Yet Another PC-Mac Case Mod

JayPee writes "Fortunately, this mod doesn't involve destroying a brand new G5 for its shell. (And yes, I know the G5 was a "hoax"). Instead, the modder used an old Macintosh SE case for his gaming computer. While I'm sad that he wasn't able to use the old black and white display in conjunction with the LCD, I'm still amazed that he was able to deal with the heat issues that I'm assuming would pop up by stuffing a higher end PC and video card in a Mac SE case." This mod is technically impressive, and looks great.

First Mod

[X-wes]

This article says that the designer of this case mod is actually doing his first ever mod. Considering how unique this idea is, it's amazing it went so well. It really looks quite amazing.

Re:First Mod

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like the retro look. Except the blue light, which is ugly retro. So two years ago.

Re:First Mod

[SphericalCrusher]

Yeah, I'm very impressed with it. That's one bad ass computing machine with a bad ass case! Hopefully we'll see more and more Mac mods.

Re:First Mod

[SphericalCrusher]

There is nothing wrong with taking the system, making the performance specs better, and changing the way it looks. Maybe YOU don't like the idea, but that doesn't make it a STUPID idea.

risky HD placement?

[inio]

I would have second thoughts before strapping the HDD to the side of the PSU...

Re:risky HD placement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Attaching magnetic field sensitive device to magnetic field generating gizmo is never good idea. He will figure it out the hard way.

Re:risky HD placement?

[Greedo]

I also got the shivers from this part:

I got a 400W power supply that I spray-painted black ...

That's just asking for trouble, I think. Unless he used some heat-resistant paint, this machine is going to make some nasty fumes.

Re:risky HD placement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Your psu isn't going to bother it, honestly nobody seems to know anything about magnetic fields OR their computer components anymore. Have you ever taken apart a hard drive? There are EXTREMELY powerful magnets in there. It's true that you can't leave a floppy next to a magnet, it's not true for hard drives.

Re:risky HD placement?

[irokitt]

Back in 1997 Hewlett Packard actually sold units where the hard drive was nested right on top of the PSU. I'm still having nightmares involving hard drives on their death throes.

Akihabara

[jetfuel]

I came across something similar in Akihabara a couple of years ago: http://context.metalbat.com/index.pl?671 The i/30 is an SE/30 fitted with a G3 mobo and with the B&W CRT replaced by a TFT. Excellent.

Re:Akihabara

[Mad_Fred]

That's the real deal! I don't get all that impressed when people don't integrate the screen into a machine like this. Sure, it's good work getting everything into an enclosure of specific dimensions, but if you don't get a screen in it's still just that: an odd box.

Re:Akihabara

[Golias]

I could not agree more.

Whether you are talking about an old Macintosh, a jewelry box, a tool case, whatever... If you are just going to use it as the plastic walls around your garden-variety PC, your project is slightly less interesting than making a bong out of it.

Re:Akihabara

[kimagine]

What are you considering a garden variety PC? What do you consider a tool case? Please enlighten me. Brandyn, If this is you, please enlighten me more. I am your voicemail. MAG

Re:Akihabara

[colinleroy]

The screen looks photoshopped in the upper edges, and just putting some USB keyboard in front of it isn't enough. I'd had been impressed if the mod was detailed, but I, too, can claim to put a bi-g5 in my powerbook 100, with just a photo starring said powerbook powered off...

Re:Akihabara

[jetfuel]

The screen looks photoshopped in the upper edges, and just putting some USB keyboard in front of it isn't enough. I'd had been impressed if the mod was detailed, but I, too, can claim to put a bi-g5 in my powerbook 100, with just a photo starring said powerbook powered off...

Why would I fake this? 1. Photochop a G3 + SE/30 mod and post on my photoblog claiming that some random store made it. 2. Wait 2 years, then link to it on Slashdot. 3. ???

Re:Akihabara

[owlicks58]

I'm not saying you faked this, but as someone who uses photoshop every single day and my job is retouching pictures I can tell you that screen is fake. It's a bad fake at that. The color is far too uniform, a real screen would have much more light reflected. Not to mention it's wider at the top than it is at the bottom, look at the width of the monitor compared to the side of the case. And yes, the most obvious is the top corners from the old monitor showing through, even the bottom corners had a poor j

Re:Akihabara

[jetfuel]

I took this picture with my own camera. That means I saw this Mac with my own eyes. If you are suggesting that someone used Photoshop to fake a physical object sitting on a table in a store, we might be in more trouble than I'd originally thought.

Re:Akihabara

[baryon351]

I came across this picture of a Mac Classic running OSX in Color [danamania.com] linked on /. months ago. It however is a certain fake, as are most (all?) of the ones on that site.

Re:Akihabara

[ChuyMatt]

seeing as the site is called vHacks (Virtual hacks) i would think it would be obvious...

Re:Akihabara

[Rand Race]

Any idea what screen it is using? I've been looking for a LCD or even a color CRT that would fit the SE/30's opening without major modification to the case or fitting a smaller LCD (like this [mini-itx.com]) for a while now.

hmmm

[Apreche]

I just brought me home my apple //gs and my mac plus. I'm a gettin' some unhealthy ideas maybe...

Re:hmmm

[Foo2rama]

hmmm Things to do with the old apple II clone and IIgs in my garage. Although a part of me wants to hold onto the IIGS as a potential collectors item. But that old commie 64 case might have enough room... I wonder how the keyboard was wired in that.

From the looks of it

[freaksta]

It would appear he is running WindowsXP.

Should use Objectdock

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

He should junk the Windows XP shell and add ObjectDock [stardock.com], which does a pretty fair job of emulating the feel of the OS X dock. That'd really throw people for a a loop when they saw it...

Re:Should use Objectdock

[Brandybuck]

Or KDE with Baghira and KSmoothdock...

Re:Should use Objectdock

[System.out.println()]

Objectdock = Windows XP
Baghira = I don't have a fucking clue
KSmoothDock = Linux

As one of the other posters noted, it appears he would like to play some games on it.

Re:From the looks of it

[irokitt]

It would appear he would like to play some games on it.

Nice job, except for ESD controls

[Halvard]

Appearance: wow, great job! But it looks like you want a static display piece! Nice job laying out all your hard work on the carpet. Next time, uh, lay it out on a work bench, ESD matt, etc. It'll last longer, you'll hopefully have fewer problems, etc.

What is this,

[Stigmata669]

a reverse rice rocket?

I guess the owner wants to shock you with his very slow looking Yugo that can do a 10 second quarter mile.

369 fps on Quake3 may not be enough to brag to your buddies, but maybe it just looks that much better when it comes from a case that held a 30mhz mac.

Re:What is this,

[tiktokfx]

Actually, the SE was only 8 MHz.

Re:What is this,

[CuriHP]

This is an SE/30, the successor to the original SE. It had completely different innards.

Re:What is this,

[tiktokfx]

No, it isn't. The mod is clearly of an SE. There are two floppy slots. The SE/3000 refers to the fact that it has a 3GHz processor in it. Also, even if it were an SE/30, it's still not an original 30MHz computer. SE/30's were 16 MHz 680THIRTIES.

Re:What is this,

[insmod_ex]

The SE/30 ran at only 16Mhz.

Re:What is this,

[tiktokfx]

I believe that's what I said.

Re:What is this,

[insmod_ex]

Sorry, I seen the the two different Mhz ratings and :-S. Completely my fault.

Re:What is this,

[CrazyBusError]

Hate to say it, but I have an SE30 sat at home with two floppy drives in it... (not modded)

Re:What is this,

[tiktokfx]

Then it's an SE/30 in an SE case. There was NEVER an SE/30 with dual internal floppies.

Re:What is this,

[SlamMan]

Correct. SE/30's never shipped with dual internal floppies.

Stealth is the way to go.

[dbirchall]

Reverse rice rockets are the best... that's what made the Dodge Omni GLH-S so cool. A clunky-looking little econobox that ran in the low teens at the drag strip [dragtimes.com].

Here in Hawaii, there are tons of "riced" Hondas and other imports (and "dumbestics" too, I've seen some truly horrible things done to a Dodge Stratus sedan). I've got a bog-standard totally-stock Accord, but maybe someday I'll get one of those gizmos that makes fusion from tiny bubbles (hey, wasn't that a Don Ho song??) and a flux capacitor, a

Re:What is this,

[redJag]

by the way, the term for "reverse rice rocket" is sleeper. Lot's of people do it (cars that are wicked fast but don't look it).

Interesting

[Cthefuture]

A pretty nicely done mod. Of course no matter how good it is there will be something to criticize.

My problem is with the CDROM. Ugh, it looks horrible in there. He should've either decased the CDROM (so all you see is the door), used a laptop style thin drive, or best would have been to use an old iMac drive.

Right now it looks out of place on an otherwise decent design. I've never seen an Apple with a big 'ol dorky CDROM drive shoved in like that.

Interesting, but...

[quecojones]

I would've been more impressed if he'd managed to put a dual G5 in there (to keep the whole Mac thing going). :)

Re:Interesting, but...

[mgs1000]

This was pretty cool [mac512.com]

Some guy took the guts of a G4 cube and put it in a Color Classic

Re:Interesting, but...

[quecojones]

Now that is a cool mod. :)

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[Nick of NSTime]

The G5 wasn't a hoax. The submitter was referring to the recent brouhaha about a guy who stripped the internals out of his G5 and replaced them with not-so-great PC components. It turned out to be a hoax.

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[b-baggins]

Yeah, right. Snotty kid brags about turning a G5 into a PC, gets about 30,000 emails, many of them variations on the theme of: You are a total idiot, and a few days later, said kid comes out and says: Uh, it was just a hoax, guys, I didn't really do it.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[goon america]

guy who stripped the internals out of his G5

No, the whole point was that he really didn't strip anything out of it; he got a hold of an empty G5 case display and used that.

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[Nick of NSTime]

You're wrong. He said his parents bought him the G5 and he didn't want a Mac, so he pulled out all of its guts and "gave" them to a friend. He liked the G5 case so he turned it into a PC.

That was his story, anyway.

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[josh glaser]

Wonder what his parents thought...

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[GizmoToy]

Yea, except you're wrong. Go back to the overclocker's site where it was posted. You'll see his admission of the ruse - he obtained an empty G5 case and used that. There were no guts to pull out.

Re:G5 was a "hoax"?

[Nick of NSTime]

You're missing the point. In the hoax, he said he gutted his G5. That's what I'm asserting.

Nice peripherals, sort of

[Stargoose]

The Apple monitor and keyboard sort of make sense, if you reason that he wants to make a Windows box look like a Mac, but I kind of think the theme gets muddled: PC in old Mac case, with new Apple monitor and two-year-old Apple keyboard.

On the other hand, using a PC monitor and keyboard probably wouldn't have looked any nicer. Anyone know how PC hardware handles the special keys (command, option) on Apple keyboards?

Re:Nice peripherals, sort of

[prockcore]

Anyone know how PC hardware handles the special keys (command, option) on Apple keyboards?

I have an Apple Pro Keyboard hooked up to my PC. Option is Alt, Command is the Windows Key.

Re:Nice peripherals, sort of

[dbirchall]

My wife took her Pro Keyboard to work, since she couldn't stand the craptastic one on the PC there. Works fine. I suspect the volume up, down, and off keys, eject key and F13-F16 on my G5's keyboard would be confusing to a PC, though.

Oh, and since prockcore didn't spell it out, the "Command" key is the one with the apple and the cloverleaf on it, if anyone's confused.

Re:Nice peripherals, sort of

[prockcore]

I suspect the volume up, down, and off keys, eject key and F13-F16 on my G5's keyboard would be confusing to a PC, though.

Actually, volume up,down,off and eject all work under Linux. I think volume up and down work in Windows, but eject doesn't.

And F13-F15 map directly to Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause.

It does take some getting used to though, because the "windows" key and alt are swapped.

Not quite...

[Trillan]

F13-F15 do not map very reliably. I don't know why they shouldn't, but F13=PrintScreen in particular was highly problematic on my Apple keyboard. I had to plug the PS2-type keyboard back in or install software to get screenshots for documentation.

Speaking of mods

[Pope]

Not so much a casemod, but a guy over on MacNN put a neon kit in his G5 and runs with the panel off. Linky [macnn.com]

Can't say I'm a fan of people who make their cases light up ( I think it's a waste of time and money, frankly), but why not try something no one else has?

Logo...

[arson1]

Why does that logo remind me of the SeaDoo [seadoo.com] logo?

nice rendering

[tholomyes]

either they took a lot of time and care with the photos, or they're very nice renderings. either way, it looks nifty. but, somehow, unreal.

it'd be nice if it didn't light up, too, and you could just tuck its nice small case away to do be a file/print server. good size for that sort of thing.

How sad...

[oldosadmin]

Killing a piece of computer history is horrible... Instead of killing the machine, donate it to science or something. Just DON'T TRASH HISTORY. Please.

I am proud owner of a Mac Classic, which will -not- be destroyed.

Re:How sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a mac SE is a piece of history, I got a museum in my basement.

Re:How sad...

[Chris_Jefferson]

Seriously.. who would want a mac classic? I have 6 lying in a cupboard somewhere, and one day I'll get around to throwing all but one of them away because no-one wants them. Just because something is old doesn't automatically make it worth keeping around you know

Re:How sad...

[TheDredd]

quite right.

The Mac Plus is however a different story, and I have my Mac Plus (fully functional, and still capable of playing Dark Castle), stashed somewhere safe! Those babies are going to be worth something someday, and if I'm lucky it's going to be worth the same amount of $$ I payed for the bastard

Re:How sad...

[capmilk]

Remember "Back to the Future" part 2? There was a Mac Plus in the antiques shop, right next to Gray's Sports Almanac. I can't remember the price tag, but it did not seem to be awfully valuable. But hey, that was only 2015. :)

Re:How sad...

[oldosadmin]

I know at least three people who would kill to have a Mac Classic...

Now just give me your name and address, and I'll send them after you with axes!

Revival

[phorm]

You're not killing it, you're reviving it in a new form. Now, instead of sitting in a closet picking up dust, the user has a Mac case which, while looking much like the original, is a bit fancy and a whole lot more functional.

Re:How sad...

[crackshoe]

My home school district has been thowing out classics and SE's for a few years now. I take em home (from our dump), figure out which ones work, and which ones don't. the good ones find homes or sit around looking pretty, and the busted ones get modified. howver, there reaches a point where you have a bit too much nostalgia (this comes when you can't lie down on your bed becuase you didn't have anywhere else to cram that 6500)

Re:How sad...

[Myopic]

lighten up, man. one fewer SE in the world is not trashing history. there are millions of computers in dumps around the world. you may be a proud owner of a Classic which will not be destroyed, but instead it'll die a lonely death in the corner of a closet.

Re:How sad...

[oldosadmin]

FYI, my Mac Classic is setup, functional, in my room.

Rarely used, but functional.

Re:How sad...

[theEd]

Why have it collect dust when I can be useful again? I had a dead Mac Plus that I transformed into a home for a pair of cory cats [geocities.com]. And I'm not the only one that has done this particular case mod [google.com]

Puts my computers to shame!

[kingLatency]

Not only was this a very impressive casemod (and not super-tacky like many are), the computer inside puts all of mine to shame, especially my still-functioning Macintosh SE. ;)

Re:Photoshopped

[ALpaca2500]

oh yeah? you look photoshopped to me...

Thats just wrong man

[Cow007]

Putting a pentium in an apple case is just wrong, wrong man i was really floored when i saw that.