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Hardware

New Dual System PC 163

Posted by CmdrTaco from the cram-more-in-the-box dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ExtremeMhz.com has released an article on how they designed and built a PC containing dual systems. One system is a supercooled Intel and the other is a water chilled AMD. This PC features Dual SCSI storage subsytems also. Looks like some crazy stuff." Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case ;)
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New Dual System PC

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  • Mac in a dual case. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SN74S181 ( 581549 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:04AM (#5364581)
    Well, there have been PC cards for Macintosh machines for a long, long time, so I guess you can cram an expensive 'PC' (we'll call it 'an IBM' for the old time Mac Zealots) in a Mac case.

    It's possible because the PC is an open architecture.

    I can imagine the screaming and sputtering and legal injunctions that would stream out of Steve Job's office, though, if someone tried to implement and market a PowerMac on a PCI card that could be plugged into a PC. It's closed hardware, you see.

    • Oh dear, do you have any idea what you may have just started here?

      ...the PC is an open architecture.

      PowerMac...It's closed hardware, you see.

      Here we go again...

    • Re:Mac in a dual case. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mithras the prophet ( 579978 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @11:17AM (#5364840) Homepage Journal
      You can buy this PowerPC on a card [agelectronics.co.uk].

      Combine it with Mac-On-Linux [maconlinux.org], and you can run OS X Jaguar on your PC [maconlinux.org].

      Or so I imagine - I certainly haven't tried it.

      • Re:Mac in a dual case. (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        actually that MOL seems to be a waste of time
        from the FAQ

        Before continuing, you should also be aware of some requrements for running MOL:

        - A supported PowerPC(TM) CPU (604[e], G3 or G4)
        - Linux/ppc
        - A 2.2 or 2.4 kernel
        - MacOS 8.6* or later (9.2.1 is known to work)

        MOL can run MacOS 7.5.2 and later in "oldworld" mode. However, this requires an image of a supported boot ROM.

        MOL can run on non-Apple hardware. APUS hardware (Amiga PowerUp System) is currently unsupported, but work is in progress.

        so you need to have a Mac then run Linux which in turn then runs OSX

        this seems to be as useful as having a Windows emulator on Windows or an Amiga emulator that only runs on an Amiga

      • Re:Mac in a dual case. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MyHair ( 589485 )
        You can buy this PowerPC on a card [agelectronics.co.uk].

        I can't find the price. Anyone know the price on that and if it would be useful to run OSX on a PC? Or perhaps a Linux host running separate from the PC?

    • Terrasoft makes PowerPC Linux machines, called briQ's [terrasoftsolutions.com] with a 5.25" form factor. Come with a 500Mhz G4 or G3, laptop (2.5") HDD, etc.--and only manage to chew up 40W. They also managed to cram in a PCI slot somewhere...

      Theoretically, you could cram a full-tower case full of these babies, thus having your Mac 'n AMD or whatever.

      Wonder if that comes close to SGI's computing power per unit volume record...

    • Commodore did this in the '80s, with the Amiga 2000 and the Bridgeboard. The various models of Bridgeboards had x86 processors and their own RAM. They could share the floppy drive, and could display simple graphics on the Amiga screen, in a window. Or you could install a separate video card and use a switch. My A2000 was setup to run MacOS, Windows and AmigaOS simulataneously, all in one box, many years ago. As has been already stated, Apple had PC cards available for Mac for some models also. Again, many years ago.
    • haha, where have i heard this argument before... oh yeah... :)

  • Siamese did this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:04AM (#5364583)
    If I'm not mistaken, there was a range of computers built by (or called) Siamese. They had amiga, atari, mac and PC, and any combination of many others all in the one system, all used through the one monitor and keyboard. I'm not sure about sharing drives however
    • I don't think it shared drives. The main idea was to use retargetable graphics on the Amiga side to come up on the PC screen. It all worked really well supposedly.
    • Close. It was a wacky Amiga-people idea (that failed like the rest) to put an Amiga on a coprocessor card for PCs and sell it to people who didn't know better. It happened around 1997, and IIRC, it was never released.

    • Re:Siamese did this (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:19AM (#5364637)
      There was bridgeboard for the Amiga A500 and A2000 (circa 1989/90) that was essentially a 286/386 on a card. It shared the Amiga's memory and drives and you could pull up a PC DOS session in a window within the Amiga's OS. It's the most integrated dual-hardware system I've ever come across. Heck, you could even copy and paste text from one to the other - later versions even let you transfer files between the two machines.
      • we had one of those... never worked that good though...
      • Back in 1983 my parents bought me an IBM PC but the high school had Apple ][s. So we got a QuadLink [atarimagazines.com] board so I could bring work (and games) home. Worked like a charm but a bit tough to install -- it was an octopus, with wires running everywhere.

        I still have it but I have no idea whether it would actually work in modern PCs.

  • cool (Score:4, Informative)

    by Captain Galactic ( 651907 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:05AM (#5364585)
    I always dreamed of this...Play a game on one system, when boss/parent/spouse walks in,push a button & pretend you are working...

    • Re:cool (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:10AM (#5364601)
      Yeah, like some sort of... Windowing... system... Using "windows", we could quickly and easily switch between two (OR MORE??) different programs all together! Maybe by pressing special key combonations, too! (That way we wouldn't have to modify our keyboards, too.) Like, ALT-TAB on Windows... maybe COMMAND-TAB on Mac. That sure would fool them! Now if only we could get some techy-type person to make and mass market this! (Or are we just dreaming here??)
    • Man...you know what...there was a gaming "system" that came out in the early 90's that could do this.

      I think it was called...Leisure Suit Larry 1.

    • Re:cool (Score:4, Funny)

      by MyHair ( 589485 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @12:20PM (#5365136) Journal
      ...when boss/parent/spouse walks in,push a button & pretend you are working...

      Damn, you work with your parents and your spouse? Sounds like a mess to me. I'd look for another job!

      My boss is in another state 900 miles away. So are my parents and my ex spousal candidates. I highly recommend this arrangement, although it's hard to get all of them to move so I had to, but other than that it's been great.
      • ...when boss/parent/spouse walks in,push a button & pretend you are working...
        Damn, you work with your parents and your spouse?

        I think you misread that. The / in this case is not an or operator, it's an and. Clearly this person is from some combination of down south, and back east.

    • After seeing the first picture on their webpage, it made me start dreaming of some sort of contraption where you can have your bong work out of your computer !!! That would rule!

  • Cool (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now if they can only cram a built in space heater in it to make it perfect. Wait a minute....

  • One question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by prichardson ( 603676 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:07AM (#5364591) Journal
    I understand this has some coolness factor, but does it have any purpose at all? One might as well just grab two cases and duct tape them together. The only time sharing a case would be cool is if they could share other components as well (monitor/keyboard don't count).

    When I first heard about the PC and mac combo I thought someone might have found a way for two computers to share components and was wildly disapointed. I'll start getting interested in this stuff when the computers can share a hard drive or a video card. Otherwise it's merely a case mod.
    • Exactly my thought, like drop off one of each at a Delaware welding shop and pick it up after lunch.
    • If people never did things simply because they were cool, life would be much more boring. Part of the fun of doing things new and different ways is just the experience of it, regardless of whether it serves a useful purpose or not. I've had at least 5 different operating systems (a few linux distros, beos, windows.net) installed on my second hard drive in the past couple months. Did they all serve a useful purpose? No, but I like the experience of trying something different, just like the people at extrememhz.
    • The two *are* sharing a disk.
    • A computer without two systems is like a duck without a wooden handle.
    • Since when did "purpose" or "usefulness" have anything to do with a geek project? You want a purpose? I'll give you one!

      Okay... here's the scenario. You need a new computer, but your wife/girlfriend/SO says "There's only money in the budget for ONE new computer. We'll just have to share!"

      So you just buy this monstrosity, keep her from seeing the price tag, and the two of you can compute away at the same time. It's kind of like a bicycle built for two, only without the doing things together part.

      • Wouldn't it be possible to have a single computer with two sets of monitors/keyboards? It would be like a dumb X client except that it only takes one computer.

        I seem to remember Sun or SGI doing something like this with one of their workstations. Could it be done with PCs?

    • First things first. These people have done nothing clever; they've just shoved two independent computers in one big box. Big deal. My hamster could have thought of something more useful... like running round his wheel.

      Now, what IS clever is to put two simple motherboards together in a normal ATX case. It can be done. Just a processor, LAN and some RAM... and run OpenMOSIX / MOSIX software. Clustering on the cheap. So it's not dual-proc, but it's much cheaper, and you also get loads of PCI slots, IDE headers, serial ports - the works.

      Presumably one can do something clever with Xinerama and the two VGA-outs. Any X-perts here?

      Ebuyer in the UK (now the US also) sell a fully-featured motherboard for 35ukp. Just add some RAM, a CPU and some power and stick it into your case. Double the power of your PC for 150ukp.
    • I've thought about putting my main computer in the same box as a server. Throw in a network switch and you have a great rig to take to LAN partys. Or use it as a space saving setup. Me, I'd do it for the coolness.

  • They have done PC and Mac together (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TechTV's Screensavers did it. They put a G4 in one of those Antec Cases and then they put a 5 1/4" pc in one of the drive bays.

    It was pretty complicated and look largely useless but heh... they did it!

    Look back on their site around Oct-Dec to find it.

  • Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's 2 separate PCs, in one case, with a unified PSU and cooling system...

    Next!!!

    Seriously, this is a bit boring really, isn't it... wake me up when a MoBo manufacturer develops a dual-machine (not dual CPU!) board with a unified disk subsystem, now that I would buy...

  • PC/MAC Machine (Score:5, Informative)

    by rminear ( 2509 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:11AM (#5364605)
    TechTV/The Screen Savers did this about a month or two ago. They built a clone mac machine, and then added the PC Parts and processor to it. http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3413988,00.html

  • mac and pc in one case (Score:4, Informative)

    by ZeissIcon ( 67281 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:13AM (#5364613)
    Actually, back in the day, they did. Orange computing used to make a PCI card with an entire pentium 100 computer on it that would share the hard drive on your 604 mac, you could access it through a window on your mac desktop. I think they discontinued them because they were useless; 500 mhz processors were showing up in the marketplace and the Orange card was more expensive than a complete PC.
    • The company was Orange Micro [orangemicro.com] , and they've long since gotten out of the business.

      Their cards were always priced similarly to a complete PC system at the same Mhz; what you were paying for was a) the convenience of running two systems out of one box, and b) the interoperability of the two environments. Their competition was Insignia's SoftWindows emulator, which was as zippy as a tortoise in a vat of cold molasaass, so Orange Micro offered a significantly better solution.

      I think what killed their business model was that Macs got fast enough to run PC emulation software at acceptable speeds (about the time the G3's first came out). No, you still couldn't do 3D modeling with it, but when you double-clicked on the My Computer icon on the desktop, the window would open and render in seconds rather than minutes. That also meant that Office-type applications now ran at acceptible speeds, despite the fundamental x86/PPC incompatibility of having to convert big endian/small endian numbers for every byte that passed through the CPU. Orange Micro just couldn't compete because their PC cards started at just over $1000, whereas VirtualPC cost (back then) about $250.

  • Already been done... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:15AM (#5364622)
    Way back in the mists of time, i remember two occurances of pretty much the same thing. One was a sega mega drive in the same case as a desktop PC, literally it had a place where you could plug in a cart underneath the CD bay. Also the Amiga was released with the same thing, you had a Amiga 1200 mobo and a Intel mobo in the same case, both sitting on the same scsi chain using the same drives at the same time. It was kinda expensive at the time, but useful for the people who needed both. Screen switching was done via a built in kvm or something. Thinking about it now, i think it was a extension to the Siamese [dircon.co.uk] which used a serial leed between two seperate cases.
    • One was a sega mega drive in the same case as a desktop

      that would have been the amstrad mega pc ... linkage:

      here [swipnet.se] and here [club-internet.fr]
    • There are actually a number of different PC hardware solutions to running PC software on the amiga. The most popular was a 286 which commodore sold, and sometimes bundled with the Amiga 2000. There is a text console for it which shows up on its own "screen" (you know, the GUI-mode screens which can be pulled up/down and flopped between; Workbench is on one of them.

      There have been PC boards for tons of computers. There was an SBUS 486 card for old suns, there have been a number of PC-on-a-card devices for macs, both nubus and PCI (and maybe some other ones too for a performa or two) and of course, you can get a PC-in-a-PC.

  • I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:17AM (#5364627)
    ExtremeMhz.com has released an article on how they designed and built a PC containing dual systems. One system is a supercooled Intel and the other is a water chilled AMD.

    For years, you've been able to mix a PC and a SPARC [byte.com] in one case, and you can mix AS/400 and PC [itworld.com] too. There are many advantages to this kind of configuration. But why would you want to mix a PC and a PC?

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)

      by 3waygeek ( 58990 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:44AM (#5364708)
      FWIW, SPARC cards date back to the early 90s; Definicon had an ISA bus SPARC coprocessor in 1991 or so. It ran SunOS 4, a forerunner of Solaris.

      Definicon had other coprocessors, too, including 68K, AMD 29K, and National 32K families. When I worked there (90-92), I developed firmware and about half of a SVR4 kernel for an i860 coprocessor; unfortunately the project was cancelled (lack of funds).

      • Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
        SunOS 4, a forerunner of Solaris

        Solaris == SunOS + OpenWindows.

        Solaris 1.x is based on SunOS4 which in turn is based on 4.3BSD.

        Solaris 2.x is based on SunOS4, which is based on (or at least is a workalike for) SVR4. The SunOS4/BSD codebase was (ostensibly) used to create the /usr/ucb binaries included with it, which are BSD-style commands (SVR4 commands being the default.)

        SunOS4 is not a forerunner of Solaris, SunOS4 is the prior major revision of SunOS, a component of Solaris. SunOS4 is SunOS5's predecessor, though.

    • "But why would you want to mix a PC and a PC?"

      I know this is slashdot, but i will remind you anyways. why: so you can make a beowolf cluster of them!

  • Mac and PC in one case? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:17AM (#5364628)
    1995: LC 630 DOS. 68040 and 486/66 in one case, swap operating systems almost instantly with a key combination. It even exchanged the clipboard contents.

    1997: PowerMac 7300/180. Similar arrangement, Pentium 100 or 166

    Sheesh, I thought this was "news for nerds", not the "noise of newbies"

  • Wow! A Mac and a PC in the same case, Taco? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You mean like I had in 1990 with my Amiga 3000 running a Bridgeboard card with a 386 CPU and at the same time running the Emplant on the Amiga side to run Mac software?
    Fuck, you're a real visionary Taco!
    • Not quite like that. Your Amiga setup was actually probably better in many ways. Most of the Amiga's hardware was used by the 386 - at least the hard drive and the monitor were. The same goes for the Emulated Mac. Best of all though, you could run apps for all three systems at the same time on the same screen!

  • No way (Score:5, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:20AM (#5364640) Homepage Journal
    Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case.

    Yeah right. I'll put a Mac and a PC in one case for you the moment you make oil and water mix. Oh wait. They already did that [slashdot.org]. Nevermind.

  • Back in 1992, British PC manufacturer Amstrad built a machine that combined a 386/SX PC with a Sega Megadrive.

    It was a complete flop, though.

  • sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:21AM (#5364643) Homepage
    It's a computer and fridge, with water and ice dispenser! Now if only it had a crisper :)
    • It may not have a crisper, but if you could turn off the cooling on both systems on demand, you'd have one HELL of a toaster oven.
      • You can't do that though. You know how many people would put toast into the toaster than bread?

        You'd have quite a problem with tech support :)
  • Isn't this getting a bit weird for slashdot?

    I mean, I'm sure it's alright in some circles to talk about police constables with anoraks being shoved into cases, but I always thought those sort of situations were more the preserve of some of the world's seedier clubs...

    Ah well, to each his own.

  • What an innovative concept... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...though I think I've seen it somewhere else [rlx.com]...
  • There's quite a lively online gaming scene in Poland, but the internet infrastructure is - for the most part - monopoly run by the state telco. One of the telco's largest competitor's (Internet Partners) has been building their own network, and have set it up very well with lots of crossovers to the telco's network.

    Anyway, one active scene member managed to hook up 'the scene' (in general) with a place for 2 machines in one of IP's server rooms. The only problem was, how to meet the demand of all of the scene members. Different games, different servers, different loads. The solution was to put together 4 dual processor motherboards into two cases. This let them set up something like 30 different servers for 3-4 different games.

    I'll try to find the link to the article (with photos)... I know I had it arround here somewhere.
  • Dudes, it must suck to be you...

    That brought zero to the state of the art. Talk about being stuck on/in a case.

    How about improving component accessibility next time. Your case looked like it was filled with flatulent intestines.

  • my god... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Da_Monk ( 88392 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:28AM (#5364671)
    Now if only they could put a mac and a PC in one case

    can you imagine the consequences?
    Dogs and cats living together...MASS HYSTERIA!

  • Sharing? what a waste. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pyrote ( 151588 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:32AM (#5364677) Journal
    Asus and many others already do this, it's called dual CPU motherboards. if you want 2 environments, VMware is out and MSoft is planning a similar software built in.

    I thought about this myself, not impressed with it's technical feat, I choose to just run a 2ghz machine and a dual monitor system.

    Usefull if you can't afford/aquire another case, but I can't see how this changes the world any more than putting a computer in a 1920's taster case (which I'm trying to do now anyway). I hope I don't wind up on slashdot frontpage.
    • ...and MSoft is planning a similar software built in.

      No, MS bought the company (and its IP) who did this already. MS doesn't innovate, they buy.
      (-1, Troll or +1, True? You decide. I already have.)
      • Microsoft just aquired the VM IP from Connectix. Press release is here [connectix.com]. They are a direct competitor to VMware. Here's my question. Now that Microsoft owns the software, will the software run non-Microsoft Operating Systems? It did before, will it now?

        This whole "two computers in one case! yay!" thing is tired. Move along, nothing to see here.

        • prolly not... my guess is that it wil be implimented into a "clean room" copy of the OS running to offer terminal services that can do more.

          My guess is that they are itchin to get DirectX implimented on a terminal service. then they can set the X box up as a terminal for a hub computer.

          Personally I like terminal service style computing, but not at the expense of flexibility like running Linux on a winpc.

  • MacCharlie (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shayde ( 189538 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:44AM (#5364706) Homepage
    The first real incarnation of this was a weird little thing called a MacCharlie. It took what was then the only form factor of the Mac (what I believe folks today call a 128KE) and added a pair of 5 1/4" floppy drives, a system board, and the keyboard extension needed for the F1-F10 keys and the numeric keypad.

    Here's a decent webpage [demon.co.uk] about it. It was manufactured by Dayna, and actually was sort of cute.

    I believe it was limited to 80x24 text applications (since in that day, the Monochrome Graphics Adapter was actually an expansion, and if you were -really- inventive, you could get (gasp) a CGA card! Woo! :)
    • Yup, that was the first one, and then there were the cards. Once apple added a card bus (NuBus, then later PCI) there were several PC-on-card products that shared the disk, video hardware, etc. Apple even sold one of their own, a 486 board that worked in the 6100/7100/8100 series systems. This allowed you to switch systems w/ a key combo and shared the contents of the clipboard as well. It worked pretty good, but was a little pricey.

      Now for the real fun. Apple still has machines in R&D running hardware that supports both their OS and Windows in a similar multi-board type system. This allows Windows to run on Apple HW w/o SW emulation. There is a some abstraction layer code that lets the windowing system interoperate like rootless X11 in Jaguar. Of course, the question is, does the market want this, and in the end would it help Apple. Until someone decides that those questions have been answered appropriatly, don't expect to see these systems emerge from R&D.

      So in short... move along, nothing to see here ;-)

  • If they could get both computes to share the same SCSI buss I would be impressed.

    I rember back in 1991 or so I had a friend that did this. He even wrote a program so the computers could pass network data over it.

    It never worked that well IIRC, but was a interesting proof of concept.

  • But ? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When will they put two FPGA C64 emulators into one box?

    Now that would be swank.

  • Why is it so big? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @10:55AM (#5364741)
    A rough calculation suggests that a flow of no more than 1.5 litres/min should be needed.(Water is an extremely effective heat removal fluid). This is very small indeed. So why is the equipment so big? The wall of the tubing is given as being 3mm thick. I would have thought that 5mm bore 1.5mm wall tubing would be more than adequate, with the result of much lower stresses on the heatsink, and much easier pipoe routing. The convector ("radiator") only needs to be large because the temperature differential between air and liquid is tiny and the design is extremely inefficient.

    As for conformal coating, if you want to try this heed this well meant advice: use the brush on stuff. It is much less likely to get into connectors from BELOW (masking doesn't cover the holes on the board side of the connectors) and it is easier to apply around devices that have heat sinks or just need some air exposure.

    I may be wrong but I am going to hazard a guess that a lot of this water cooling stuff is far bigger than necessary in order to look impressive - but that does not improve the performance, neither is a thick walled tube less likely to leak than a properly sized thin walled tube. Computers do not have high levels of vibration and cables and pipes crossing one another or rubbing on metal like they do in the more badly designed cars.

  • The first step in setting up the cooling circuit involves preparation. In order to ensure that the electronics are protected in the event of a leak occurring in the future, all PC boards (for both systems) were protected by applying several layers of spray on acrylic lacquer conformal coating.
    OK, sounds like a great idea. Where does one purchase spray on acrylic lacquer conformal coating?
    Note: Special care must be taken to protect the areas of the board that should no be sprayed, e.g. memory slots, ATX connectors, PCI slots etc.
    But wait. If you don't cover the RAM slots, what's the point of covering anything? OK, maybe if you've got a little leak and it just dribbles on the board a bit you'll get lucky and you won't lose any blue smoke. I just don't see the point, it seems a bit like wearing a radiation suit all the time to protect against The Bomb, but not wearing the hat.
  • Well, there have been PC cards for Macintosh machines for a long, long time, so I guess you can cram an expensive 'PC' (we'll call it 'an IBM' for the old time Mac Zealots) in a Mac case.

    Unfortuntely, these cards are no longer offered - perhaps the power requirements got too obscene for the PCI bus to provide power. I bet nobody thought of hooking up a drive connector to a PCI card back then (as with a Radeon 9700)

    I would definetly be in the market for this, as its one less @#$#$#@ box under my desk. I don't need more than a ~1Ghz Pentium III pc (or two). A dual Centrino on a PCI card would be a bonus. Yes I would like to bring it up as a window under os X or X (or optionally full screen cheap but decent 2d-accelerated video out the back of the card)

    Anybody going to make that card for me? I believe the highest performance model ever offered by any of the manufacturers was the OrangePC (OrangePC 660 - AMD K6-2/400 @100 MHz bus, L2 cache) That's too pokey for today, plus there's no driver support for doing things between modern versions of the OS, or support for newer macs than a B&W G3.

    The VirtualPC route has never interested me too much - every time I've demoed it, its never been quite fast enough for the tasks I wanted it for - like compiling for win32 or a developer install of sql server, etc.

    • I would definetly be in the market for this, as its one less @#$#$#@ box under my desk. I don't need more than a ~1Ghz Pentium III pc (or two). A dual Centrino on a PCI card would be a bonus. Yes I would like to bring it up as a window under os X or X (or optionally full screen cheap but decent 2d-accelerated video out the back of the card)

      Why don't you just put the boxes in a closet somewhere, get it on your home network, and use some kind of network-based video? (VNC, Terminal Services, X Windows, etc.)
  • There's only a few (good) reasons to do something like this: push price down per performance/application, push performance up per price/application, or push new technological applications per price/performance. This thing doesn't do any of those.

    Outside of the usual overclocker zeal, I really don't get it.

  • What's so great about this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by xA40D ( 180522 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @11:24AM (#5364883) Homepage
    Just two systems? I've got 6 systems in one box. A 386sx, 386dx, 486sx2, 486dx4, CYRIX 686,and a Pentium. It's got a big label on the front too:

    Obsolete Hardware

    Hmm, I wonder if I could get on the front page if I posted some photos on the web?
  • now there would be a good combo, forget the mac

  • Pardon me if I'm not impressed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TWX_the_Linux_Zealot ( 227666 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @12:08PM (#5365072) Journal
    As huge as that case is, I don't see how it would be difficult to put two complete PCs inside. If it were the size of a standard full-tower (aka, not a doublewide, like it appears to be), or were something engineered along the lines of the Mini-ITX form-factor, I would then be impressed. With how they have it, I'm not.

    My old DEC Alphaserver 1000a is smaller than that, and if I took out the raid array section and replaced the power supplies with standard size supplies, I could easily fit two motherboards into the case. I can't see why I'd want to.

    If someone is really interested in having an enclosure with multiple PCs in it, I'd recommend getting one of those equipment units that musicians have for sound equipment (one of the deeper ones), and going with 19" rackmount stuff. It's more durable, more standardized, and at this point. the cases can be found from anywhere between $60 and $100, depending on how fancy you get. If you want more than that, get a standard 19" telco cabinet, and put all of your systems, network equipment, etc, in there. It's not difficult.
    • Ditto. This is one ugly hack, if you ask me. That is definetly the Frankenstein Computer. Why not put the thing on top (what is that? compressor? the lousy article doesn't say) inside this monster case? I totally fail to see the 'coolness' of projects like these, it's like the glue-on spoliers.
      J.
      • It is definitely one thing to have big computers, after all, my workstation is an ATX-full tower, and I have three 17" displays hooked up triplehead xinerama, but I'm actively looking for the right rackmount case to replace the tower with. I'd rather have big UI than big case. As much as I have mixed feelings about Apple Computer, their plans of having small, inconspicuous computers that look cool are a definite advantage.

  • Rack mount (Score:5, Funny)

    by briancnorton ( 586947 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @12:27PM (#5365166) Homepage
    This is truly an amazing feat of boredom, but isnt this why they invented rackmounts?
  • I remember a Sega Megadrive and a 386DX(?) were once merged into a single PC-like box in the early '90s. The Megadrive was great for gaming, but sadly the two systems were completely separated. You couldn't program the gfx chips of the Megadrive through the 386. And Sonic the Hedgehog looked much better on a big TV screen anyway ;-)

  • microsoft and apple (Score:2, Interesting)

    by frankmu ( 68782 )
    they used to cohabitate way before the mac/pc combo.. the old apple ][ had a cp/m card made by microsoft in the early 80's.

  • PC and MAC in one (Score:4, Informative)

    by Milliardo ( 551873 ) on Sunday February 23, 2003 @12:51PM (#5365277)
    Tech TV's [techtv.com] show The Screen Savers [thescreensavers.com]put a MAC and PC [techtv.com]in the same box. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but it worked.

  • Only 2? (Score:1)

    by eht ( 8912 )
    RenderCube [rendercube.com] does 4, they also build in a KVM and a 100Mbps Ethernet switch, it looks quite nice too
  • http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story /0,24330,3413988,00.html i think that 301 little pc belongs on my dash, rather than in a custom mac case
  • As to your comment about wishing they could put a Mac and PC in the same case, well its been done [techtv.com] by mastermind Kevin Rose of the Screensavers! He even used a Samsung SyncMaster 171MP picture-in-picture monitor and a KVM switch that allows you to see and control both on the same screen! Also check out Yoshi's Boxx [techtv.com], with every game sytem you can think of crammed together:
  • so, wouldnt the best idea be to implement some sort of hardware standard where the motherboard is just a connceting device where you can just plug in these other boards that contain whole computer systems, it would be good... (imagines what it would be like) mmmmmm... tasty, just imagine, any kind of processor you could put in your computer... it would be universal... i dont really have teh money or skills to prusue that right now, but if anyone has some vc they want to give me, i would try to make it happen... :P
  • though they seem to have disappeared, they built a modular architecture. want x86? slap in an x86 processor daughter board. Want a sparc? slap in a sparc daughter card.
    too bad apple didn't want to play. they were all ready to go with MAC daughter cards too.

    sadly they now appear to be no more.
    >x_x
  • Brilliant stuff. Now where can I get my dream case from - one with all the drives and IO and switches on the SAME SIDE so I don't have to keep turning the damn thing 180 every time I want to fiddle with something?
  • And I thought the original Franken-system was the old DEC Robin. I gotta admit, this one is a LOT faster.
  • PC cards, biscuit PCs etc. [advantech.com]

    Not to mention the VIA mini-itx boards, Shuttle spacewalker flex-atx boards, PCs that fit in a 5 1/4" bay. If I win lotto I'll make a cluster out of a backplane and a bunch of PC cards :)

  • Check it out here. [imdb.com]

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