhere that has room but no easy access to actually have a monitor and stuff) but I have to admit, the cases were very pretty
the suggestions I see for these as a LANparty case just dont make sense, usually I like to have my full graphics and sound etc along with me
Bottles.
I'll refrain from the obvious comment about /. editors.
Why is it that there is no serious commercial market for quality case design? The only company actually seriously doing any design work is Apple. Some of these cases are exceptional, and I know I'd pay decent money for them.
What's with all those companies out there? Why can't they get their act together and provide some decent case options? Anyone know?
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
So I wonder if the poster has ever seen the Desktop Hacks at Applefritter, which include the Shop Vac Mac and the Lego Mac?
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
A Beowulf cluster of these...
Inside a toaster.
That was actually my submission to The Register when they held a contest for Eden applications. VIA was giving away a bunch of these Eden mini-ITX systems to the winners. That is where VIA's applications page came from.
Imagine a cluster sitting on top of every desktop in a classroom. Instead of just being able to use time on a cluster to explore it's architecture or a class building one cluster as a project, each student would have their own cluster.
Problem is, even the 800mhz C3 performs no petter than a 450 PII. Additionally, the processor has absolutely no parallelism. Only one path with no out of order instructions.
That lack of balls does give them an advantage: they draw only 60 watts for the entire system. That includes memory processor and all.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Case modding is fun. I stuffed my last PC into an old SGI Iris Indigo that I was getting pissed at (blew up my KVM switch before I realized that the keyboard port is a few pins away from standard PS/2...). However, watch what you're stuffing that motherboard-of-the-week into. I don't care if you rip up a Sega Saturn, a Sony PlayStation, an old SPARC, or an Iris Indigo - those were all mass-produced systems. (With the exception of the Indigo, these were all on the mini-itx.com site.) No one is going to miss that old tape deck, and making your own case out of plexiglass is just cool.
What I don't want to see is someone ripping up a piece of history for 15 minutes of fame. I'm donning my flame suit already, but just give me a chance here. Stuffing an Eden mini-itx into a 1/10 size Beetle is just cool. However, if you rip up an old NeXT Cube, or an Apple III, I'll be forced to kill you. Old hardware is cool and useless; old, rare hardware is to be kept around by any means. Go ahead and rip apart that old boat-anchor XT you have lying around for a new bullet-proof (literally) box, but if you put a cutting wheel through a rare piece of hardware, you deserve to have your guts ripped out and a new motherboard sewn into place, just like the antique that you destroyed.
So go ahead and stuff a micro-pc in that old 80's toploader VCR, or a PS1. Just stay away from the truly rare, cool stuff - it needs no modifications to be neat and interesting.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
I like big, thank you so very much.
.
:-D ) then sure, but. . . .
Besides.
I have 5 PCI cards and 4 IDE devices, and I am trying my best to get some more stuff. . .
Now if some new bus interconnect method was made up that involved a connector edge a tad wee bit smaller then that of PCI (heh, hasn't technology advanced at least a wee bit since the early/mid nighties?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If its size doesn't satisfy my secretary, I'd have to go to great pain and expense to get it enlarged. And adding another 6 inches of plastic to what's already there would look kind of weird.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
A couple of years ago at the height of the .com economy I was working as a "Sales Support Technician."
...Sadly, all the money for cool toys went into paying the salary for a certain pair of other IT workers who's sole purpose seemed to be making everyone else's life hell. Ah ve.
Our sales force had been touring the country with a windows based pre-alpha product that had a footprint too large to effectivly work on any of the laptops at the time... Our sales force started carting around a normal desktop. Imagine their chagrin when they realised that desktops weren't meant to travel regularly and they had to talk their way out of demoing the product...
Well, that's the reason for that neat-o title. Part of my job included carting around the two 19" monitor boxes containing a mid tower case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, etc... I would have *loved* a design like this (and a flat panel display) doing all that traveling.
Regardless, these days laptops like the Dell Insperion's negate the need for complete desktop systems, but I can see cases where a proper desktop would be useful (Demoing a PCI/AGP device anyone? How about a particularly nasty piece of bloatware.)
It's a nice tradeoff between flexibility and size.
My case mod
72 LEDs mounted behind translucent plastic, all with computer controlled brightness. There's an XMMS plugin :)
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Being a VW, shouldn't it remain air-cooled??
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
The monitor they show is only video, not VGA ! Has *ANYBODY* ever found a source for a ~10" LCD VGA Monitor?
I don't want to use NTSC out from a video card (clarity and all) and I don't think I'll have much luck dismanteling laptop LCD's.
Help!
I live in the dorms, and I only have one room. So, my computer is always out in the open for every one to see 24/7. Why would I want to put something ugly in my living space if I could put something beautiful?
It's not about ego, it's about the fact that having beautiful things around you makes you feel better, while having ugly, cheap looking shit makes you feel bad.
Some people actualy are sensitive to this sort of thing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hummers do have an asthetic, even if it wasn't intended. Just because something isn't flowy like an AudiTT or something dosn't mean that it dosn't look nice. The Hummer may not have been designed with looks in mind, but it does have a look. And a lot of people like it (the whole 'technical' look)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well, the new Beetle is water-cooled. Besides, the idea for air-cooling the original Beetle came from Hitler.
Umm, Hitler was a dictator, not an engineer.
In addition to making war on europe and killing 6 million jews, Hitler started volkswagen. He didn't do the engineering, but he did do the requirements (affordable, reliable, specific performance and weight requirements for the engine), and his chief designer went on to work for Porsche. Thus concludes today's history lesson.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Read the link I supplied -- it explicitly states (in paragraph 6) that Hitler told Porsche to make the VW air-cooled. Porsche, not wanting to end up dead, did what der Furher asked.
Sarcasm generaly has a 'humor' component. If the above post had been funny, I might have caught the sarcasm.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ever seen bubbly flowered stereo components? And you never will.
Actualy I have. At the exotic "target" stores.
Unless you consider a nearly spherical cd/sterio with hello kitty plastered all over not to be 'bubbly'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
havn't established anything, other then your general lack of humor, and otherwise rampant idiocy.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've got an old Personal Iris case with a working power supply, but I'm not sure how to rewire it for a standard PC motherboard. Does anyone know of a guide somewhere? I was just going to get a normal PC case and leave this alone, but this thread has come at a good time...