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ElectriClerk Computer Of The Future
ElDuderino44137 points out this "Fully functional retrofitted prop computer." Chocolate / peanut butter, Mac SE / Underwood. This is no spray-paint job.
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They must have been running the server from that SE.
- Sherman
The site is already Slashdotted (with 1 comment!) but it's very simple to describe. He turned a 1988 Macintosh into one of the computers from Gilliam's movie "Brazil." Truly impressive piece of work.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Interface. It would save so much on the laser printer and give me the best keyboard ever made.
Purchase the Criterion edition if you can. Yes it may be 50 dollars, but there is a lot of great content on it.
0 00152
Actually deep discount DVD has it for 43 dollars.. Free shipping too!
http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemID=HVD
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
The site is already slashdotted but here is the text (not too useful without the photos though) Built for a game of Cthulhu Lives! that has yet to be played, this piece was inspired by the retro-futuristic machines in the movie Brazil by Terry Gilliam. It was one of the most difficult and time-consuming pieces I've ever attempted. Despite the ridiculous amount of abuse I subjected it to, and despite the fact that all its components are now exposed to the air, the 1988 Macintosh SE which forms the heart of this piece still works just fine. Click on the photo at left to see an enlarged view.
If you had an ink ribbon, you could save your progress.
... still looks hotter than the latest Dell box I've seen ... and who ever said Apple Computers just look sexy from the outside ...
hey ... if you zoom up in on the monitor of that picture, I think I can make out the AmigaOS 4 AmiDock running on the bottom of there ...
Last two posts near insta-slashed. Perhaps it's time to build a local archival system into the article links?
Timothy is killing websites right and left today!
Here's the Arhive.org cache of the website from June 2003.
/ /w ww.ahleman.com/ElectriClerk.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030602070516/http:
Google's Cache
http://eth0.is-a-geek.org/
http://home.earthlink.net/~ahleman/ElectriClerkLit e/ElectriClerk.html
Seems to work
There seems to be a mirror (with pictures that load) here.
I've seen this already in a magazine (MacAddict?) but it's nice to see it's made its way into Slashdot.
Now just to trick out a G4 cube like this...
I've never seen Terry Gilliam's Brazil, so I can't compare this with the machine he says its based on, but it is very reminiscent of the computer used by the private detective in the Detective Story short film in The Animatrix. Very retro-cool. Though why build it with old circa 1980s Mac parts instead of present tech escapes me.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
why do i think that coding on that beast would be a little problematic - I'd be afraid of killing the keyboard setup. in all, a deeply cool object. now i need to make one
This neat little prop was done in 2002, as the wayback machine will tell you. Seems /. is loosing its edge as far as up to date news go :-)
On a redeeming note, I am sure I saw this on /. before...
He tricked out the machine to use the original typewriter keyboard, hacked the carriage return lever to act as the return key, cleverly grafted a trackball onto the side of the typewriter chassis to replace the mouse. The grafted on trackball looks just like part of the chassis.
There are exposed vacuum tubes and the chassis of the Mac, as well as the CRT are alao exposed.
There is a swingaway Fresnel lens in front of the mac CRT.
Recall the computer Theora used in the old Max Headroom TV series? That's a lot what the ElectriClerk looks like.
It is one VERY sexy/Retro casemod!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Given the heat problems of that classic-style Macintosh case, i'm sure the components are actually cooler now than they were inside that thing.
The SE had a fan at least, the Mac Plus didn't have one, which spawned a significant aftermarket in attachable fan modules that would slide into the handle vent (and had an AC cord of their own).
That was all a Steve Jobs snafu - he wanted the Macs to be silent so they were. They were so silent they overheated. After his departure from Apple the fan was added in.
Brings the problems with that lucite cube into better perspective, when you remember back to that.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The original had a pneumatic tube attachment.
Sad to see that there are still people who so blantently bash homosexuals.
Can't find the article right now, but this is an old project, and was linked to a loooong time ago. I still have the bookmark to the guy's website.
Vote for global prefs bug
Might I suggest the editors search Slashdot before posting articles to avoid repetition?
Check out the Underwood No. 5 PC where yet another fellow with too active an imagination has converted a typewriter to a computer. Quite clever, actually.
I could follow the link. But the whole idea is that you have some text to help you decide whether or not to follow the link. In some cases the text can help you interpret what you're looking at when you do follow the link. In this case, when I followed the link, I still had no idea what I was looking at.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
If he would have used and SE30 he could have run Open/NetBSD or linux on it as well as MacOS up to 7.5. As well as added 128 megs of RAM.
Yeah, that mod is great...the only thing that it needs is a talking anus. Shades of the David Cronenburg movie Naked Lunch. Exterminate all rational thought.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
a classic
The truth doesn't care what I think.
I've had a Plus for about 14 years as well as a 128K and a 512Ke for the past 8. All run fine, the Plus even ran 24/7 for three years as my X10 home automation controller. The top vent gets warm, as does the vent on my oldschool G3 CRT iMac... but I've never had heat-related crashes. Very few crashes at all, actually.
OT: On the other hand, my well-vented PowerMac 8100 was a crashy nightmare, but that was due to the horrid versions 7.5.x and 8.x of the OS.
Further OT: I never tried 9.x. I did the NT, 2K, and XP thing. Came back to Apple/Mac/NeXT with a PowerBook G4 and OS X 10.3 Panther... and I couldn't be happier!
I think this is a reference to 'Brazil'.
I swear that I have seen this posted to Slashdot before. Admittedly a slightly longer timescale than most dupes.
Unfortunately, this casemod is not going to help the case of this book.
Tweet, tweet.
When I first read the "prop" part, I imagined those prop computers you see in furniture stores. You know, those plastic computer shells that resemble a generic computer (though lately Ikea seems to be using actual gutted computer cases).
In any case, I thought it would be hilarious to take something that was designed to look like a computer but not be one and make it into a computer. Or a toaster. Or anything functional.
That was all a Steve Jobs snafu - he wanted the Macs to be silent so they were. They were so silent they overheated. After his departure from Apple the fan was added in.
The Mac Plus came out in 1986 and was still fanless. Steve Jobs had already left by this time.
The first fanned Macs - the Macintosh SE and Macintosh II - came out in 1987, a long time after he'd left. They were also the first Macs to include internal hard drives, a much more likely reason for the fan to be included.
The G4 Cube does not have overheating problems, that was a myth which went with its "cracks" (in reality, scratches in the mould). Its efficient chimney design transfers heat very effectively from the unit. I still use mine to drive a "photo wall" that is on 8+ hours a day without issue.
The Cube was designed with a place for a fan, It was there if it was needed, should it survive in the market long enough for hotter 1+ GHz PowerPC chips to require one. But at 450/500 MHz it simply didn't.
The Cube flopped, not because of overheating, but because it presented confused expectations of how a computer should look, and because of poor access to its ports and limited expandability. It was still a brilliant design.
The largest surge of traffic is going to occur when the site first becomes available to non-subscribers. In other words, if the site lives past the first 2-3 comments, it'll probably stay up.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
If some enterprising PC user wants to give something like this a go, maybe they can start with this antique vintage underwood noiseless portable typewriter of their own. Noiseless! Even better, it's advertised as "ALL KEY DO WORK AND NO STICKING."
If anyone hasn't seen Brazil, you should rush out and rent a copy tonight. Definitely one of the most brilliant movies ever made.
While working as an Apple repairer, I once had a Mac SE in for repairs that had a serious heat issue - it would work fine for about 10-15 minutes then cut out. When we opened it up we found about 1.5 inches of fine red sediment had collected in the bottom of the unit, encasing the logic board and causing it to overheat.
When I checked the paperwork which had come with the machine, it became clear that the computer had come from a cattle breeding station in the country.
I was the first computer I had ever seen that was literally drowning in bull dust. I stripped the machine down, cleaned it thoroughly inside and out, and it worked a treat.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I'd like to see a working Enigma machine made in a similar vein. Now *that* would be cool.
I have three SE models in my basement. One of them is an SE/30 which I was going to install OpenBSD on as soon as I upgraded the hard drive to something bigger than 80M. Now I have a use for them besides that Fish Tank case mod. ;)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
despite the fact that all its components are now exposed to the air, the 1988 Macintosh SE which forms the heart of this piece still works just fine.
uh, yeah, i'm sure glad my computer is in a vacuum chamber, that darn air that's everywhere could get inside the components...
I've been looking for this for ages, ever since I saw it in the pages of Macaddict.
Talk about design. Man. Really takes you back to a time when art and science were one in the same.
Pity we can't mass produce these things, but then, if we did, no one would buy them, because they don't look "professional."
Hey, that almost looks functional for a Mac. Maybe they are starting to catch on that good looks don't always mean a good 'puter.
Computers are useless. They can only give answers. --Pablo Picasso