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Hardware

Iris Indigo Case Mod 252

Posted by timothy from the blueness dept.
James Palmer writes: "I have always been enamored with SGI's Iris Indigo. Recently I resurrected an old Iris Indigo by retrofitting it with an ATX motherboard and powersupply." Lots of gruntwork here for a very impressive result.
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Iris Indigo Case Mod More

Iris Indigo Case Mod

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  • More like butchered.
  • It begs the question...

    WHY?

    I must be getting old...

    Jason

    • Quoteth the poster:

      > WHY?

      Because it's there...

    • Of course, this can be extended to the question "why do anything?" Why not?

      What are we here for? Some might say it's to breed, others to invent, others to expand our "empire." I'd argue that we're here simply to be and to do. Who cares what we do in the long run? Especially if it doesn't hurt anyone else (and don't give me any crap about the EMF this thing gives off, that'll get modded down for being redundant just as quick as this will be for being off topic).

      Just let the guy have his fun -- there are much worse ways that he could spend his time/money/expertise (take your pick[s]).

  • Case mods...off topic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TeldakSS ( 265917 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @06:56PM (#3087420) Homepage
    Maybe you should make Case Mods a seperate category of news. I mean, lately there have been about 1 a day. that should be enough, considering some categories come up RARELY (Amiga, MacOS, etc).
    Just a suggestion.
    -teldak
    • good thought...I mean how many case mod stories have been posted today alone? two or three? turbo linux and many other categories havent had a post in like a year!

    • Re:Case mods...off topic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @07:01PM (#3087457)
      a quick search for 'Case Mods' down at the bottom of the screen turns up dozens of subjects that have more to do with court cases than PC cases.

      That said, 99% of the casemods, radical overclockings, unique PC hacks I read come from slashdot. Why not make a 'Hardware Hacks' (Suggestion: Hacksaw Icon) area that deals with things like this and then keep the Hardware area pure for people who are interested in reading about new kinds of hardware, or the recent 'Intel likes DDR Ram' stories we've been seeing.
      • That's a great suggestion. I personally could care less about what color someone decided to paint his case today, but I realize to a certain audience this sort of hacking is fascinating. Put it in its own category, and everyone is happy.

  • Following Tough Acts (Score:4, Funny)

    by ksw2 ( 520093 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [retaeyebo]> on Thursday February 28, 2002 @06:59PM (#3087439) Homepage
    Talk about following "tough acts"... that Frozen case earlier today makes this one look like my ass.

  • Whats next... Lego? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Suicyco ( 88284 )

    Thats what I want to see. All these case mods going around, why hasn't anybody made a lego pc case yet? Seems a natural fit. That would be really cool, if somebody else did it ;-)
  • I really feel that these case mod stories should be restricted to the extremely new or innovative. There are web sites for this type of thing.

    I mean, if someone turned an old Volkswagon Beetle into a modded case, I'd be impressed. Beyond that, it's all just pretty bells and whistles to me.
  • This is a very poor hack job compared to other recent case mods.

  • uh, why? (Score:1, Troll)

    by 5arah ( 308173 )
    okay, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but WHY IS EVERYONE SHOWING OFF THEIR MODS?? The mod where the guy built his own case with the laser cut logos, etc. was at least semi-innovative/creative. All this guy did was core out an old computer and stick new crap in it. C'mon, I want NEWS people, not Show-n-Tell.

    please feel the need to give me a Troll rating.

    • Re:uh, why? (Score:1, Redundant)

      by Bagheera ( 71311 )
      Honestly, I don't think it deserves a "Troll" rating. While case mods may be cool, we've seen two "Cool case mod" articles in as many days. How are case mods "News for nerds" or "Stuff that matters?"

      It's not that slow a news day!

    • Yohave a point there - maybe instead of a "case mods" topic, there should be a "show 'n' tell" topic :-)

      Unfortunately, technology news has got an awful lot of show'n'tell type stuff going on and that might eventually become an overcrowded topic itself...
      "Thursday Intel stated 'hey look, we've just built a 3GHz processor - come and see for yourself at www.intel.com'."
  • You can get similarly shaped server cases from most hi end PC parts manufacturers, in a variety of colors.

    What I'd really like to see is a case mod with an O2 [sgi.com] case. There's lot of low end, sub 200Mhz ones that are salvageable from dotcom auctions.
  • Not nearly as sexy as the custom-build case that was on here yesterday.

    This is more in the realm of "too much time on my hands" -- it reminds me of that time in college when we slapped together a machine using an empty case from Leinenkugals (we got to drink the beer, too, which was a hefty side benefit).

  • One question... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cethiesus ( 164785 ) <cethiesus@yAUDENahoo.com minus poet> on Thursday February 28, 2002 @07:08PM (#3087505) Homepage Journal
    Where can I get a wife that will go dumpster-diving for computer hardware with me?

    Do tell.
  • Remember the guy who burnt [simson.net] the case? What I want is an computer with a burning case ;-)...

    Would just putting an Athlon in without a heat-sink work? ;-)
  • I couldn't help but notice that he has only USB devices, which includes his CD-ROM. My second CD drive is a USB, and I find that it is way too slow to use frequently. I'm amazed that he can stand it, if he indeed can.

    • Re:USB CD??? (Score:3, Informative)

      by erasmus_ ( 119185 )
      Well, since he didn't have room, it doesn't seem like he had much of a choice. Not like FireWire ones are readily available for cheap.
  • Are there site statistics for this fellas page too? In the last case-mod post, it was almost as fun to check out the case as watch his server get nailed.
  • I'm the proud (?) owner of an SQL Iris 4M. I can't get it to boot. It also needs a 20 Amp shop-style plugin. I've been debating turning it into a bar fridge [home.wxs.nl] or maybe a really oversized PC case. If anyone objects to this senseless butchering of a historical artifact, let me know and I might be willing to sell (shipping NOT included! And you can come pick it up, I put my back out last time I moved it).

  • Don't forget the Espressigo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cutecub ( 136606 ) on Thursday February 28, 2002 @07:16PM (#3087558)

    SGI has a log history of cool mods.

    While I was working there, folks pointed out the Espressigo [mesa-sys.com].

    'Dem was the dayz.
  • i hope he grounded the thing!

    maybe i'm wrong... but wouldn't it be very bad to mount a motherboard on a piece of plexiglass?
  • On his page, he mentions that he took out the inner metal chassis and replaced it with plexiglas.

    He no longer has any RF shielding...
  • My roommate and I have had one for months. Exact same case. Pretty easy mod, the hardest part was drilling the holes for motherboard standoffs. I put an ecs motherboard in it with a builtin cyrix 667, and 192 megs of ram. I wanted the cyrix's low power consumption since I am a starving college student who has to pay the bills. The ecs motherboard also had lan, audio and video on board. I put 120 gigs of storage in it, and have it running windows terminal services, so I can use the rdesktop program on my linux computers. It also serves some DNS and acts as an NT domain controller. Mainly it stores MP3's. The other thing about it that is neat is I added a crystalfontz lcd panel. Old SGI cases are hard to find though, so good luck repeating. How all I need to do is find someway to mod my sparc 5 *grin*

    Doug
  • Fit all of that into an Indy, then I'll be impressed.
  • Is /. now a case-modding forum? Iris Indigo [slashdot.org], Cube [slashdot.org], water-cooled notebooks [slashdot.org], what next?

    Mods are cool and all, but I can get more than I care for here [hardforum.com], among other [caseetc.com] places [casejunkiez.com].

  • link is here...

    http://home.nexvs.net/~ggeros/captainchest.htm

    To me this is better than gutting "just another case" and plopping an x86 in it.

    Making the computer not look like THE COMPUTER is a much more worth use of time.

  • I bet the FCC could tell. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fizzlewhiff ( 256410 ) <jeffshannon@nosPAm.hotmail.com> on Thursday February 28, 2002 @07:26PM (#3087631) Homepage
    You would never know it's not a real Iris Indigo.

    With all the metal removed and a plexiglass frame replacing it the FCC could probably tell its not a real Indigo from the EMF radiation.

    I think though that I might be inspired to do a case mod now using a Sun 411 enclosure. Given the past two days bigger cases seem to be better, perhaps I can mount my Handspring inside it.
  • But it wasn't great. I much prefer the case mod that the guy made out of an old IBM 5150 [slashdot.org]. Now that was a mod. This case mod, while it did require a cut or two, is basically just taking out the SGI motherboard and putting an Intel one in instead. The Indigo case doesn't even look that cool.
  • I wish the case-mod insdustry and the sex-toy industry would join forces in an onholy alliance that would present to the world the ultimate geek product. A hot, lifelike girl that dual booted and had room for 5 drives, a couple gigs of ram and had usb, firewire and biological "ports". Until that happens I just don't see the point. :)
  • In an attempt to get hits on his website and a story on /., Joe Bloggs ripped the guts out of his new iMac and managed to hammer in an x86 system. He claimed this has been the most adventurous case mod yet. Others are not convinced.

    "This isn't a case mod, sure he had to cut some holes and stuff, but basically he just ruined a perfectly good iMac. Shouldn't he be shot?" said one reader.

    Another reader pointed out that throwing a 350 Chev into a Ford is not really modifying the look of the Ford. He did say however, "It would shock the pants of people when it actually displays some grunt, that is until the suspension goes."
  • I have a complete AS/400 sitting in my basement (510 series, no joke, inherited from a friends business) that could hold several computers and all their components...

    Can anyone say "wow, imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!"... (ba-da-bing)

    But seriously, I guess it would be pretty neat to make a self-contained cluster computer inside a 400lb (that's where the AS/400 comes from) slick black case... I'll have to get out the torch and give it a try someday.

    Unless someone wants the thing... U-haul/pay shipping of course ;)

  • Jeez.. "Unremarkable hardware" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tony.Tang ( 164961 ) <slashdot&sleek,hn,org> on Thursday February 28, 2002 @07:41PM (#3087710) Homepage Journal
    From the site: The hardware itself isn't particularly remarkable.... I am using a Soyo K7ADA motherboard with a 1.2 Ghz T-bird and 512 megs of DDR ram.

    Jeez. I wish I could say things like that. (/me pats his p166 fondly)

  • I just received my black YeongYang Cube case (No, not Cube as in Apple, just Cube), and it looks a lot like this case. The case is twice as wide as a normal case, with the motherboard on one side and the drives on the other. They are made for servers: 2 external 3 1/2, 6 external 5 1/4, 8 internal 3 1/2. More space than a full tower, and half as high.

    By the way, YeongYang is not the only manufacturer of this type of cases: I know Chenbro has a similar line.

  • RF leakage (Score:1, Insightful)

    by nsayer ( 86181 )
    I dunno.... Looking at the pictures it looks like there's an awful lot of unshielded plastic. The reason PCs go into metal boxes is so that you don't wreck your next door neighbor's TV reception (or worse).
  • So he takes the Indigo case and puts that Zip drive on top? Oh dear, the clashing, it hurts my eyes so, it is so utterly *minging*, darling.

  • To post those gutted Indigo cases on Ebay ;)
  • I found a before picture [irisindigo.com] for those of you that are curious. more before pics here [irisindigo.com] The next case I buy will probably be a Lian Li PC-60 [modthebox.com] and I do like the case mod articles on /. but it may be a good idea to make a seperate topic for hardware mods.
  • I took a Sun SparcIPX case and stuck my old K62/400 system inside. It was a fun little project with the eventual goal of turning it into a Linux broadband router+firewall. If anyone is interested one of these days I'll post the pics for all to enjoy. Next project is to put a PC into a Sparc 5 case.
    • That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. What the heck were you smoking?

      I'd trust an old Sparc running something like OpenBSD FAR more than I'd ever trust PC hardware for something "critical to your network" like a firewall/router box. I used to use a complete Sparc IPX for exactly that, and am now doing the same with a SPARCstation 5. They work beautifully. The hardware is high-quality, rock-solid stable, and won't ever fail me. It's the kind of machine I don't have to worry about, because I know it'll run forever.
  • Here's a great link for doing a similar case mod [datadocktorn.nu].
  • And they were designed for ripping the guts out
    and replacing with a PC?

    Maybe if the case was bigger, then you could squeeze a CDROM in.

    -don
  • My name is Indigo Montoya. You stole my RF shielding. Prepare to die!

    *ducks*

  • Anybody seen any nice cases that aren't just boxes? ie, spheres, disks, pyramids, that sort of thing. Non-parallel sides. Art school stuff. Stuff inspired by cool architecture like Le Corbusier (sp) and Frank Gehry, etc?

    Just curious as the boxen with radioactive green on black or aluminum with blue LEDs is a little old. They all look like electrified trash compactors.

    Also I agree with others: if /. is going to start showing hardware hacks all the time it needs its own category!

  • Well.. putting a regular machine into a fancy machine's box is kind of like cheating. Of course, your guests are going to be impressed for a second but the disappointment will be bigger.
    I've seen a Sun Ultra being put in an old XT case. Now pointing to this XT case and saying 'well, this is our server' was much cooler IMHO :-)

  • Yet another mod (Score:2, Interesting)

    by whee ( 36911 )
    If you ask me, case mods like this are relatively simple. Most everything I've seen involves taking an existing case, buying a few extra parts (fans, lights, lcds, whatever), and then just mushing it all together. Anyone with coordination and time can manage to take a bunch of pre-existing parts and put them together in such a way that they could house a computer. Granted, I have seen a few impressive cases with this approach, they aren't exactly innovative or breathtaking.

    The aluminum cube mentioned a day ago, however, was a case that was breathtaking. It's one thing to take a case and strip it down to what you need (or add things like lights/fans), and a completely different thing to build the case from scratch, using your own designs.

    Which brings me to the question: when the hell are we going to see mainstream cases that don't resemble current towers? Are there cases that are, by default, modded in the fashion common nowadays (status lcds, excess fans, useless-yet-pretty lights)? I'd really like to see less case mods and more completely custom cases, but I don't think that would happen until the souped-up cases people do now are no longer seen as modded cases, and are instead seen as mainstream. I'm assuming the main reason people mod cases is for the "hey look at my nifty case" factor; if everyone had nifty cases, then hopefully more people would consider building a custom case from scratch in order to distinguish themselves.

    Maybe then we'll finally see those dodecahedron cases that the G5 is rumored to reside in :D

  • This is a cool idea, I've been wondering for a while how feasible it is......especially since I have 9 indigos + keyboards/mice + 19" monitors filling up a closet.....hmmmmm.....I could use some more ideas though...

  • Not kidding about how solid these things are (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:30AM (#3089334) Homepage

    Ah, those were the days. Contrast with the latest PC case I just bought. The metal was so thin that when I put my fingers into the expension slots to pull it into place under my desk, I ended up with multiple deep incisions in my fingers, like the world's worst paper cuts. Ick.

    The only case I've ever seen that's more solid that an Indigo was an IBM PC from about 1985, made in Greenock, Scotland, a famous shipbuilding town. I reckon that the fab had just swapped over from making plates for ships, and decided to re-use the last few, complete with water-tight bulkheads. ;-)

    But SGI's are amazingly robust (and heavy) as well. A workmate just bought an Indigo (the desktop orientation) on eBay. The seller noted that he'd package it up to his usual high standard, although there wasn't really any need. When it arrived, we saw what he meant. If the Indigo was a car, it would be a Mercedes. But not an ordinary Mercedes. It would be one of the "Diplomatic Specials", the ones that sneer at small arms, and give you a fair change against an RPG. It's that sort of construction. It's not just the thickness of the box, it's the redundant internal bracing, and that the components have multiple fixings, or are in snug caddys. You could probably go over Niagra Falls in one of these babies. ;-)

  • ... especially because the Indigo (like many SGI systems) was built like a mini rack... there was a backplane at the rear of the case, and all the boards slid in on rails and latched in. Drives were also sled-mounted (which is a royal PITA for SGI retroheads like myself, always scrounging for sleds!).

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