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Hardware

Case Tweaking 336

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool-hack dept.
A reader writes "I don't know what they were smoking, but these guys decided that the G4 case makes for a great LAN party box. Of course, without the G4 and all that yucky Mac hardware -- just the aesthetics. They go about hacking and modding the case, turning a low power (aka, weak) x86 box and toss it into the G4 casing, and don't end up destroying the case to make everything fit. Lotsa pictures and explanations of every step in the process"
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Case Tweaking More

Case Tweaking

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  • My pesonal case mod. All aluminum CoolerMaster ATC-200, with window and sheetmetal biohazard symbol. Bundled cables, and neon light. It's definitively badass. Check it out here [quantumheresy.com]. Worth a looksee, trust me.
  • So, thay got a Mac, converted it to a PC & started running IIS.

    And before they even got the thing powered up, they got their first attack of Code Red.(check picture three down on the right.)

  • I had thought about doing this exact mod for almost a year now, but haven't been able to find an empty g4 case. I suppose if a business bought some g4's and then rackmounted them they might have some g4 cases laying around or something..

  • Excellent. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by beowulf_26 ( 512332 )
    Props to them for coming up with a quasi-creative case mod. In a time where stealth-mods, case windows, and neon lights are no longer creative but norm in the case mod scene, anything different is welcome.

    My personal favorite is the case mod that throws a computer inside a case of beer. [bluesmoke.net] Thanks for the "light" news every now and then /. readers.
  • I guess its a natural reaction to kill what is alien to you but to throw away PowerPC hardware is a sin. Its just a better CPU than any Intel I have ever seen. I mean if you had that many G4's you could have built a killer cluster out of it and done some Vector processing on each node with the extra sexy AltiVec stuff that comes on those CPU's.

    At this point in my life I view the G4 as an equal to the x86 and the only reason x86 is equal is the range of software geared towards it. I personally find x86 to be "on the way out". Its design has been recycled so many times [16 bit - 64bit, new opcodes no one uses anywhere.] All in the name of backwards compatibility that your OS's don't provide.

    If I had access to a G4 I certainly wouldn't throw it away. I would just get OS 10.1 when its out. :)

    But that's just my $.02
    • Other things to do with G4 hardware:
      Better than real-time DVD encoding
      Superfast MP3 encoding
      Lightning fast high res Photoshop work
      Playing StarCraft
      and lots of other useful and not so useful things. I still don't understand this lack of software on Mac's idea. There's more out there than I'm ever going to use!

  • Expensive (Score:5, Informative)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:56PM (#2113682) Homepage
    $160 for just the case from an 'apple authorized service center'...

    And doubtful if they would sell it to you if you told them what you planned to do with it...

    • Re:Expensive (Score:2, Informative)

      by Agent Q6 ( 266280 )
      No, that's not really expensive for a case. Some all-aluminum cases cost $300 and don't even come with a power supply or fans.

  • G4 is by far the nicest consumer case I've ever us (Score:4, Informative)

    by helixblue ( 231601 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:13PM (#2114155) Homepage
    I really wonder why none of the PC vendors I've seen use a similar swing-out case design.

    The G4 case is a work of beauty. I'd love to see a PC version for the next time I decide to buy a PC (probably not for a while, it seems my Athlon will last me a while). Here is what I think is very slick about it:

    * To do maintenance, you pull a handle on the side, the side swings out (as shown on the site). The motherboard pulls out with the side panel, meaning you no longer have to dig inside the machine to add memory or put in PCI cards, and you don't have to worry about using tools to open it. For an example shot, see the first few photos at http://profile.sh:81/Collection/Apple_G4_and_Cinem a_Display/ or the Apple site. This is by far the most easily maintainable consumer level machine I've ever encountered.

    * All of the cables for IDE and such are very taught, and held onto the edge. No mess of cables to worry about accidentally loosening up when you add RAM.

    * Handles are very convienent for moving it around. As a hidden feature, your machine is actually elevated slightly, rather then completely on the table. You don't have to worry about scratching the beautiful case, just the corner handles.

    * The CD burner is nicely hidden from view, with a blue spring-loaded bezel over it. You hit the little blue eject button, and out pops the white cd-rom inside of it. No more worrying about color matching.

    * Suprisingly good built-in speaker for the newer models

    * Power light is nice bright & white, which fades in and out during sleep mode. This is just a cutesy thing though :)

    Overall, it's of very high quality, I'd love to see a similar 3rd party type case for my Athlon. It's got a nice ColorCase brand casing right now. Any ideas on a similar case?

    • Re:G4 is by far the nicest consumer case I've ever (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rand Race ( 110288 ) on Thursday August 09, 2001 @11:30AM (#2110190) Homepage
      The problem in the x86 case area is the noted chintziness of PC buyers. Just look at anything Apple related that gets posted on /., it inevetibly devolves into "Macs cost to much, I can get a PC for $300!". Yea you can, and the case will be like the Bene Gesserit human testing box; "What's in it?"... "Pain!"... keep a lot of Neosporine and Band-Aids handy when you add internals and don't have anything planned for a while. Nobody is willing to lay down the investment in the PC market because the vast majority of the DIY propellerheads are cheap bastards and the industrial designers will never recoup their investment and be left hiding out in shanty-town flophouses with bottles of cheap rotgut clenched in their palsied hands moaning incesantly about their great ideas for easy-access case designs.

    • > * Power light is nice bright & white, which fades in and out
      > during sleep mode. This is just a cutesy thing though :)

      Actually if you have an Apple monitor the power light of the monitor fades in and out during sleep mode and it does it in synch with the desktop power light (I think it's synching through USB)
      That's quite a sense of detail.
    • Just for the record--

      Last time I added RAM to my G3 B&W (same basic enclosure, flip-down-door mounted logic board) I went for speed, just to see. Not the safest thing in the world, but I'd been drinking...

      Anyway, measuring from powerdown to powerup I added two sticks of PC100 in 27 seconds.
    • Well, after saddling users with the case from the PowerMac 8500, apple had a shitload to atone for.


      The shell was easy to remove.. but woe to you if you wanted to add memory. Gads, I love apple with a passion (my first computer purchase was a Mac+, followed by a SE/30 I still own) but that box's internals still gives me flashbacks.

    • I went to a LAN party sponsored by our local college ACM chapter [umn.edu], and a x86 fiend came up to me to discuss the G4 which I brought. He kept ragging on the case- saying that every other case with such a design was a pain in the ass- his biggest complaint being about cables getting pinched when you tried to shut the door.

      Well, the point of that story was that, from that conversion, I thought similar cases, perhaps comforming to ATX, did exist, but were simply below the standard of Apple's version. I never did have any problems with cables pinching in that case, anyway. :)

  • Why are Mac and PC enthusiasts so hateful to each other? What makes someone go from "my PC is cool" to "your Mac is the worst piece of crap on earth" and vice versa? Were you all abused by computers as children? Get a grip, just because you don't like doesn't mean it sucks.
  • The old Ps/2 model 80's had a handle built in and whre very well made cases. I wonder if I could fit an ATX motherboard in one?

  • G4 (Score:1)

    by ttyp0 ( 33384 )
    I would be much more impressed to the the original hardware run Windows.

  • These guys are really smart! (Score:4, Funny)

    by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:26PM (#2122088)

    Next project: take a new PowerBook G4 [apple.com], and remove all the innards and transplant them in an IBM PCjr case! That way you can get rid of the yucky titanium case and downright sickening 15.2" wide-aspect ratio screen. Cool!

    • zdnet-ization. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gagganator ( 223646 )

      Of course, without the G4 and all that yucky Mac hardware...

      yes, i dont know what is with the recent zdnetization of /. first the which-is-the-greatest-laptop-in-the-world story, then the antimac rant story, now these comments. seems like they are subscribing to the flamewars-generate-hits school of thought *sigh*

  • exactly (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by unformed ( 225214 )
    the case serves as an encryption device; by removing the insides of the case and using them for your own purposes, you are violating the DMCA! And you don't get any Fair Use here, because the hardware itself isn't audio. ;)
  • I've been wanting to build a custom case but I run into the problem of having the PCI cards standing on the motherboard. Does anyone know where I can get cables that would let me relocate the cards? Or if they exist?

  • My G4 / How many FPS do you want? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:27PM (#2124276) Homepage
    My machine at work is an older G4/533... (533 MHz PowerPC 7410, 512 MB of CAS-3 [slower] PC133 SDRAM, and the stock OEM nVIDIA GeForce2 MX). While 95% of my time (ok, 85%, but don't tell my boss) is spent in Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and Cleaner 5, I have installed and played with some of the latest wizbang games. Quake 3, FAKK2, DeusEx, and UT all play very smoothly. "Timedemo" benchmarks show numbers in the 50 - 75 frame-per-second area. Just how much better does a game player need? I would imagine that the GeForce 3 gives even better performance, as well as the CPU improvements in the current G4s (733, 800, and 867 MHz PowerPC 7450). And who doesn't replace the stock mouse with a real one? Just like I did with my old Dell, the first thing I did was buy a nice 3 button scroll-wheel mouse. Works great in Mac OS 9.1 and OS X.

    Sure the Mac is no gamer's dream, but it plays games as well as I would ever want. Plus it's a great workhorse.
  • Don't forget Quakecon 2001 [quakecon.org] this weekend. They have their annual Case Mod Contest [slashdot.org], and this year should be quite good. I heard rumour of a question asked of one of the organizers: 'You think a goldfish would live if its water was heated by my P4?'

  • I mean: Why these guys (mod-freaks) are so eager to destroy good hardware just to make its appearance plase them? I can barely understand an out-of-order VAX being transformed in a bar, but when some idiot destroys a WonderSwan just to play GBA games in its case, or a G4 just to put a crappy PC Motherboard inside, I'm ashamed.

    Besides, maybe they don't know that a G4 runs Linux. And Loki has released their games in PPC versions. Coming to a LAN with a G4 running Quake III on top of Linux would be IMHO more impressive (best of all, it would probably convince more Mac users to drop their crappy MacOS, more gamers to try Linux, etc.)...

    Note that I'm not saying it's no good to tweak a machine, I'm just saying it's good if you're actually *improving* it, but destroying it for æsthetical purposes seems pointless to me...

  • That's great and all, and I'm happy for 'em, but I hardly think it deserves it's own topic. But, props to the makers.
  • Somewhere in the company is a G3 case with a PIII motherboard running Win98 - I know because I've used it, and was rather suprised when asking for a windows box I was pointed to the blue case.

    These mods are easy. The hacking to the case conducted here just shows he was a complete muppet who didn't understand what the hell he was doing. The G3->PIII conversion (mboard, drive, etc.) took about 15 minutes, and the G4 cases aren't that different. There was no way he needed to cut the case up the way he did if he had made a sensible choice of mboard.

  • Yucky hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chaoskitty ( 11449 )
    "without the G4 and all that yucky Mac hardware"

    Let's see... 64 bit PCI, gigabit ethernet, Altivec... Even story submitters can post anonymously so as to make stupid, stupid comments like this with no responsibility for answering to them.

  • Advantage one: We Windows users have an OS that will help to preserve the floppy drive for generations to come.

    Advantage two: We Windows users have an OS that will run cool games for much, much more than the cost of a PS2, xBox or GameCube. It's fun to spend!

    Advantage three: Mac users are forced to have sex with their mates while we get the opportunity to fight trojans and viri for fame and glory!

    Advantage four: Windows allows us to have more "quality time" with our computers.

  • Ah... Apple (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    The Apple tower series designers were really onto something when they came up with the G3. You gotta hand it to Apple, when it comes to aesthetics and the melding of form and function, they've got the monopoly.

    Dancin Santa

  • Floppies (Score:2, Troll)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 )
    Gah! What's everyone's obsession with the floppy drive? They suck, get over it.

    • Re:Floppies (Score:3, Insightful)

      by No Such Agency ( 136681 )
      Ok, yeah, floppies do suck, but they're a commonly used medium. Anybody with a slow modem at home or no net connection at all probably uses them a lot. I use them to back up important data (2 copies, because floppies aren't 100% reliable, true) cheaply, and without having to buy a CD burner/tape drive/Zip drive for my old steam-powered Pentium 233. Remember, not everyone has a PIII with a brand new CD-RW. And let's be honest, the drives cost what... twenty bucks new? It doesn't kill you to put one in. You may need to exchange files with unfortunate wretches like myself on occasion.
      • If it is of value than, as you say, you can just get one. There are a variety of USB floppy drives out there including combo drives that also read CF, Smart Media, etc, great for digital photography and such, that are trivially easy to hook up to your Mac and use. Myself? I have a floppy drive on my older Mac at home, but I have not used a floppy drive in many years. I think somewhere I still have some floppy disks but I'm not sure. Keep in mind that Macs have always been able to boot from CD (well, once CD drives came into existence, of course.) Maybe Windows PCs require such ancient technology as a floppy, but Macs do not.
      • I beg to differ, I have a stinking 28.8 modem, and I don't use my floppy drive at all. These things are a waste of money, I really with people would just stop using them. Yet I still can't see new PCs being sold without them. Sure the drives might be relatively cheap, but the disks are not. Not only are the disks expensive but they're damn unreliable, damn slow, and have way too little capacity to store anything useful. On my computer at work, to my memory I've only ever used the floppy drive once, and it was because some network card driver came on a floppy disk.

        I wouldn't dare back up important data on a floppy disk, they're way too unreliable.

        This isn't the 80's anymore, its about time people just let these things go the way of the dinosaur, so that we can all move on and standardise on something a little more advanced.

        Also remember its not just the drive you're paying for - you're paying for all that obsolete circuitry, components and wiring on the motherboard too. And you're paying a little extra in installation costs. Sure, its not much, but its still something. And those damn FDC ribbons clutter up the inside of the PC making it even more annoying that it already is to do any sort of work inside the computer, I struggly to get hard disks in and out every time I want to because the ribbon cable and power cable to the stupid floppy drive get in the way.

        I would differ that they're a "commonly used medium". I don't know anyone who uses them. These things still seem to be bundled dutifully with all new PCs though. Its like some sort of culture, everyone just assumes that the floppy drive "should be there", its just something a PC needs. I think if everyone threw all of them away today, most people wouldn't even miss them, and the few who might would simply adjust.

        The only possible use I can think for them is diskless systems (e.g. simple X terminal) actually.

      • Re:Floppies (Score:2, Insightful)

        by hearingaid ( 216439 )
        Anybody with a slow modem at home or no net connection at all probably uses them a lot.

        I bought an ATAPI Zip100 drive precisely to stop the endless flow of sneakernet.

        it just really sucks having to cart back like six floppies from school just to get the new netscape (and that's with browser download only).

        for a few years, splitfile was on every floppy I owned. then I got a zip drive.

        floppies suck. zip and cdr are the ways to go.

    • Actually, I agree with this.

      I don't use floppies at all. For the most part I use CD-RWs.

      But CD-RWs suck 'cuz it's a pain to burn a disk just for a few files.

      Only if your CD-RW drive and it's software sucks. Any good Packet-Writing CD-RW drive will treat a RW disk just like any floppy. Sure, it only holds 512k and it has to be used in a drive the supports Packet Writing, but most high quality drives now days do.

      My only real complaint here is that no Operating System as of yet has Packet-Writing as a standard available FS for use with CD-RWs.

      (Perhaps if Amiga is smart AmigaOS 4.0 could take this opprotunity to further innovate by doing away with floppies and using CD-RW's with Packet Writing as the standard removable media...)
      • Sure, it only holds 512k

        CORRECTION! UGH!

        I meant 512 megabytes. I can't believe I made such an error. Talk about an FS that really cripples! Shesh!

    • Re:Floppies (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CyberPhunk ( 457518 )
      I agree here. No need for floppies. I purchased a G4 Cube a few months ago (before I heard of them going out of production), and was a bit worried about the lack of floppy. But other than that, it was THE machine, so I just figured I'd buy an external one if there was a need. Besides, I have another older Mac and AMD box with a floppy drive. Well well, pleasant surprise. As floppy-phobic as I was, I haven't had the need to use a single floppy since I purchased the Cube. Now that I come to think of it, I don't even remember when the last time was that I used a floppy, PERIOD, except for the OpenBSD boot disk. (Which souldn't be a problem either if I would just buy the distro with bootable CD.) So why don't I need floppies? Well, they seem to cost more than a CD for manufacturers that want to bundle drivers etc., so no more floppies for that! And with a new machine, back-ups don't go on floppies anyways. What, back-up my graphics etc. chopped up into bits and pieces and scattered over 2000 floppies? I don't think so. And in all honesty, I don't know ANYONE that doesn't have an internet connection, and that includes my grandparents, so file transfers are not a problem either. Just my 2cents.

    • Re:Floppies (Score:5, Funny)

      by csbruce ( 39509 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @09:24PM (#2169059)
      Gah! What's everyone's obsession with the floppy drive? They suck, get over it.

      Well, before the Internet came along, floppies were the best method for exchanging viruses.
      • before the internet was avaliable en mass, floppies WERE the internet, it was called "sneaker net" (because you had to walk the disks from one place to another)
    • One word, and one word only: booting.
      You don't know the joy of not having to work your way around windows NT's monopoly on the MBR, or not having to juggle two or more kernels (y'know, the new one you just compiled) on the same partition, y'know, with a little script that selects the previous one on the next bootup, so that if you're totally fucked up, you can just reboot and get back to the unfucked up state, etc, etc, until you've started booting your non-primary partition or non-primary kernel off of a floppy. It's the simplest thing in the world.

      • Making do without flippy floppy (Score:5, Informative)

        by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @09:57PM (#2169131)
        Yeah, booting. Don't forget; we're talking about a Mac here, which has been able to boot from a CD, external FireWire drive, Zip drive, or whatever for about 10 years. The old Mac Classic could even boot from ROM (they had a complete version of the system software built onto ROM) for complete diskless operation. Thus the lack of a floppy for about 4 years.
        • The old Mac Classic could even boot from ROM (they had a complete version of the system software built onto ROM) for complete diskless operation.

          I'm not entirely sure that's correct. It's true that older Macs had the MacOS Toolbox (the OS runtime, basically) in ROM, but I don't believe any Mac had the ability to boot to ROM directly.

          On the other hand, Macs have had NetBoot-- which is basically bootp for diskless network booting-- at least since the debut of the iMac. Never used it myself, but it's cool that its there, built right into the hardware.

          • The Mac I was referring to was the Macintosh Classic (code name XO) circa 1990.

            Back when Apple designed it, they found that 256 MB ROM chips were cheaper than the smaller chips required by the spec, so they used the larger chips. Since they had a lot of extra space in ROM, they put a stripped down version of System 6.

            As someone else mentioned, booting the Classic while pressing x-o would result in it booting from ROM, the computer equivalent of wriggling your ears, I suppose. I had a Classic Mac my freshman year in college, and I confirmed that it would boot from ROM (it just indicated that the boot volume was "locked" and used the RAM disk icon for those that care).

            The Macintosh Classic was the last Mac to use the 68000 processor and was designed to be a low cost version. It was later replaced by the Classic II, which ran the 68030 chip (the same as the Color Classic), as someone else in this thread alluded.

  • What a waste! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by talonyx ( 125221 )
    To take that beautiful Mac hardware and replace it with disgusting PC crap? Just to have a nice case?
    You can BUY imacky cases.... why ruin a G4 to do it, I don't know.

    • Re:What a waste! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
      I do agree that tossing out that G4 hardware is a waist (send it to me). However aside from only having 1 full size drivae bay and 1 Zip/Floppy sized bay, the G4 case is one of the best case designs ever. I wish my Athlon had a door and such a great hardware layout. Even Apple's laptops are easy to get into. It is a shame the rest of the industry is not catching on. (however compaqs slide out drive bays are kind of cool).
      • The laptops got kind of nasty.

        I cracked the case on my Titanium trying to put in the Airport card. And replacing the hard disk in them is...well...a bitch.

        The old Powerbook G3s and iBooks are a dream. Putting RAM in the new and old G3s, G4s and iBooks is really easy though. So is putting Airport in the old iBooks.

        http://www.macworld.com/2001/05/features/powerbo ok .html

        There are better articles on ogrady's powerpage
        www.ogrady.com
        and xlr8yourmac
        www.xlr8yourmac.com
        About what a pain it is replacing the HDs in those beasts.

        I love my Titanium...but man it's a pain when you pull the bottom off.

        • Putting RAM in the new and old G3s, G4s and iBooks is really easy though.

          From my experience, taking it out and putting to proper use is even easier. Sorry dude, couldn't resist.

  • Blah. (Score:5, Informative)

    by unphased ( 411092 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:51PM (#2148596) Homepage
    Look at http://virtual-hideout.net if you have any interest in case modding. They have projects that put this to shame.

  • It somehow seems strange that people can be so obsessed with computer cases. I'm all for cool/personal cases but wow how much work goes into this?

    But then I guess I'm a bit of a hippocrite, I've got a pretty wild case for my work PC also.. check out the titan case [trans2000.com] at Trans2000.

  • You must be mistaken. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rbruels ( 253523 )
    Yucky Mac hardware? Like what, the oh, RAM? Hmm... no, that's standard PC133. Oh, the hard drive. No, shit, that's ATA. DVD-ROM? ATAPI. Hm.

    Perhaps you mean the 128-bit-path PowerPC 7400, which has this terrible tendency to rock the Pentium right off the scale. Or the board, with its firewire interfaces, Gigabit ethernet, and 802.11 capabilities?

    Nope, don't see any yuckiness there. Now why you would spend your time and money on violating a really great machine to put a sub-par low-tech x86 box in there is absolutely beyond me. I would love to have that kinda extra time and money. And you probably put Windows on there, for Pete's sake.

    Now, I'm no biased Mac fanatic, I'll look at all the sides (and I merrily use Linux), but... why destroy an awesome machine like that? Why?

    • I can't actually read the article (damn /. effect) but several other people have pointed out that the guy just bought the case, and recommended going to an Apple service center to get one, so he's not exactly tearing a G4 apart.

      I think what most people hate about Mac hardware is the fact that you still can't buy all the parts you need to build one yourself. Hell, I probably would have built a Mac, if I had the option (and if OS X were available at the time).

  • Now THIS is a cool case (Score:3, Informative)

    by Braudo ( 265448 ) <peregrin@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:53PM (#2149998) Homepage
    It's nowhere nearly as cool as this case [eugenesargent.com] (http://www.eugenesargent.com/case1.htm).
    Thanks, Jethro ;)

  • Cases galore..... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 ) <soulsteal@@@3l337...org> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:54PM (#2150073) Homepage

    This case [eugenesargent.com] is spiffarifficus. Completely Rocketeer approved!

  • money to blow? (Score:4, Funny)

    by moniker_21 ( 414164 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:55PM (#2150337)
    Geeesh, where does one get the money to buy a G4 just to remove out all the internal parts?

    Watch next week as we disembowel an SGI O2 to make a bird feeder!

  • no, no, no! (Score:2, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 )
    you got it all backwards! you're supposed to take Mac guts (now that they use ATX power supplies) and put them into fat PC cases so you can add more drives than just two internal 3.5s! eesh, some people...
  • I have a bondi blue Mac monitor connected to my PC. Whenever I'm at a lan party people always ask "When did Tribes 2 come out for Mac?"

    I just laugh.

  • Oh for goodness sakes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by chancycat ( 104884 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @07:53PM (#2153155) Journal
    Where do kids get the money to obtain a G4 just to gut it and add the organs of ANOTHER computer, ALL just to have a show piece??

    Pretty soon we'll have to have flames shooting out of the floppy drive just to get chicks.

    Ug

    • Well, not on the Mac - they don't have floppies anymore!
    • From the article:

      Now, if you've read this article all the way through and you've got bright ideas swirling in your head about doing this yourself, you're probably wondering where to get the chassis. I got mine through connections, but if you're looking to obtain one for yourself, you might want to check with your nearest Apple Authorized Service Center. Ordering the chassis cost me about $160, and the 3.5" and CD bezels should cost you about $45 total.

      By fancy case standards, that's not so bad.

    • Re:Oh for goodness sakes! (Score:5, Funny)

      by unformed ( 225214 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:12PM (#2150915)
      Pretty soon we'll have to have flames shooting out of the floppy drive just to get chicks. I'm sorry man, but as a geek, if I modding my case will get me chicks, shit hell yeah, I'll do it.

      • Re:Oh for goodness sakes! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Nater ( 15229 )
        Here's how (I could tell you how I know this, but I'd have to kill you):

        1) Obtain a floppy disk
        2) Carefully disassemble the disk
        3) Obtain several matches
        4) Carefully remove the sulfur compound from the matchheads and collect
        5) Apply a very thin layer of Elmer's glue to the floppy disk media (it may help to add a small amount of water to the glue)
        6) Liberally dust the media with sulfur compound
        7) Let dry
        8) Reassemble disk

        Now this disk is ready to make flames shoot out of the floppy drive. Just insert and access.

        DISCLAIMER: If you try this, you are an idiot and the consequences of doing so are entirely your fault

  • What I want/need (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:31PM (#2168891)

    Screw fancy case mods, what I want is a case that puts the back of the case in front, and then moves a few bays so they are accessable, as well as the power buttons. If you have a lot of connections that you change frequently in the back of a PC, you know the feeling.

    It would have to be a full tower, to get enough height above the motherboard for the cd drive and floppy, and it should have 2x 5 1/2" bays, but as long as everything is excessable from one side, I'd be happy.

    • In that case, you should really check out Front-X [frontx.com]. I think it does pretty much what you want.

      magic chef
    • This case [mp3car.com] seems to fit most of your requirements. It's actually closer to a cube than anything, but a really nice use of acryllic. The entire top sorta splits off to reveal the guts of the case. However, everything is mounted in front, along with adequate cooling.

      In fact, this case was the inspiration for my own clear case. However, I didn't want to spend as much time/money/energy as this guy did, so I kept the metal interior of a cheap mini-tower. Besides replacing the boring beige with clear acrylic, the real useful bit I added was a hinged side panel with thumb screws. I absolutely love it. After putting enough system cooling with it, my next project is to mount some low heat (probably LED based) lighting to the inside. I want my case to glow softly =).

      But as for your connections in front - I wouldn't want that. I'd rather have the inconvenience because excessive cables are simply an eyesore. USB, firewire, video in, and headphones would be the real ports I'd want available in front. But, to each their own - good luck building this if you get into it - acryllic can be annoying to work with. One tip: though it's harder to cut, buy thicker acryllic. If you go with th thinner stuff like I did, you'll lose potential stability that the acryllic can offer.

  • Cool case =) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PlazMatiC ( 11127 ) <slashdot AT plaz DOT net DOT nz> on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:33PM (#2168898) Homepage
    By far the coolest case I've seen in a while =)

    http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?threadid =1 87889

  • G4 Resale Value !? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has anyone else noticed that G4s have ungodly high resale value??

    Even a heavily used G4/400 with just a Rage128 AGP card goes for a fortune on eBay. The going rate on the usenet is no better.

    It's not like a new G4 is -that- expensive. At my university's campus computer store, the 733 model with DVD-ROM/CD-RW starts at about $1599 and the 867 MHz model with the neat dvd burner DVD-R/CD-RW is about $2399.
    • Yup, absolutely. So these merry bozos are idiots on even the most primitive, financial level. Never mind the techie obnoxiousness of taking a well-designed thing and making it worse on purpose for God knows what reason, it's "Whee, let's also throw away kilobucks in resale value and make something that is worthless to get on slashdot and amuse ill-behaved children!" :D

      Funny as hell, but I hate to say it guys- this is laughing AT rather than laughing with. You lusers :)

  • Back during the "glory days" of the Internet boom, a friend had rack-mounted a few G4s and had the gutted cases laying around. He asked if I wanted one, and being the cheapo I am, I said, "sure."

    it's been sitting in my room all this time, and I *AM* thinking of getting one of those Athalon 1.4Gig machines... Hmm. Anyone know the ideal motherboard model that might work? I guess you need a smaller one than usual or something....

    W

  • OK , let me get this straight: (Score:3, Funny)

    by cygnus ( 17101 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @08:59PM (#2168986) Homepage
    d00d wants to 0wn at the next LAN party, so he takes a Powermac G4 case and installs inside:
    • A 440LX-based motherboard
    • A Celeron 466 MHz
    wouldn't he be better off with the original Apple hardware? i mean, if you're hacking an Apple case, at least put something faster in it, like dual T-Birds!

  • a man's case (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jeff Probst ( 459812 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2001 @10:03PM (#2169143) Homepage Journal
    check this case here [infopop.net]. posted yesterday on arstechnica's message board.

    Invalid form key iTXPURWLGP

  • If I properly recall my Computer Voodoo course, placing an x86 motherboard into an Apple case conjures up Clarus the Dogcow in his most terrible form.

    Normally, he lives in the "Page Setup" dialog box in Classic Mac OS. He makes sure you know what you're doing with your printer options. Further, he's kind of cute.

    However, placing the untamed power of a x86 board inside the sleek, modern design of a G4 case causes an energy imbalance which disturbs Clarus. Clarus rises from the "Page Setup" and MOOFs until every last screw holding the system together falls out. Rejoing the parts will only result in IRQ conflicts, although each part will work fine in another machine.

    For more information on Clarus:

    http://developer.apple.com/products/techsupport/ do gcow/

    http://www.multimania.com/maddog/MOOF/index.html

    And to help Clarus make the transition to Mac OS X, sign the following petition:
    http://www.PetitionOnline.com/sod/petition.html

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