The Incredible Invisible Case

Brett Profitt writes "No, it's not entirely like the clear pc case, and it's much, much cooler than a simple windowed case, but it would still look great with a hard drive window. This, my friends, is The Invisible Case ! " Truly a labor of love. This may be the nicest case I've ever seen. To bad you can't buy them like this! Check out the details (Transparent rubber feet, fans, and hard drive window). It absorbs envy beams from miles around.

Big Deal!

[poot_rootbeer]

So what? I just leave the case off my PC most of the time, and it has the same general effect. :)

I wonder if it's possible to make translucent-clear printed circuit boards? I guess green is okay, and the occasional red-lacquer board you come acros is neat-looking, but I'd like to be able to look through a motherboard like looking through a frosted window...

what would be really cool

[7-Vodka]

what would be awesome with this, is pouring some liquid CO2 smoke into the case and seeing exactly how the airflow inside the case is behaving! you could work out how to best position fans etc.

How serious is RF interference, anyway?

[steveha]

I like putting computers together. I always try to keep the RF shielding intact. This computer has no RF shielding at all.

How much of a problem is that, anyway? If his next-door-neighbor is an amateur radio enthusiast, will the clear computer mess up the airwaves? If he wants to watch TV, will the computer ruin the picture? Can he stop pacemakers at 50 yards or something?

I don't have any clear idea how serious the emissions from computer hardware really are.

steveha

invisible case, invisible pictures

[phyxeld]

When a site is immediately slashdotted, I think the editors should pull the story off the front page. There aren't likely to be any ontopic comments if nobody can see the site. If anyone posts a working mirror maybe they can move the story back to the front page.

kinda OT: Mirrors...

[DraKKon]

Since /. is charging for subscriptions... how about /. stat mirroring the "cool" sites that get the /. effect and make the "cool" site useless..

I hate it when there's something "cool" in a message, that 1 million other people see, and you try to go to the site and you get broken images everywhere..

Most of us use perl/perlmagick here and it wouldn't be to difficult to create a script that mirrors the site that we want, compress the hell out of the images, and have a new fangled mirror.

Remove the mirror after an hour or two, so /. doesn't use up too much hd space..

now THAT would be a service that would be worth the subscriptions...

Re:Big Deal!

[Smallpond]

On really old oscilloscopes, Tektronix used to gold plate not just the connectors but all of the PCB traces. Those would have looked great with a clear case. Especially with all of the vacuum tubes glowing.

Re:kinda OT: Mirrors...

[DodgyGeezer]

It sounds something like a Google cache. I definitely think that a short-term cache would be a good idea. It could all be done through redirects: if slashdot can't open the page in a reasonable time frame, then they should serve a cached copy. I'm aware that some sites rely on hit count for ad revenue, but once it's /.ed, that becomes irrelevant. Using a cached copy when the page is over-loaded should allow them to still get hits, and allow other people to see the site.

nevermind modding the case!

[limber]

OT, but this /. obsession with case modification -- a practice which i can't relate to -- makes me think of the classic story of Andy Ihnakto's 'anti-case-mod':

He did the reverse -- he kept the case intact, but substituted something else more interesting for the innards. Specifically, he made an aquarium [jagshouse.com] out of his old Mac 512. (no pics, but if you hunt around on google there's lots of 'em people have done)

Who needs a fish screensaver when you can have real ones swimming around...

Re:kinda OT: Mirrors...

[hyyx]

Every time someone posts intelligently regarding Slashdot implementing some sort of mirror system, it always gets modded up. Look at the amount of posts here regarding slashdotting... more than half I would say [at this time]. We are speaking out, but no one ever seems to listen. What do we have to do to convince Slashdot that this _is_ a good idea and it is what the readers want?

My new (?) idea of /. mirroring

[Shiny Metal S.]

Every time someone posts intelligently regarding Slashdot implementing some sort of mirror system, it always gets modded up.

Here's what I would suggest to do, this solution would address every /. concern [slashdot.org]:

I got email, saying that link to my site (http://site/) is going to be posted on Slashdot in half an hour. For the time of slashdotting I add this to my httpd.conf:

Redirect /img/ http://slashdot.org/cache.pl?url=http://site/img/

so when someone wants http://site/img/image10.jpeg, she/he would be 302 redirected to http://slashdot.org/cache.pl?url=http://site/img/i mage10.jpeg and would got this image from Slashdot cache. I could even set it up so only queries with http://slashdot.org/* Referrer header would be redirected, or alternatively, someone could just change the URIs in <a href="..."> links in the HTML if the webmaster don't have access to webserver config. But the point is that this way the cache would be served only for explicit wish of the webmaster and also only for those images which are not the ads, banners, counters, etc. if the webmaster wants so.

It could be also used for HTML but the large images are probably the main reason of killing banwidth on sites, like in this story, with many high quality pictures of cool hardware (I suppose that there are many high quality pictures of cool hardware but I can't access it). The cache could work for, say, 6 hours and would serve only files in subdirectories of linked URIs to avoid any abuse.

What do you think?

Re:no shielding

[MajikMan]

What you are saying does make sense, however I've been doing a good bit of reading about case-mods and such lately (not specificly clear acrylic cases...I think they look tacky but thats just me), and have never read anyone actually complaingin about getting interference while using a case with a large window, or even a fully clear case.

I'm no elecrtonics expert, and I agree that in theory it could cause some serious problems, but as a neutral onlooker I haven't seen anything actually indicating that it does cause a problem. I very well may have just missed an article, and if that is the case I would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

Solution to interference problems?

[swebster]

Couldnt we just put down a layer of indium tin oxide (ITO) [puretechinc.com] on the inside of these plastic cases? It's transparent and conductive so wouldnt that solve the emissions problems while maintaining the look of the case? Would this work? Of course it would make the case cost a couple grand or something, but money isnt the issue here right?

Another case mod article?

[MrZaius]

I can see why these are nice and all, and I enjoyed seeing these articles until now, but it is getting really redundant. Couldn't a seperate case-mod section be created, so that I can ignore these but not the relevant/interesting Hardware articles?

About time, but when...?

[Myself]

They still haven't gotten to the fun part: Transparent circuit boards (copper-clad glass substrate, brittle but beautiful) and transparent chip packaging.

Think about it! Most QFP and PGA chips have boring black plastic bodies. How hard would it be to replace them with clear plastic? Ceramic packages could probably be made at least translucent.

Then you embed light-emitting junctions at important areas of the chip, so you can watch the whole thing brighten, dim, and change color as the computational load changes. NOPs would be faint blue, cache misses would make the prefetch unit flash red. Floating-point would cause the FPU to glow green. Imagine it! You could tell what was eating most of your timeslices just by looking at the chip. Nevermind how you'd see through the heatsink to perceive all this. ;) Oh wait, if the board's clear just watch all the action from underneath.

Seriously though, if the whole mobo chipset were clear-encased too, you could tell the difference between RAM accesses, drive activity, interrupts, DMA storms... Ooooh.

We already have SCSI terminators with activity indicators, am I really asking for too much?

(Now why didn't I patent this 5 years ago when I came up with it?)

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