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Stunning, Classic Computer Console, from 1958?
Predicta Lover writes "It's widely believed that the late-50s Predicta series was the swansong for Philco. After its introduction, RCA's president David Sarnoff is quoted as having said "Philco has reinvented the industry and made TV more exciting again." Somehow, I can't imagine Bill reacting that way to an Apple product launch, at least not publicly. Years later, Philco's phenomenally-designed but questionably-engineered and over-priced TV sets are an icon of modern television design, and are even made in a stunning reproduction form. Maybe Philco would still be in business if they'd thought to shoehorn a contemporary computer into the box and put a high-resolution LCD up top (ahh, I guess that would've been tough...oh, the cruelties of history). At any rate, the researchers and designers at Onomy Labs did just that, 45 years later, and the result is an absolutely lust-worthy piece of computing hardware. Built to eventually house an experimental computer being produced by Sun Labs, the supercharged piece made its debut at their recent Open House held at the Computer History Museum.The Pedestal model that's used here was originally penned by Philco's Catherine Winkler, and is variously described as being inspired by the ideal female form and looking like a gas pump (I am not even going to touch that one). The perpetrators of this project have been mildly vilified by classic TV collectors (fearing imitators) and highly praised by most everyone else...some are calling it the 'best casemod ever'. I don't know about that, but it's definitely a beautiful object."
i saw one of these at a garage sale some months ago and my first thought was "what an amazing casemod this would be!".
admittedly, it doesnt look like much in these pictures, but in real life the thing would look totally wicked as your digital entertainment hub.
The television in my bedroom is branded Philco, yet it couldn't have been purchased more than seven or eight years ago. Yet they went out of business in the middle of last century? What's goin' on here?
Nothing special. Technically, RCA went completely out of business (in CE) in 1986. RCA brand is simply a stamp of Thomson Consumer Electronics (which likes to use the name GE Consumer Electronics mark depending on the current customer sentiment and the whim of GE corporate).
Same goes for Magnavox which has really been Phillips for years.
Remove trailing slash from URL to make it work:
http://www.ahleman.com/ElectriClerk.html
When is a case mod practical, aside from this one.
I remember finding a few of those old Philco's on the curb come trash day and they were nasty beasts. We dragged one home look through it and the shielding wasn't very good, if one of these things, and several were not very stable, fell over you could have a fire in short order. These things undoubtably predated consumer product saftety testing and who knows what kind of radiation they leaked. It didn't become much of an issue until the late 60's
For a case mod, I would only consider one of thse with a 17" or larger LCD display, but it would probably look fairly dorky and the beatuy of LCD displays is they're small enough that you can place them where you need, rather than being fixed to the computer, like laptops.
Casemodding isn't my cuppa, though some do end up looking kinda cool.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Philco is an undead company, driven out of business long ago and its name owned by one of the Asian contract manufactures. The same is true of the Sylvania, KLH, and Koss "brand names" which I have at home. When I bought the Koss stereo it was shortly after this happened. I should have realized that something was up when the price was so low. When I took it home and noticed there was no ground strip on the receiver I was very disappointed. I was young and naive back then. But now-a-days much of the once high-end equipment is made by the contract manufactures and it is all the same steaming pile anyways.