Slashdot Mirror
PyraMac Pyramid G4 Case Mod
Factomatic writes "Kent Salas has unveiled his latest creation, the Pyramac G4 pyramid, which took six months to design and build. Salas says the toughest part was figuring out how to get all of those rectangular parts to fit into a pyramid, but he finally managed to cram in the motherboard from a 466 MHz Graphite Power Mac he bought on eBay for $600, a $400 1.4 GHz overclocked G4 upgrade card, 768 MB RAM, a 100 GB hard drive, an ATI 8500 video card and a CD-RW/DVD optical drive. You may remember Salas as the creator of the BlueIce modified Power Mac G4 tower with a front-mounted 5-inch LCD screen (also here). Wired News has an article and eight images of the Pyramac mod, but Salas has included the full set of 51 images on the building page of Pyramac site. I'm sure it won't be long before pyramid PCs show up at mini-itx.com... add a Webcam to the top and John Poindexter's vision of Total Information Awareness can be a reality in your home or office!"
I always knew Apple was plotting a path of world domination from the very beginning.
Apple/Illuminati/Pyramid/Art Bell
It's all coming together now...
*dawns the tin foil hat*
Here's the story, folks (You heard it here first)
Some crazy time traveller from the not-so-distant future decided to travel back in time to ancient egypt with something similar to this. The Great Pyramids were built in its likeness.. It's all coming together now... In the center of one of the great pyramids, there is a huge shrine dedicated to the savior Steve Jobs, no joke! I know this creates a pretty big temporal paradox, but it's the god's honest truth..
*removes tin foil hat and goes to sleep*
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
As the site seemed to be slow w/ just subscribers...
Mirror of the images hereNot all of them are there yet, but the skeleton is there. Refresh often.
--sig fault--
Sort of like fitting a square peg in a round hole - or a triangular hole, ...er yeah.
DAILY REMINDER: Hillary Clinton doesn't just stand by...she actively works to offshore American High-Tech!
Interesting...
Maybe someone should mod their Mac into a 1' sphere, with covers for all the ports, so when we get tired of playing games on the mac, we can play soccer with the mac!
So that I can oggle at it for 5 mins. Keep up the good work boys.
Case in point: while stories of (distant future) storage technology consistently fill all the typical industry rags, a very real technique is already available and well-known to insiders. DVD-A, one of the newer ideas that has taken off, promises to roughly quadruple conventional hard-medium storage techniques. Although more prone to tolerance faults because the scheme involves replacing the typical single-head approach with four carefully-positioned around the box, the increase in input capability has lead many to believe that consumer demand for DVD-A will rise rapidly as it begins to hit the shelves in larger numbers.
We've all chuckled over the "640K is enough for anybody" quote, but the reverse approach of industry visionaries who predict teraflops of holographic storage or similar pie-in-the-sky schemes is similarly unlikely to lead us to tomorrow's breakthroughs. Don't be fooled into thinking that we've fully exploited the potential of current techniques.
The thought sickens me.
"he finally managed to cram in the motherboard from a 466 MHz Graphite Power Mac he bought on eBay for $600, a $400 1.4 GHz overclocked G4 upgrade card, 768 MB RAM, a 100 GB hard drive, an ATI 8500 video card and a CD-RW/DVD optical drive"
He needn't have bothered. Most mac users don't care what's inside the box anyway.
Hmmm.
Who's got the balls to start hacking up a G5?
I wouldn't want that on the floor, someone trip on it! ouch.
It also keeps your knives sharp, and your fruit from rotting!
(subtle reference to early 80's pyramid mysticism crap...)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
...a pyramid hat to go with that.
After 8 posts. New record?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
...anyone sits on his computer.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
Now, if he could come up with a triangular lcd, he could market this as a new form factor for the imac. That could almost make the imac cool.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
But how am I supposed to put my coffee mug on top of it?
Isn't it extremely dangerous to modify the hard drive? I thought they assembled those things in special dust-free environments that would be impossible to duplicate in the average workroom (if Forensic Files is any indication, anyway.)
Macs and a lame case mod, all in one story! All he needed was something to with Your Rights Online (Did he check to see if anyone has patented Pyramidic PC's yet?) and have an opinion on SCO (Just a one liner somewhere in the article would do, it worked O.K for RMS the other day) and he'd have the Slashdot "Lame shit" full-house!
Better luck next time!
It's quite scary: I could immediatly tell the minute the story went live for everyone... the download rate dropped from >50KBps to below 3...
NEWS BULITIN - Cupertino, CA
Rumors came to an end today. In a press conference, Steve Jobs announced the new Apple user input/output device. The device, called COCK(R), it is a radical shift in human interaction devices. COCK(R)'s enhanced as it also contains feedback support.
Basically COCK(R) looks like a shaft with two balls at the end. A user places the shaft into their mouth and keeps the balls pointed towards the monitor. There are sensors on the balls that track the motion of the COCK(R) in relation to the monitor. The user must look at the area
on the screen to move the mouse. Thrusting of the shaft results in click actions. Additional functions may be provided by mapping licking and coddling the balls.
Since the device is used by one's mouth, bio-metric security can easily be used on OS X. COCK(R) has a built sampling device which can match saliva to specific users on the computer. As such, the user will have access based on their spit.
Feedback exists in several forms. First the shaft may increase in size to better fit the user's
mouth. This usually takes a couple of minutes. There is also the ability to give the user a slight shock given error conditions on the computer. Additionally, in severe error states, a milky substance will be emitted from the COCK(R) to signify an error condition to the user.
Questions at the press release signified mixed opinions on COCK(R). There seems to be resistance to using such a device in the non-Macintosh community. Steve Jobs acknowledged this problem. As such, the current mice will still be available when purchasing Macintoshes.
Currently Apple is marketing towards current users of their platform. "Product testing showed us that long-term Mac users were most willing to use COCK," Jobs stated. Despite resistance, Apple does not feel it will hurt their sales, only increase them. Jobs said
"We at Apple hope that COCK will be as important as our switch to G3 based computers. As such, our marketing staff are fully committed to convincing every one that COCK is the best."
Now that Steve Jobs released COCK(R) onto the world, he hopes sales will increase steadily. One
mac fan stated "COCK is the best IO device in the world. Even the milky error substance tastes
great!" Apple's stock has not significantly dropped or rose. However, Apple's online store estimates that sales of COCK(R) will rise in the next two weeks.
It needs the eyeball at the top of the pyramid. :)
Steve Jobs was quoted as saying "This is the fastest pyramid on the planet".
http://www.kubuntu.org/
but, mac mods are just way cooler than pc mods.
I write code.
So why does this rate a slash dot? Check any PC casemodding site and you can see better. I've even seen a PC inside a remote control car and the car still drives! Seen far nicer clear case mods too. Apple's own cube was cool, this is just fugly.
This might be novel for the average Apple 'tard but its old news for us 1337 PC types.
PS f@rk you!
be vigilant, be pure, behave
My god that thing is Fscking ugly. and it took 6 months to build. What a total waste of effort.
A pyramid is a massive structure built as a tomb or grave to house and protect the body of a pharaoh for the afterlife and as a monument to honor the pharaoh. It has four triangular sides that meet at a point. Pyramids were made from huge blocks of stone. The largest surviving pyramid is the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Cheops, (located near present-day Cairo). It covers an area of thirteen acres and is made up of two and a quarter million blocks, which each weigh five-thousand pounds on average. Before pyramids were constructed with smooth sides, the sides of the earliest pyramids looked like steps. These stepped pyramids might have symbolized a stairway to heaven which during some periods might have been seen as a way for the dead king to climb up into the sky to become a star and blabla no one is reading this because slashdot readers just automatically give long posts +5 informative without actually giving a fuck about the content and woot free karma baby!
The page containing (at least I think it does) is slashdotted?
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
I don't know about anyone else but it doesn't impress me in the least bit. The diamond shaped LED's on the front look terrible with the pyramid shape. Also, all it seems is that it was hard to fit the parts into a pyramid shape... so he kept increasing the size of the pyramid... hmmm, no rocket science here folks.
While it is a noble cause of BYOM (building your own Mac), I really don't think it looks that great.
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
Well that was fast. Bye bye server.....
I was planning on doing this with a PC in the near future, I wonder how closely this resembles my own design.
PS. I'm still waiting for a case shaped like a giant breast with some skin tone colored foam on the outside....
----------
word to your moms... I came to drop bombs...
There was a mod I saw posted where you would replace the top HD cover with plexyglass for that 1337 look. Anyways, you just steam up the bathroom with hot water. That way it collects on whatever dust is in the air at the time and pulls it to the ground. NOTE: Use the harddrive for at least 30 minutes as to warm it up. You want to have as little condensation build up in the inside as possible.
Life is not for the lazy.
Site's down.
Get it here
-- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
Shortyly after iMac came out Intel showed off at some show some cases that were different. One was a red/brick colored pyramid shaped one. It actually was not a full pyramid as the tip was cut off and a platform to put the monitor was used instead. Course this was back when 15" monitors prevailed.
It only takes a second... Not trying to be a karma whore but here it is for everyone else:
HTTP/1.1 Server Too Busy
is the NWO! Hail to the Illuminati!! Seriously, ever notice how the AOL logo is a pyramid with an eye in the center?
Life is not for the lazy.
This looks like it's from "Stargate". 8-)
He's inventive enough to build his own enclosure, and a unique shape. And I bet it runs cool, there's plenty of room for heat to rise away from the MB. But there's just no style. No finishing on the plexi. It could use some paint or brushed metal, or.... something. Anything. Sometimes seeing all of the guts just looks junky. This guy nailed it.
What do you think Apple made iSight for?
I'd be more impressed if someone managed to casemod a computer into a hypercube.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Okay, If you want to store data on the drive, it's a REALLY bad idea. Incredibly bad, in fact. On current HDDs the fly height of the head is incredibly small. Check out an excellent primer on the subject from Storage Review at http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/ heads/opHeight.html. The graphic's at the bottom's the important bit. I work with the guys that used to design these things. Unless you have access to a clean room (and even then it's iffy) this is a Bad Idea.
Michael C. Hollinger
... and is sadly absent from Coast to Coast now that that George guy took over (Art used to let nutters talk shit about anything...even pyramid shaped Macs)... Oh don't forget the Stone Cutters. Turn your back on them and next thing you know; we'll have pyramid shaped structures in Egypt.
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
HTTP/1.1 Server Too Busy ;-)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why did this abomination make it to slashdot?
I think the folks at Wired News need to look up the definition of translucent. Clear as glass seems transparent to me. I like the UV paint, though.
But I never realized that they had Macs too!
sorry... i felt it necessary
is very entertaining...to say the least. Most of the content is utter BS, but it still is entertaining to listen to at night. But ever once in awhile, you get a diamond in the rough (guest wise). For example, there was a four hour interview with Kevin Mitnik. I wish I had taped it for my friends. It was AWSOME!!. To bad Slashdot doesn't post such radio events as important guests are due to be available
Life is not for the lazy.
You should attribute the quote in your .sig. Cypress Hill I believe, yes?
I'm not sure how impressed I'm supposed to be by someone who would fork over $600 for a 466 MHz computer. You could probably get a faster PDA for that kind of cash, and it would be small enough to fit into any case you want.
Okay, I have to say it. Does the idea / quality of this case deserve a slashdot article at all? Maybe its a novel idea, but I would certainly submit that the quality (from the provided pictures), both of the craftsmanship and of the final design, is not fantastic.
/. has come to. Still, I keep checking back, finding the occasional good story, hoping that things are looking up again. Nobody's fault but my own for having too-high expectations...
Still. Let's say that it gets an article if for no other reason than that Wired gave it one (weird, if common, logic).
Now the real question. Why on earth does this get Front Page status? Near as I can tell, its not news, and it certainly doesn't matter. Considering the things that are buried way down these days, this is pretty weird.
Ah, well. I guess that's what
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
this really doesn't look that great to me. not near as nice as the blue ice mod. it's got too many cables, too many different materials - it looks like he sacrificed a lot just for the shape, and then he sacrificed some more to make ti transparent.
in the end, it just looks like a pc mod gone bad, but way more expensive.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Man, that is the ugliest case I think I've ever seen.
I have never understood the desire to have gigantic plexiglass boxes with tons of neon sitting next to my desk.
My other computer is your Windows box
the CPU. Motorolas never get as hot as an Athlon Thunderbird.
Yet another useless case mod, and yet another design example of aesthetic taking overwhelming precedence over practicality. This guy should work for Umbra. Whoopity doo.
I think the pumpkin case mod was more interesting and useful than this one.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
The one extremely important question that never gets asked of these UV-and-plexiglass addicted dorks is:
Do chicks dig it??
Say what you want about rice boys in their Civics. At least they get laid one in a while!
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
Quoting : "It's crap"
yes this is a really bad idea, that a LOT of people manage to pull off succesfully.
personally i know two people that have put windows in their hd cases with NO problems.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
The case itself is serious flamebait, but onto the constructive criticism, I understand it took this guys a lot of time to build this thing but next time he should try to make something that's possibly just a little bit elegant?
Poindextor wil not be the one watching.
Instead it will be some sort of nasty G'Hould. Maybe Anubis
In a recent reponse from Steve Jobs, he was quoted as saying "It is the fastest desktop computer in the world" When asked about the case and his feelings on it, he said "Lets just sue them, sounds like the Apple way of doing things" and when asked why, he simply responded, "I have a really tiny willy, you want to see?"
BTW, the only reason wired would focus on such a case mod is because it is a G4, while I like the publication, it goes a little overboard when it comes to Apple cheerleading.
I call this a quick way to void about a dozen warantees.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
As goes the rest of the country it's only a matter of time before Apple starts suing people who do this. Profiting from the work of others? Material breach of intellectual property laws? Stealing the function/design?
Oh yeah pretty soon even looking at your own computer will be a licenced activity granted you on a subscription basis. You will be told what to do with your computer, when how and where.
23...17! i!!uminati 0wnZ0rz youz!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
the blue ice mod was cool, pyramac is truely a waste of deskspace, material, and time. i'd like to see more mods which have a higher level of thought and execution, such as this, the cast aluminum case.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
It takes the engineers forever to come up with a proper farraday cages to comply with FCC regs on emag emissions; yeah, these designs just throw FCC regs out the window....
This is an atrocity. Since there is an exposition on its construction, it doesn't even have what the original pyramids had, namely the "how on earth could they have built this?" mystique. All this has is the "how on earth could they have built this awful thing?" mystique.
It is so unattractive -- did you see it when the lights were on? Are neon blue lights to case mods what red lights are to prostitutes?
I pray there are security measures in this pyramid to protect it from graverobbers -- what with all the jewel...cases.
Doesn't this remind you of the infinite energy producer/levitation device that the kid built in Chocky's Childen (or was it chocky's challenge?), a BBC series based on John Whyndham's Chocky?
I remember that Chocky was into pyramids too.
It's not a REEEALLY bad idea, you just have to be damn carefull when it comes to making the mod. If you do it in a clean room you shouldn't have too many problems. It also helps if the humidity is quite high too, makes the air less full of dust, pollen etc'.
Yes! Slashdot now has a room on AOL Instant Messenger.
Join chat room "Slashdot" or use this AIM hyperlink: Click Here .
One! One PC Modification site! Ha Ha Ha!
Two! Two PC Modification Sites! Ha Ha Ha!
Three! Three PC Modification Sites! Ha Ha Ha!
Four! Four PC Modification Sites! Ha Ha Ha!
With apologies to Jim Henson Productions...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Way f'd up server. He is flooded, and this isn't even a really active story. Hehe. Oh well...love those little servers, don't we /.?
I got nothin'.
Or maybe not make it plexiglass. Anyways, 2.5 out of 4 stars.
I'm no casemodder, but from an outsider's point of view, I just think I've seen neater things that haven't gotten as much attention from the likes of Wired. Sifting through old bookmarks, here are a few that I personally found to make me all geek-sweaty-tingly-sexy:
Project Frozen, which appeared on /. a few years ago.
The Invisible Case, a very classy custom acrylic case, constructed before clear cases were readily available.
Anemone... this one seems to be a /. favorite.
Frankly, it looks just like a cardboard box stuffed with junk that you've been keeping in your garage for 2 years. Except this one is glowing blue, as if the moss in the box mutated or something. My folks would have a heart-attack if they went into my room when it's dark and ran into the humming-levitating-glowing pyramac. "OHMYFUCKINGOD! *gasp* *gasp* ..silent retreat.. Johnny! I TOLD you to take that junk out months ago! Now it's became infested with alien germs, oh what are we ever gonna do!"
::062203 BUILDING PYRAMAC
::062603 THE PAIN!!!
Building page is up with a ton-o-pics, 51 exactly, you have been warned.
I'll suggest the new addition for him
Were being slashdotted, the Pyramac has begun to melt. WHY WERE WE NOT WARNED?!
moo.
Pay especial attention to the bold faced section....
www.eFax.com are spammers
First, why is it that all these case modders think a clear case that lets you see the wires and fans and garbage inside looks cool? This is the equivalent of one of those invisible human models where you can see the inner organs. NOT COOL. Ugly, and exposing things that were never designed to be looked at. Second, what is so great about sticking an existing computer in a new shape that has no redeeming qualities about it? A pyramid? Who cares? How does a pyramid make you work faster, better, etc? How does the form improve the function? It doesn't. It's just some random shape ... according to this logic, if you think a pyramid is cool, then stick a computer in a beer keg, stuffed hello kitty toy, plant pot, mail box, bread maker etc. it will be equally as "cool". In other words, who cares? Ultimately how much skill does it take to pick some random item and stick a computer in it? None!
How DARE you criticize! You- you- you LOWbrows! IT'S ART! LOVE IT! NOW! Fund it with your tax dollars! GRRRR! Hisss!
--- Ban humanity.
It looks pretty bad to me. How many of you would be proud to put that on your desk. It's just a cry for attention Too bad case modding today has become a competition for the most outrageous cases rather than great simple design. I wish the community lean towards innovative cases designs that better the computing expirence and have simple but aesthetic appearances.
Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise
Seems like a long time to make that computer. But, the fact a Mac user is smart enough to mod his own computer is impressive.
is a nice sphere mod. That way you can get an Apple is cube, pyramid, and sphere shapes. It would be educational for the kiddies.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
would make a good band name.
isn't the point of a "case mod" to make the new case look better than the original case? I wouldn't be caught dead with such a fugly tetrahedron on my desk, glowing or not!
I'm waiting, sir.
For $100,000... here is your first command prompt. Go!
Jeez, with Her Liary on an ad in the upper left (of course) corner I could hardly stand to look at the butt ugly pyre.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
And I am sure everyone around him knows exactly when he turns the thing off or on. I remember reading about a guy that didn't use a shielded cable years ago when he connected a parallel printer. His neighbor had her TV replaced twice with strange interference, and he just happened to find out about it. Uh oh....
Ok it glows blue etc., but AFAIK the pyramid shape is the absolutely worst possible shape to build a computer, if preservation of any of your desktop space is a requirement. It is the maximum desktop footprint you can create (and still not be able to stack other things on it.)Maybe he intends to place it on top of a Greek column or plant stand...
I think I might try doing a mini-itx hack on something like a Bang and Olufsen Beomaster 2400 . Now that could be cool... (and I could stack stuff on it.)
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Bullshit. Windows gives me problems every #@%!ing day!
Must be an asshat at the crapfest, eh Zork? Is it fame bait when you address it to a single person instead of a whole group?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If your modded drive does not move, what do you want to look at through the window?
I can imagine gluing a little ho scale figure to the moving drive arm. It would be very funny to see a crawling 1/80 scale Africa corpsman in there. You could tell people that he reads your data and keeps the pixi dust working. Of course, I would not put any of my priceless irreplacable works of true genious on that drive. No, that kind of thing I post to Slashdot.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is a fun idea, but with the 4 'thermal zones' on the G5 wouldn't it take 4 light sources (and 4 fog generators :) ) to illuminate the entire inside?
He may have spent six months, but his dimensions are not correct for a true pyramid. His enclosure is too high and clearly out of proportion. He made the same basic mistake as most people when building DIY pyramids...all edges are not the same length.
I'm sorry but this mod looks like, well, a pile of components with a plastic pyramid on top of them. Maybe if he had covered the pyramid with something more interesting, like dirty laundry or a stack of Twinkies or SPAM cans...
...something that would stand on the pointy end? The flat side (on the top) could open up to reveal I/O cards, or drives or whatever. You'd have some room below to put stuff around it. Maybe be able to spin it around to get to the ports on the back.
Or use the top as a big heat sink (hot air rises)?
That could be kinda cool.
Travis