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Wired Case Mod Roundup
tpurcell writes "With the popularity of case modding, here is Wired's round-up of some more extreme mods. From a V8 engine to a 3 burner coffee pot, make way for some great cases."
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Small, light, inconspicuous, and doesn't have any extraneous crap sticking out of it.
Oh, the iMac G4? Damn, I thought I had a surefire winner there!
The funniest casemod I have seen was a FlexATX sized mobo stuffed inside an old vacuum cleaner. With the small old fan it actually also souded like one.
Now the cd-rom drive REALLY doubles as a coffee cup holder.
It would be great to see some of these cases marketed. I would be more than willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for one of these cases, as they look very cool indeed. Of course I guess that would defeat the point of these guys going to the huge amount of trouble to create these impressive cases, but still, there has to be some money to be made there, if marketed correctly.
Being on my third pot of quadruple espresso, enhanced with SkyRocket Vanilla syrup (from ThinkGeek) and about 5 tsp of REAL sugar, I could just imagine a beouwolf cluster of the PC/Coffee Pot combo... ...too bad it's not an espresso maker, but I am pretty wired... stay tuned for pics!
...to see Gabe and Tycho make a computer inside someone's hollowed out skull. Any PA fans in the house?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
My personal favorite was a single board computer and CDROM stuffed into a model funnycar, you would lift the hood to insert or remove the CD's.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Do the dual P-III CPUs produce enough heat to keep the coffee warm ?
Weird Case Mod Roundup
The shiny aluminum one is my favorite...
SPECS: 350-MHz Intel Pentium II, 256 Mbytes RAM, 4-Gbyte Ultrawide SCSI hard disk
COST: $84 in scrap aluminum, abrasives, screws, and LEDs; $1,800 in computer components
TIME: 100 hours over two years
By the time he finished it, the computer was obsolete. Right on!
Has anyone seen any case mods with really clever design in them, such as subtle quiet simple cooling, or my favourite, hidden wiring?
The objective behind auto hidden wiring projects is to have as little or no wiring, cabling, tubing or piping visible. When you get inside the car or look under the hood you see JUST the engine, and nothing else. It looks empty and oversimplistic. Often needing some awesome innovation in just moving parts about.
I'd like to see more of the same in case design. Seeing an open case with edges smoothed, and a motherboard just sitting there with barely a cable or lead running off haphazardly to a bunch of drivers powered by more power leads just thrown about. Having those cables routed impeccably tidily looks stunning.
I've been working on one for a few months after thinking the idea over. It's slow going, I don't have the time to get it done quickly, but it should look quite stunning when it's finished.
That v8 engine is sure ugly.
Does anyone know whether those small mini-itx or via epia boards are any good for clustering? Can i build a linux cluster out of them? It sounds like that could be fun, especially that they're pretty small, inexpensive, consume very little energy, and are quiet.
does anyone have any links about that?
the frozen case
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I always see case mods, but the fact of the matter is that most cases are tucked away under desks where people can't see them. The monitor, however, is always on top of the desk, front and center.
I'm wondering if anyone is doing monitor mods. Maybe the high voltages scare people off... but then again, the possibility of deadly shock might make the art of monmodding even more extreme...
I personally would love a monitor that looks like a Philco Predicta...
see more of these mods
A mod done inside a Commodore 64/128, please! Extra points for turning a VIC-20 tape deck into a firewire drive. :)
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It gets better. According to the Caffeine Machine website the CPU refrigeration system also cools a compartment big enough for a 6-pack of Mountain Dew. Sah-weet!
And this guy here just might be the new Ron Jeremy.
At mini-itx.com are loads of mods for the VIA mini ITX platform.
home
My personal favourite is www.digitaltables.co.uk - a PC hidden away in a very cool retro gaming cabinet.
I would like to see, one day, somebody build a computer case to look aesthetically pleasing, and not like a pile of melted action figures with chrome fins.
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I think this one is pretty cool. It's built into a PC PSU, which is then installed back into a normal beige case. The case is otherwise empty (apart from a 70's disco ball, as if it wasn't surreal enough already).
This |
this |
and my favorite
$1800 for a 350 MHz Pentium II? Did you perchance ride a short bus to school every day?
"The horrible beige box drove me to it." Uh, I know this may come as a shock to you, but there's a cure for that now. And it is a hell of a lot faster than 350 MHz...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
"People who have no knowledge about the inside of a computer modify the outside."
I love the concepts, but was put off by the non-realistic photographs, I guess I am a cynic.
I have to agree with you. "Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters to the Wired Editors".
"SPECS: 350-MHz Intel Pentium II, 256 Mbytes RAM, 4-Gbyte Ultrawide SCSI hard disk
COST: $84 in scrap aluminum, abrasives, screws, and LEDs; $1,800 in computer components"
Maybe they should quote the prices with deflation in mind, since it looks silly to have a "2.2-GHz AMD Athlon (overclocked to 2.4 GHz), 1 Gbyte RAM, 240-Gbyte hard disk, Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 graphics card" PC priced at the same $1800 the 350mhz PC costs listed on the same page.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Epia boards are so small, you could fit one INSIDE a monitor. Take that Imac!
Besides the V8 and the Keg one, I wouldn't say these are too extreme. This guy has some real case mods. In my opinion, if you aren't building the case from scratch, it's not really extreme.
IANAL, but I play one on
Quintus malus puer est.
I was watching TechTV a few weeks ago and they were showing some of the extreme cases from QuakeCon. My favorite was the one made from a gas can. I wish this wired article had better pictures.
These all make my portable mini-itx box, built into a $5.99 Kmart tool box (painted beige, of course), look kinda lame.
Of course, my oldest son still insists it's the coolest thing I've ever built.
D'oh!
Slightly off topic, but after looking at that Coffee PC I was reminded of some case mods I have seen for my home espresso machine.
? t= 663&start=0i a/pepesilvia. html ...Now, if I can only add a G5 processor to my Silvia...
Having just purchased a Rancilio Silvia espresso machine (considered one of the best home espresso machines), I have found a number of websites with case mods for the machine. Links below show addition of thermostats drilled into the machine:
http://www.bellataiwan.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php
http://my.execpc.com/~n9zes/pepesilv
I'm thinking of building a custom wooden case for my machine, but I'm concerned about airflow and radiation.
Has anyone had any experience with good/bad airflow from a custom case?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
I know, not so weird as a Coffee pot...But still cool.
1970: "Bet I can make a bong out of that!"
2003: "Bet I can make a casemod out of that!"
was my hotel roomate at the AmiWest show at the end of July. Kermit is a fun guy indeed. If you think the Atari case mod was bad enough, you should have seen what he did with an Amiga 1000, or even more interesting what he has planned for the near-future.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
This is another sweet case mod. I especially like his silver '90 Pontiac computer chair. http://www.inmodwetrust.com/articles.php?author=1& page=view&id=7
i've been looking around on the net for a mini-itx case which can hold around 6 ide drives but remain relatively small -- say half the size of a regular desktop machine or smaller if possible. while having a case that glows and stuff is nice, i would rather have something that is small and functional which i can put on the network somewhere.
has anyone here seen a case like this?
-- john
"This textbook provides a basic introduction to the fundamentals of current computer designs. As the title suggests, the text skirts the border between hardware and software. After an overview of the subject and a discussion of performance, the book launches into technical matter such as instruction sets, how they are constrained by the underlying processor hardware, the constraints on their design, and more. An excellent critique of computer arithmetic methods leads to a high-level discussion on processor design. Following is a great introduction to pipelining, nice coverage of memory issues, and solid attention to peripherals. The book concludes with a brief discussion of the additional issues inherent in multiprocessing machines. The extremely lucid description is grounded in real-world examples. Interesting exercises help reinforce the material, and each section contains a write-up of the historical background of each idea. Computer Organization and Design is accessible to the beginner, but also offers plenty of valuable knowledge for experienced engineers. " - Amazon
--Your Friendly Neighborhood Product Placement Troll
This is getting ridiculous. Can't we just say "you should read Wired" instead of posting each individual story?
All Slashdot stories, from the latest issue:
case mod roundup
disney & dali
record companies use P2P research data
companies ranked for privacy in the workplace
Check out Mike LaVella's pinstriped computer done by Dirty Donny.
found a picture and writeup here - http://www.budlife420.com/pg5/v1e7index.html
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Calling some of these things "mods" is like calling NASCAR "stock" car racing.
This guy's modded a monitor, the v2, (i know, uhg flash, but some of the stuff is pretty cool) Also i'd think the Mac CRTs we have at school, came with the G4s, completly transparent would be perfect to put some lights inside. Also i got these and this(also avalible at thinkgeek). Got both in blue and arranged them like in the pictures, they're quite bright and light up my desk pretty well. I had to lengthen the cable on one of the small ones to get it to the other side of the monitor, i attached the control boxes(off-sound reactive-on, and sensitivity) tot he back of my speakers. I got a usb card for something like $5 and wired the ports into the switchbox i made in my empty 3.5" bay. 4 switches with blue LEDs, one controls the case fan, one controls this inside the front of my case. Its one of those radioshack Compaqs with the changable transluscent front panels, it lights up pretty well. The other two switches control the monitor lights. Its a pretty simple but uniqe mod, no window, no cold cathodes. Inside though, round cables for improved airflow and the case fan is a blue led fan and it shines out the vents pretty well. E-mail me if you want pictures.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I've got this old Celeron 733Mhz / MoBo just laying around doing nothing.
I'm going to go mod my XBOX and put a PC inside of it!!1!!one! It'll be awesome!
Or a PSU (or UPS) with basically an O-scope/ multimeter built in, and a USB connector. Near real-time monitoring of all the parameters of your power going in and out.
If your wondering were computer design is headed? this (scroll down to the "buying is better than building" section) is it. A flat-panel with either the computer seperate, or built in. Same for the periphials. For those who need horsepower? There's either rackmount, or other distributed computing resources i.e appliances which can be hidden (now why does everything NEED to be together?). When MRAM technology improves, and does away with the bulkier aspects of computing i.e. hard drives. (maybe in a PCMCIA format. Bulky HD cases need not apply). Then computers will start looking more like works of art, because presently we are still being hobbled by big MB's with right-angle PCI accessories boards, and bulky peripherals.
And how much will the forth cost to replace?
with bullets, making him dead!
However, I'd like to see it go a step further and accomidate something that dispenses either hot or cold caffeinated goodies. Let's see one of these as a case mod centerpiece...
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
if you want something thats actually usable...
Eat pizza and wash up after!