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Who is Making Cases out of Natural Materials?
alansz asks: "I've been rereading William Gibson's Idoru lately (insert your favorite bookstore link). The main character uses a computer made by 'Sandbenders', an Oregon commune that designs computer cases (and parts) from natural materials like stone, wood, glass, etc. The theme is a blending of the natural/analog and the relentlessly cybernetic/digital. Like the imaginary customers of this commune, I find the idea of such a computer very appealing. There's a fair number of case mod stories here on Slashdot. Have any of you actually made (or decorated) or found a company that makes PC cases that incorporate unusual materials and a natural aesthetic?"
I had a Northstar (8080) with a cherrywood case. It was sweet (*sigh*). 2 MHz, and 32k of RAM...what a great machine.
-- MarkusQ (waxing nostalgic)
...like this?
If you undertake a project to build a funky case out of plastic/glass/stone/wood/whatever, be sure to take the EMF into account. If it's something opaque like wood, this is easily remedied by liing the inside of the case with a faraday cage (wire mesh of the right size, basically). I'm not sure what you should do for clear materials - perhaps leaded glasses have some emf shield properties? not really sure on this.
11*43+456^2
You might try to adapt how people make model trainsets (with all that paper wad type modeling) to make a rock lookalike computer case.
Id definitly say, that given the proper amount of time, its feasable.
This
I was procrastinating from writting a paper and noticed the page was running slowly. Here's a mirror:/ case/
http://www.students.bucknell.edu/cbarker
I already have this. My computer's made entirely of natural materials.
Sand for the circuit board and transistors.
animals and plants to the crude oil that makes the plastics.
And natural rocks, found in the ground, refined to give the metallic casing.
from 100% natural materials.
yea.
or just give out mod points better
Alas, these comments make me sad.
Is there no place for beauty or art that serves no purpose other than being pleasing to the eye.
What is the point of living in a world of cold grey boxes?
ASR? wth? imho i dont know wot ds m33nz?
hmmm... "queer faggots" as opposed to all those straight faggots?
Last I checked steel and aluminum was about as natural as glass is...
Why does it have to be made out of copper? You can get regular steel mesh from any large hardware store. Computer cases aren't made out of copper ... so why would you substitute copper mesh?
If you're worried about how it looks or something, spray-paint it with copper-colored metallic paint. That won't reduce its EMF shielding effects so long as you ground it through any layers of paint.
...I've seen them around for a while.
...they make wood cases and computer systems, as well as periphs (mice, keybds, LCD monitors *DROOL*). They'll even let you pick the wood. They also do PDA veneer and the like. Some of their high-end stuff is quite striking, if out of my price range. :-)
http://www.arbustus.com/
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
What is the point of living in a world of cold grey boxes?
The point is to get some work done. If you're going to espouse the value of form, it's wise to note the value of function as well.
There's more to life than eye candy.
Incidentally, I have a Lian Li brushed aluminum box with a great cooling system, your cold grey box. It's absolutely gorgeous, cold and grey as it is.
--
pants ahoy
I think I'm pretty safe as long as I *don't* have a case constructed out of radioactive elements that have a half-life in the millionths of a second. ;)
;)
To be honest, I don't see myself getting much value in having a computer case out of mundane materials. Aesthetic, utilitarian, environmental, economic, or otherwise. While some people may wax poetic out of goat cheese made from swiss monks, personally, I'd rather brag about how technological it is. After all, we're talking about computers here!
Would be made from human bones. Hard to come by (rare) and quite the conversation starter. "What an interesting use for a human rib cage!"
The idea of a polished oaken computer case gives me a woody. Well, it would if I get a woody. :) (I am of the Chick side of the Force) Wait! I can always install Debian 3.0 on it...
:D
(rimshot)
Hmm. I kinda-sorta made a computer out of natural materials once... when money was short and I had plenty of spare parts sitting about, I built a machine using ordinary paper in place of the handy-dandy metal plate (donno what they're called) that the motherboard attaches to. In fact, I used the campus foodservice newsletter.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
using a cabinet router and some veneer sheets and contact cement is not that hard, a nice skill for anyone to get, and doing simple flat rectangular surfaces is easy. Pick out your laminate, spray case, spray laminate. stick on, roll or press, take the router to it to trim precisely. cool. I haven't done it to a computer case but I can't see it being that hard. Guess I'll try it now sometime thinking about it, next time I scrounge some scraps of laminate that are my taste in "cool" looking. That would seem to be the quickest easiest way to make a nice exterior.
I was looking at the miniitx page via a link from another thread here, saw a mod I HAVE thought previously I want to build, and that is a computer inside a briefcase. I don't want a laptop inside a case or bag, I want the case to be the laptop and have some storage for cd's etc inside. You open it up, there's the screen on the case facing you. simple, easy, you reach in, haul out the regular keyboard and mouse and get to work. The guy did a nice job,it's not exactly what I was thinking of but nice still, he used to me looking at it like an anvil-style case. I want a "laptop" or call it a portable like that, inside it's own case, full sized "normal" keyboard, decent screen, etc, and dual or quad batts! yep, it'll be heavy, I _don't_ care, 99% of the time it'll be sitting on a desk. I got a "normal" laptop already, just want a better one and don't got 3 grand to drop on one right now.
As to some sort of "natural" case, possibilities are pretty limitless, depends on what you want it to be functional as later. Just a piece of art work you can sit in front of, and have it not look like a computer? Still need the screen and keyboard and mouse. Hmm, I like house plants, put one in the base of the pot of a big potted tree sitting over in the corner, use wireless keyboard and mouse,hmm, don't even know if they have the wireless screens, but that would be cool if they did.
Make one look like one of those big bragger "coffee table" books people affect.
"Stealth" computer, you get a raggy old black and white tv, gut it, turn it into a sort of iMac computer, add a real lame broken rabbit ear set up with tinfoil on one of the ears, keep the keyboard and mouse hidden someplace else when you are gone. burlgar busts in while you are gone, they see a tv so cheap even the pawnshop wouldn't give them 1$ for it so they leave it. Full effect is set of vise grips on a stub for a lost knob, scratches, etc. Bonus points if it's an old style screen that was two arcs opposite two straight sides.
"Stealth" #2, monitor gets embedded flush into wall, box is buried in closet or in the wall as well, you hang 2$ walmart mirror over it when not in use.
---next guy---
How is glass any more natural of a material than aluminum?
I made a case out of old sand dollar shells once, but it started to smell....
That, and I once tossed together a 486 router on plywood, with a few finishing nails to hold it down. That was one of the ugliest hacks I've ever done, hardware or software. Worked, though; it still does, although in a "proper" case.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Ah bu66er, where's the right accent???
;)
Anyway, yeah, the above post talking about EMF and using some kind of Faraday cage could be used in your rock-case idea if you get some chicken wire fence material to act as your 'base' and you would slop paper mache over that to make your 'rock'. Sounds, urm, funky, but let me tell you about my own idea:
I always kind hated the idea of having a PC on a desk, so figured that maybe we could incorporate the PC into the desk so that (say) the monitor (a flat panel, of course) could 'flip up' out of the desk and a Wacom-styley graphics tablet would replace the mouse. In fact, the gubbins of the PC could live at the back of the integrated drawers, and the cd rom drive and floppy, etc. could be incorporated in a spare drawer along with a hot-swappable RAID array.
And it would be a gorgeous thing to look at when the PC was 'put away' and the desk reverted back to a writing desk or whatever.
Hmmmmmm
JTC
Wood is nice, but it's no bling bling.
My personal weirdest case was created after having bought an old non standard XT Mother board and a bunch of controllers and stuff from a computer garage sale (junk bins at a local computer store) when I first got into computers. It was an old dresser drawer we had, that I mounted a powersupply, Motherboard and Dual Floppy drives in, and used it in a Tower fashion. Oh yeah and the monitor was entirely open, no case what so ever. (Kinda Dangerous, but then again I was a young teen, what did I care?)
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies
the laptop idea was in a recent wired story:5 ,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,5608
second pic down on the left.
--hey thanks for that link! That's a NICE job with that haliburton case! Kinda sorta what I was thinking of.
Alas, these comments make me sad.
Is there no place for beauty or art that serves no purpose other than being pleasing to the eye.
There certainly is, and I admire it when it appears.
What I was attempting to say, (badly, apparently) is that most case mods are the computer equivalent of tarting up one's trailer home... A largely tastless exercise in naive kitsch (sp?).
Perhaps these boxen might be traded in the future on some now unimaginable ebay like market, but for my present purposes, they're largely the result of certain rather pathetic geeks seeking coolness points from one another. That's clique behavior, and I'll have none of it.
If a particular case mod might actually assist me in my evil efforts to dominate all space and time, then, I MIGHT consider emulating it.
Until then.. I have work to do!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Transparent aluminium. Good EMF, nice look. :)
- undoware.ca
Hmmm... well met.
I can see the Gibsonian beauty of a cold grey box. I don't like the terms form and function because I tend not to think like an engineer (not that it's a bad thing).
But I do understand the beauty inherent to efficiency (e.g. your cold grey box)...
First of all. The extent of my case modding is the large image of tux I traced in pencil on the side that's kept on with duct tape.
I'm not sure I agree that case modders are just seeking coolness points from eachother, but more to the point who cares?
If the proles want to waste their time with "A largely tastless exercise in naive kitsch"(sp!) let them, so they won't distract the rest of us from our evil plans.
But honestly, I think case mods can increase productivity. The main reason I didn't give up on learning Linux was that frigging penguin making me feel guilty when I just wanted to format and intall win2k and now I actually get paid because of knowing Linux.