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Orac^3 -- Not Your Everyday Casemod
jmke writes "G-nome has finished his amazing Orac case mod, which looks absolutely stunning." An excerpt from the site: "Ever since I saw the first series of Blakes 7 I have wanted my own Orac. For those that don't know, Blakes 7 was a late 70s/early 80s British Science Fiction series and Orac was this intellectually snobbish, difficult and incredibly brilliant computer, hand built by an eccentric scientist. The special effects were straight out of 60's Star Trek and a lot of the props were converted from (or later converted to) props from other classic BBC series such as Doctor Who and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (where the Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain looks like it was made by the same bloke!)."
Go look!!!!
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
That thing doesn't look like it has ANY RF shielding. Bet the FCC and the people who live around him love it. :->
I could.
I am happy someone is doing more than just adding neon or chrome to an otherwise-boring beige box. Many of you may think this is wierd, but I am happy to see people express themselves inside or outside of the PC.
OK, this is a killer mod. But it just makes me wonder why so many people who do a total mod make it look just like a regualar tower PC case? With all that freedom... why is this still just a rectangular box?
I'll first congratulate whoever built this maagnificent piece of art. Very cool. You have way too much free time :) (He's also an excellent photographer. Not something you see very often in case modders :) )
But it's just not functional!!!!
All that metal tubing for the cables and stuff and the water cooling tubing must make it a nightmare to work in. Do all those tubes even go anywhere?? It seems awfuly crowded to work in there
How would you change a hard drive?
I'm also not a huge fan of watercooling. If there is a leak, two things happen.
1) Your computer gets wet
2) The chernobyl effect. Assuming it's survived this long, the coolant's now gone, and the computer keeps getting hotter. Uh oh.
That being said, it's still beautifully crafted with incredible attention paid to detail.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The site is chugging along slowly, but here's a mirror of the two shots on the front page so people can get the gist of the mod.
Front
Back
Apple should hire this guy. In the world of cheesy 'look-through-the-window-at-my-neon-tubes' case-modding, this fellow has certainly showed us all something truly unique.
-- n
Thanks to my /. subscription, i was able to secure some images!
orac3 images
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
Been a while, but IIRC...
Orac was special because it had access to subspace, and could communicate with any computer anywhere.
Orac met his demise when the occupants of subspace got annoyed at the signals he was transmitting though their realm. (Sort of reminds me of a STTNG episode too... perhaps I'm confused).
Last I heard, the actor that played the character "Avon", had bought the rights to the series, and was working on continuing it.
Any torrents of the series?
Back on topic: why would anone want to see the dust in their computer? Or end up a slave to constantly cleaning it, and carefully?
I'm also not a huge fan of watercooling. If there is a leak, two things happen.
1) Your computer gets wet
2) The chernobyl effect. Assuming it's survived this long, the coolant's now gone, and the computer keeps getting hotter. Uh oh.
I did a lot of experimenting with watercooling for about two years, short answer is it isn't going to leak unless you do something stupid or are very unlucky. If you have a GFCI on the outlet, you don't actually have too much to worry about. Just use proper clamps, or even zip ties will work ok.
So basically, I'd say this one is not worth worrying about. There have been very few meltdowns for all of the water cooling kits sold, and it HAS come a long way. Resevoirs aren't really needed with some of the new and adapted pumps that are out there. Fish tank 120V submersibles are obsoleted for 12V pumps. Good purpose built radiators are out there. Add silicone tubes and good hose clamps, and you shouldn't see a leak. Think of all the high pressure systems in your average car - rarely do those fail if maintained in far worse conditions.
..don't panic
Really,
it's a very nice case mod, but has no link to Blakes7 other than the name.
Like millions of others, I'm always mucking around in my PC. For the past 15 years, all of the various incarnations of my main desktop have spent most of their time with the cover off. And I've yet to have a single cell phone problem, cordless phone problem, pager problem, AM radio problem, FM radio problem, shortwave radio problem, CB radio problem, 802.11b, g or a problem, TV reception problem, or flux capacitor problem. Best of all, chicks dig it! And who can blame them? I'm clearly the kind of guy who likes to live life on the edge.
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
http://robotiq.com/index.asp?category=orac
Believe it or not I became interested in computing from that TV show and that same orac computer.
... and luck would have it they were both computer engineers. So they told me a all about how a computer is an intelligent machine, and from then on i decided that i would create computers like ORAC and was pretty much obssessed with them. Shortly thereafter i got my parents to buy my a BASIC book and was deeply mired in goto statements.
No, I am not British. I am actually from one of the soviet block countries and believe it or not our national TV bought and broadcast that show. I can see now why they prefer it to Star Trek. I don't remember the storylines exactly, but Blake's 7 had a revolutionary overall story line -- it was a bit like Star Wars with a small revolutionary group fighting an evil empire. Also I am willing to bet Blake's was much much cheaper than startrek.
Well I was a little kid and I asked my parents what a computer was
Anyways, thank you Blake's 7!!! You made me a nerd!
P.S. Am I glad my country did not buy Startrek instead! I would be a startrek nerd on top everything else!
This idiot should take his next pay packet and sponsor a child in Africa or something.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying:
1) Study hard.
2) Work hard.
3) Don't Profit!
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
- The article submitters don't RTFA.
- The editors don't RTFA.
- The posters don't RTFA.
- The moderators don't RTFA.
As far as I can tell, nobody visits these web sites. So what exactly is the slashdot effect?How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Note, both times it took over a year for the system to fail. It is my belief that on a long enough time line, all water cooling systems will fail. How long have you been using yours for?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
put one drop of bleach in there (on a side note, if you ever have to sanitize water, one drop of bleach per gallon should kill most harmful bacteria and other living organisms)
This mod reminds me a lot of my PC mod. I'm not trying to tute my own wistle here, just offer some insight into the wonderful things one can do with something as simple as silver loom and offer some advice
My friends and I got into the case mod thing a while back. I ended up getting a nice case with a window, threw in a few blue cold cathodes, and watched in glee as all of my friends and I had the same exact thing albeit different colored LEDs and Neons. Wippdie-do. I needed something to make mine look a little different than my friends so aside from doing the invisible CD drive mod (case simplicity is bliss), I loomed all of my power and IDE cords with chrome loom you can pick up from automotive shops like Advance or Auto Zone.
I also found the chrome loom at a few online retailers but the price was ridicilious. I think I ended up getting a few feet of the stuff from a local auto shop from the StreetGlow brand. This stuff can really make what used to be a boring case something plesant on the eyes. It really accents the colored LEDs or Neons in your case.
The tricky part is figuring out how much to cut for each strip of wite. I suggest laying out all of your drives in your case and connecting the molexes. Make sure to leave an extra molex near the bottom for future upgrade as I'm sure most new graphics cards will require them. Cut the loom to size of the wire with a litte bit extra which can nicely cover that ugly molex. I went with 1/4" loom which worked perfectly for that huge motherboard connector, and works great with room to spare on the rounded IDE cables. If you want to give it something a little extra get some 1/8" also and use it for the smaller cables. I was going to cover my water cooling tubes with the stuff but that was a bit over kill. Still, the case looks more like something out of a badass anime while all of my friends cases look just about the same.
You can also try colored chrome loom instead of traditional silver but since I've got blue lights I wanted as much reflection as possible.
Has anyone else had experience with this, what problems did you run across? Can you share some advice?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Indeed. And why is it called Orac when it doesn't actually look anything like Orac?
It isn't a Dr. Who homage. The problem is that he only used a half-size tower case. If he had gone with a full-tower, he would not have had to leave off the "le" on the end. At least he used something approximating the corporate font on the resevoir so you still kind of get an impression of what he was aiming for.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Do not, however, believe the idiots who tell you this is a fine way to make river water potable when camping.
It had rained during the night, so we were having trouble getting the campfire started to boil a pot of water. My buddy, who was an Army Ranger for chrissakes, says, "No problem!" He pulls out this tiny bottle with an eyedropper, and plops one drop of bleach into the pot. No more buggies. Nice and clean. Tasted nasty, but it was safe.
Holy christ. Somebody needed to tell that to our digestive systems. About fifteen minutes later, somebody down there pulled the Big Red Switch and WHOOOM. More came out than ever went in, and it emerged with a force sufficient to lift me about a foot right up into the air. I expected to look down and see a pile of clean, white bones lying there. A couple of ribs, my left ulna, two vertibrae, and, right in the middle, my pelvis.
I was expelling so fast my butt actually got hot from the friction.
I've had dissentary and I've drunk bleach-water. I'll take the amoebas any day.
I write in my journal
Whatever, buddy. Seriously. Come to think of it, I'd expect to hear a mac fanboy say that :)
Chances are you didn't use enough bleach. The water in your tap, has been dosed with chlorine at much higher concentrations than what you would have drunk. Haven't you ever been swimming in a pool? Didn't you swallow any? That didn't give you the runs did it? I agree with the other poster who said you should have used more bleach and left it for an hour or two. I think the water purifying tablets you can buy say much the same thing in the instructions.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Excuse me, but BULLSHIT
I design radio test equipment for a living, and you DAMN SURE do keep the RF from a device from radiating by putting a shield around it - you just TRY to get a reciever working if don't have the local oscillators in cans!
The problem with most computer cases nowadays is they are CHEEP (spelling deliberate) and poorly made. Most panel to panel connections are simply 2 pieces of aluminum resting against each other (in other words, two pieces of aluminum seperated by a sapphire insulator, as aluminum quickly develops an oxide coating) - no beryllium-copper fingerstock, no compression gaskets, no star washers, nothing. When you have a chunk of metal not bonded to the chassis, you have a passive radiator, not a shield.
If you wish to evaluate a case for RF shielding, put a light inside it, turn out the room lights, and look for leaks. Any gap longer than about 20 centimeters will act as a slot antenna for 1.5GHz(ish). Most modern cases leak like sieves.
If you ever have the chance, look at an old Atari 800 (NOT 800XL) - those things were TANKS and didn't leak any RF to speak of - potmetal case around all active components, proper gaskets - truely a joy to behold. Of course that adds cost to the system, and in this day that won't fly.
I constantly have birdies on my 2 meter rig from my computer - I have to unload the Firewire drivers any time I am not using them or I get a signal that is half-full scale 100 meters from my house. I'm seriously thinking of making a full Faraday cage for all my computer gear (save user interface elements) just to avoid the problems.
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