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Hardware

Case Modders - Think Small 130

Posted by michael from the little-things-mean-a-lot dept.
sysadmn writes "Mini-ITX is a relatively new form factor for PC motherboards measuring only 170 mm x 170 mm. The folks at Mini-ITX.com have this page of interesting projects, including full systems built into 1/10 scale models of a Ford Focus Rally car and a VW Beetle. Another project recycles a SparcStation IPX from 40 Mhz Sparc to 800 Mhz Via C3. Not to be outdone, motherboard maker Via has its own Mini-ITX project page, with several cool automobile systems."
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Case Modders - Think Small More

Case Modders - Think Small

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  • Slowing down already...

    are they running the freakin site on one of these things?

    hmph.

  • google cache (Score:1, Informative)

    by neo8750 ( 566137 )
    in case it gets /.ed

    google cache [216.239.53.100]

  • driving home (Score:2, Funny)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 )
    In the old days of the Olde American Wild West, a cowboy going home after getting drunk at the bar could depend on his horse to find the way home while he snoozed off, etc.

    Now what would be really useful would be a car that would drive people home safely after a night of safely killing of excess and troublesome brain cells.

    A smal system like this would be a good first start.

    You could use a doom or quake game engine loaded with a map of the local streets as a nav aid for the car.

    I tell you, this could work.

    • Hmmm... that's a pretty good idea, but let's take it one step further. We could mount a chain gun under the hood, and a rail gun in the trunk....

    • Re:driving home (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why didn't anyone think of that before, maybe cuz while it could get you home, you might run people over, rear end cars, speed, but besides that its all good
  • I'll be really impressed when they can put in a water-cooling system with the reservoir under the hood of the Focus or VW mod.
    • Being a VW, shouldn't it remain air-cooled??
      • Well, the new Beetle is water-cooled. Besides, the idea for air-cooling the original Beetle came from Hitler [straightdope.com].
        • Definately keep it aircooled... and the VW came from Dr. Porsche. Don't forget the good doctor - celebrate his birthday this year on Drive your 356 Day - Sept. 22. http://www.356registry.org
          • Read the link I supplied -- it explicitly states (in paragraph 6) that Hitler told Porsche to make the VW air-cooled. Porsche, not wanting to end up dead, did what der Furher asked.
  • This doesn't appear to be a repost, but the deja-vu as I read this is overwhelming.
  • Killing sites is fun, weeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  • problems (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Friday September 06, 2002 @11:52PM (#4211077) Homepage
    my only gripe with small cases is the overly common: I cant fit it all in

    they are great for settings where you dont need much. My school library has some small cases for the computers running the card catalog, unfortinately the card catalog computers are running fullpower P4's with tons of ram and all the goodies, while the computers used to do internet research etc. (and not nice small cases) are 1st generation p3s

    in my head I dont see why you need more power to look at card catalog text (thin clients would be the ultimate space saver, stick a server somewhere that has room but no easy access to actually have a monitor and stuff) but I have to admit, the cases were very pretty
    the suggestions I see for these as a LANparty case just dont make sense, usually I like to have my full graphics and sound etc along with me

    • There great PVR/MP3 Jukeboxes. They have enough CPU to decode VCD's or play DVD's. Quiet enough to sit next to the TV without having to build a soundproof enclosure. $59 for the Cupid 2677 case and $120 for the epia 800. recycled ram, HD and scrounged a slimline CD used off ebay for another $30.

      If your set on having AGP and sound about the smallest I've seen is the shuttle XPC SS51 which is Flex ATX. small enough considering many of us have been lugging 30-50 pound cases to Lan parties.

      I'm waiting for someone to build the mini-ITX sized MB with an AGP riser slot. probably happen sooner then I think. I'm guessing late next year.

  • Duplicate story (Score:3, Redundant)

    by Corvus9 ( 300802 ) on Friday September 06, 2002 @11:55PM (#4211087)
    This story is a copied from a post [slashdot.org] that was written only hours ago [slashdot.org].

    I'll refrain from the obvious comment about /. editors.

    • It is not a duplicate for once. This is a mini sparc processor motherboard, while the other one is a p3.

      Why are we so quick to blame?
    • Yeah, I'm glad I saw the page this morning before their server fell over.

      But I guess that's a good way to get a story on the frontpage. Troll through comments at level 5 and then post interesting links that other people put up.
    • Whatever. This has to be about the third story to mention mini-itx. Every case mod story gets a dozen comments mentioning it as well. At least this isn't a just copy of yesterday's Yahoo! News.

  • Commercial cases (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Coryoth ( 254751 )
    Why is it that there is no serious commercial market for quality case design? The only company actually seriously doing any design work is Apple. Some of these cases are exceptional, and I know I'd pay decent money for them.

    What's with all those companies out there? Why can't they get their act together and provide some decent case options? Anyone know?

    Jedidiah
    • most profit in the PC market comes from businesses. they dont want fruity "extras" driving up their workstation prices, and plain beige cases go well with the grey cubical space...

      Although Apple does have a foothold in some niche business markets, they tend to be 'CREATIVE' businesses like graphic design houses...These businesses are more likely to buy such things and appreciate the industrial design.

      • I agree that business needs certainly aren't that interested in desginer cases, but then again, surely there is a BIG ENOUGH market for home PCs to make a designer case market a viable one? You can sell different products to different market niches if you want.

        Jedidiah
    • Why is it that there is no serious commercial market for quality case design?

      Computers are tools. Do we really need glossy shiny plastic to boost our egos and raise prices even when the functionality of the computer is not improved?

      The only company actually seriously doing any design work is Apple. Some of these cases are exceptional, and I know I'd pay decent money for them.

      Why would you pay more for something that is functionally equivalent? Why do you ignoor your own creative abilities? You want a nice case? Do it yourself. You don't need Apple dictating your style to you on a mass produce assembly line.

      And if you must have a company sell you something for you to feel like you have a superior case, buy a commercial water cooled or vapor phase change case. At least then you have something functionally usefull and realitively unique.
      • Some people (like me) will pay for aesthetics. Other people will not. What on Earth could be wrong with that?

        I contend that it is not possible to take a stock beige box and turn it into a well-designed device (in the sense of good industrial design, like Apple has and nobody else does). If it were possible, I'd have done it already.

        Good design requires an elegance that is difficult to retrofit. At least, that's my opinion.

        (and no, cutting a window in the side and putting in neon does not constitute good design)
      • I live in the dorms, and I only have one room. So, my computer is always out in the open for every one to see 24/7. Why would I want to put something ugly in my living space if I could put something beautiful?

        It's not about ego, it's about the fact that having beautiful things around you makes you feel better, while having ugly, cheap looking shit makes you feel bad.

        Some people actualy are sensitive to this sort of thing.

  • Applefritter (Score:2, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 )
    So I wonder if the poster has ever seen the Desktop Hacks at Applefritter [applefritter.com], which include the Shop Vac Mac and the Lego Mac?

    Loomis

  • Imagine.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @12:06AM (#4211108) Homepage Journal
    A Beowulf cluster of these...

    Inside a toaster.

    That was actually my submission to The Register when they held a contest for Eden applications. VIA was giving away a bunch of these Eden mini-ITX systems to the winners. That is where VIA's applications page came from.

    Imagine a cluster sitting on top of every desktop in a classroom. Instead of just being able to use time on a cluster to explore it's architecture or a class building one cluster as a project, each student would have their own cluster.

    Problem is, even the 800mhz C3 performs no petter than a 450 PII. Additionally, the processor has absolutely no parallelism. Only one path with no out of order instructions.

    That lack of balls does give them an advantage: they draw only 60 watts for the entire system. That includes memory processor and all.
    • Yeah!

      This is my idea. I want to build a little 6/8 node performance cluster inside one of my old SGI Indigo boxes. Turn a '91-era workstation back into a real performance computer. Roomy enough, and built like a tank! I think I can get 6 mobos, a BIG shared PS, and a mini-hub in here. It'd be nice to have these boot off of a shared image from a RAID on the right side of the case, where SGI located the 4 half-hight bays.

      Someday, when I have more time... By then the mobos will be small enough for 12 in the case!

      • Wait, I got as far as benching these things:

        They are SLOW. Great tool for learning but you are way better off price/performance/power density with a stack of dual athlon motherboards.

        $500 bucks for a dual board plus 2 2000MPs -vs- 5 VIA EPIA boards. No Contest. Three dualy athlons will fit in a wide mid tower for stealth clustering. Probly stuff two into an indigo.. except it's not quite tall enough.. Might have to use some serious low profile power supplies.

        The other route is to try their backplane version.. problem is, quad G4s are also available on a backplane...

        Of course they do have some interesting design elements. Full duplex 10/100 ethernet that can be "split" for dual 10/100 half duplex.

        Firewire networking at 480 Mb/s also has interesting possibilities.

        Remember your switch has to fit inside too and a 12 port switch is going to be bigger than a 4 port switch.

        The C3 is a socket 370 processor but in the case of the EPIA it's soldiered to the board. Perhaps they'll make a tulatin variety some day.

        • $500 for a dual mobo? Damn, I thought you were full of shit. I remember window shopping on pricewatch.com maybe 3-4 months ago. +$700 for underpowered MPs, while the single CPU Athlons blew them away at 1/2 the price. Check it a couple minutes ago. I'll be damned, they are $500 for a mobo with two 2Ghz MPs. Thanks for the heads up!

          (But how the hell am I going to figure out the right times to buy hardware, or when that time is passing by me...)
  • here [hitechmods.com] are details on the construction of one of the cases featured on the now slashdotted site...

  • Case modding may be fun, but be careful... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FueledByRamen ( 581784 ) <sabretooth@gmail.com> on Saturday September 07, 2002 @12:14AM (#4211127)
    Case modding is fun. I stuffed my last PC into an old SGI Iris Indigo that I was getting pissed at (blew up my KVM switch before I realized that the keyboard port is a few pins away from standard PS/2...). However, watch what you're stuffing that motherboard-of-the-week into. I don't care if you rip up a Sega Saturn, a Sony PlayStation, an old SPARC, or an Iris Indigo - those were all mass-produced systems. (With the exception of the Indigo, these were all on the mini-itx.com site.) No one is going to miss that old tape deck, and making your own case out of plexiglass is just cool.

    What I don't want to see is someone ripping up a piece of history for 15 minutes of fame. I'm donning my flame suit already, but just give me a chance here. Stuffing an Eden mini-itx into a 1/10 size Beetle is just cool. However, if you rip up an old NeXT Cube, or an Apple III, I'll be forced to kill you. Old hardware is cool and useless; old, rare hardware is to be kept around by any means. Go ahead and rip apart that old boat-anchor XT you have lying around for a new bullet-proof (literally) box, but if you put a cutting wheel through a rare piece of hardware, you deserve to have your guts ripped out and a new motherboard sewn into place, just like the antique that you destroyed.

    So go ahead and stuff a micro-pc in that old 80's toploader VCR, or a PS1. Just stay away from the truly rare, cool stuff - it needs no modifications to be neat and interesting.
  • I like big, thank you so very much.

    Besides.

    I have 5 PCI cards and 4 IDE devices, and I am trying my best to get some more stuff. . . .

    Now if some new bus interconnect method was made up that involved a connector edge a tad wee bit smaller then that of PCI (heh, hasn't technology advanced at least a wee bit since the early/mid nighties? :-D ) then sure, but. . . .
  • we've been doing this for a while on www.mp3car.com

  • Cars... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Brings new meaning when my computer *crashes*.
  • How many pentium 4 systems can we fit on the head of a pin?

    Come on, people, we can do better than this!

    The only problem would be figuring out how to fit a network card into the PCI slots.

  • The idea behind the mini-itx is to build a system that will look cool, and can handle the emulation software so that we can all re-live our childhood, one video game at a time...
  • The new VW beetle is NOT air cooled. Only the older model is. (the article claims the beetle is air cooled when the case is actually of a new beetle.)

    Just thought I'd let you know.

  • But my wife says size doesn't matter. Damn that poolboy sure is dedicated.
  • the cyrix proccesor has no power what so ever it can't even decode mpeg-1 what are you gonna use it for?? dos?

    reminds of when king authors said
    "what are you gonna do bleed on me". that pretty much sums up what this cpu/motherboard does to the competetion
    • Ok, the C3 may not be besting the Athlons and P4s of the world, but it's a whole heck of a lot faster then you're making it out to be!

      The C3 at 800MHz will have no trouble at all decoding DivX, let alone mpeg-1. Many people have quite successfully used these chips in set-top boxes for playing DVDs and DivX movies.
      • I've been looking for a small platform for MP3s, DivX, etc. It seems that the 800MHz C3 is almost powerful enough for me.

        All the reviews [overclockers.com.au] I've read seem to indicate the same thing:

        On default settings, all video is VERY jumpy and out of sync, with both Media Player and The Player 2.0. However, when I lowered the DIVX quality settings (Start-Programs-DivX-DivX Pro Codec-Decoder Configuration) to the minimum, all playback was perfect.

        The EPIA M (for Multimedia) boards debut in October. I'm hoping they'll use a somewhat more powerful processor in those.

  • If its size doesn't satisfy my secretary, I'd have to go to great pain and expense to get it enlarged. And adding another 6 inches of plastic to what's already there would look kind of weird.

  • Travel light... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Burning1 ( 204959 ) on Saturday September 07, 2002 @03:32AM (#4211428) Homepage
    A couple of years ago at the height of the .com economy I was working as a "Sales Support Technician."

    Our sales force had been touring the country with a windows based pre-alpha product that had a footprint too large to effectivly work on any of the laptops at the time... Our sales force started carting around a normal desktop. Imagine their chagrin when they realised that desktops weren't meant to travel regularly and they had to talk their way out of demoing the product...

    Well, that's the reason for that neat-o title. Part of my job included carting around the two 19" monitor boxes containing a mid tower case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, etc... I would have *loved* a design like this (and a flat panel display) doing all that traveling.

    ...Sadly, all the money for cool toys went into paying the salary for a certain pair of other IT workers who's sole purpose seemed to be making everyone else's life hell. Ah ve.

    Regardless, these days laptops like the Dell Insperion's negate the need for complete desktop systems, but I can see cases where a proper desktop would be useful (Demoing a PCI/AGP device anyone? How about a particularly nasty piece of bloatware.)

    It's a nice tradeoff between flexibility and size.
  • Are more people installing comps into their vehicles than we know about, or is the cell phone alone still enough to keep our eyes off the road? Who the hell thought of the word Telematics? Was it before or after he said, "Sorry about running over your cat Mrs. Jenkins, but someone was trying to outbid me on e-bay." ?????

    Peter B.s' Carputer is rather sweet distraction. But alas, to use windoze for such a divine creation is truly a pity. Oh well... The $750 he spent falls well below the price of a new laptop. Hey Pete, how are you networking? WLAN? Or is there an Ethernet plug on your car somewhere next to the gas cap? I also wonder where the CD/DVD-ROM is located. And how long do you suppose it will be before the hard drive gets rattled into oblivion.

    I'm wondering because having a computer in my car seems to be the only feasible way to watch DVDs, post to Slash Dot, read the news and shop for auto insurance all while being chased at 110 mph by the cops through a school zone.

    For my Carputer I want to use an old laptop LCD monitor mounted in place of my sun visor (Er, I mean the passengers sun visor)... anyone found any info on converting laptop LCDs for use with a home (or in this case, car) computer?

    And like my mother always said, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."
  • Ok, I can understand the utility of having a computer in the car and the article has links on how to give the critter the correct power. But the thing that has been mystifiying me for a while, is how do you drive around and not trash the hard drive on the first pot hole or rail road track that you drive over? Are the notebook sized hard drives that good for shock factor??? I could imagine a fleet of courier vehicles that I could switch over to linux/pc's & 2.4G wireless, if I could be sure that the h/d wouldn't be trashed after a few months of use/pounding.
    Anyone with experience doing this willing to share their wizdom?
    Or should this turn into an ask slashdot?
  • I submitted this as a slashdot story some time ago, but it's still "pending"...

    My case mod [sf.net]

    72 LEDs mounted behind translucent plastic, all with computer controlled brightness. There's an XMMS plugin :)

  • They chose a VW Beetle because it's also air-cooled!

    For the record, the VW Beetle they chose is a new Beetle, which is water cooled. The old beetle is air cooled. So is the old VW bus..
  • what is this? month of 'small computers'?

    seriously, how does this come as news? if the mobos were allinone superfast crusoes with integrated evolving gfx chip or something maybe then...
  • The monitor they show is only video, not VGA ! Has *ANYBODY* ever found a source for a ~10" LCD VGA Monitor?

    I don't want to use NTSC out from a video card (clarity and all) and I don't think I'll have much luck dismanteling laptop LCD's.

    Help!
  • I decided to pitch an arguement to my wife about doing this kind of mod with some equipment. After much explanation she just sat there laughing at me... All she would say is, "I can't belive you are arguing 'Smaller is Better!'"
    What can I say? I never win.
  • When You are, like me, using several PCs (as for printer server, connecting peripherals that don't work with my latest/fastest machine etc.) and building them myself, I have both a space problem and cooling problem. A motherboard like this would fit in:

    Athlon-socket.
    1 AGP port (45+ degree bent socket to save space).
    2 PCI ports (45+ degree bent etc.).
    2 Ethernet 10/100 external ports in a builtin Switch (with 1 "virtual" EthAdapter/card accessible from the OS).
    2 (or more) DDR memory sockets.
    6 USB ports.
    4 IDE ports.

    All in a minimal format (much smaller than Micro-ATX).

    A variant could be as above but with:

    Ethernet Gigabit Switch.
    Only one PCI and builtin Video.
    (For "server" dutys.)

    And to that PSUs half the size as now.

    I have a dream..
  • I've got an old Personal Iris case with a working power supply, but I'm not sure how to rewire it for a standard PC motherboard. Does anyone know of a guide somewhere? I was just going to get a normal PC case and leave this alone, but this thread has come at a good time...

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