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Hardware

Case Mod Collection 112

Posted by michael from the rice-rice-baby dept.
Let's clear out a few of the case mod submissions which tend to pile up in dusty corners of our submission bin: MarkCC writes "An incredibly bizarre sort-of case mod: someone recreated the computer terminals from Terry Gilliam's Brazil, using an old Mac and a 1923 underwood typewriter." We mentioned some Mac case mods the other day. And remember, if it looks fast, it might as well be fast.
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Case Mod Collection More

Case Mod Collection

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  • but why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tevman ( 613659 ) <`moc.liamhsalf' `ta' `vet'> on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:00AM (#4587354) Homepage Journal
    i mean seriously, every case mod is more extreme than the previous one. I, for one, have not cared about case mods for a while now. I like cool looking computers, but... is it that big of a deal?
    • Why not? Some folks fix up their civics, others work on their computer cases. Nothing wrong with a little creativity--Let the people have their little corner of individuality in a mass-produced world. :^)
    • have you seen the movie 'brazil'? the hordes of people in it using computers like this in a big burocracy... and this thing might not be for everyday use anyways, since it's a mac from '88.

      it's starting to take more and more of wits to come up with a good casemod these days..
      but this is it imho. absolutely kewl, cool and shisbang.
      • back in the day, b4 coming here to the US, and living in a 3rd world country, I thought the only chance I'd ever get for having a 17-inch monitor would be to get a 14-incher and a screen magnifier like in the movie.

        Dude, after making the computer, why not put it on the Standard Government Issue Sliding Desk ;-)

        Now I'm looking at the third monitor in my 3-headed setup and thinking of stripping it out of its case. Would that constitute a fire hazard in a carpeted apartment?

    • Re:but why? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Overcoat ( 522810 )
      The Underwood mod was meant to be used as a prop in a live-action role playing game (which looks like it's a lot of fun) called "Cthulhu Lives!" [cthulhulives.org].

      Keep in mind the 'why not' factor has been the cause of far stranger human activites than case-modding.

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by Andreas(R) ( 448328 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:00AM (#4587356) Homepage
    The site was Slashdotted in 4 minutes! See Google-cache here [216.239.37.100]
  • I'm like the fourth poster on this story and it's already slashdotted.

    I guess those mechanical keys can't keep up.

  • this is flamebait, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BiOFH ( 267622 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:25AM (#4587397)
    ... the Mac mods are always 10 times cooler. With the exception of the "Alien" PC mod (ok... and the pumpkins hehe), all the PC mods are a few holes, some vinyl dye, some lights and maybe some dremel work.

    The obvious explanation regarding the boring rectangular PC case doesn't even merit going into...

    Maybe I should mod my Cube... }:)

  • Looks like they got a Rice Server to host their Rice mods :-)

    Maybe that NOS sticker I tacked on my AMDXP1600+ doesnt improve performance? Oro?

  • We need a Slashdot Case Mod Topic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by forged ( 206127 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:35AM (#4587409) Homepage Journal
    ...a few of the case mod submissions which tend to pile up in dusty corners of our submission bin

    I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is a huge opportunity for Slashdot to create said topic. For chrissake there are more and more Apple-related topic, and even one legacy Internet Explorer [slashdot.org] topic (hand-picked among a dozen other esoteric ones), yet no Case Mods......?

    Ideally, in case we refer to a low-bandwidth site loaded with graphics, the topic could benefit from a temporary Slashdot mirror of the page (say, 1 week, to help the sites whistand the Slashdot effect).

    Editors, please hear my plea :)

    • I think a case mod topic might be overkill... I mean does it really matter what the case looks like? I only ever look at the monitor and occassionally the keyboard (when I spill coffee on it...). Case mods are something that has caught on with gamers who take their machines from LAN party to LAN party... (not like I've EVER taken one of my pc's to a LAN party :grin:)

      -josh
      • While I wee what you mean, I disagree simply because of the volume of case mods being submitted so Slasodot...
      • I think the mod with the lcd added to the cover of the G4 was interesting. Get rid of the lights and focus on the second screen. If you set the video output right you can have useful utilities on that screen. I was just thinking and have to get the specs for the size and panel construction of a G4 but why not put a full size lcd on the side and have a self contained unit like the imac. Though I am a fan of multiple displays with information split on the displays. I think that is my hang over from working in the NOC of an ISP with plasma screens displaying our network status and than monitors with detail of the status. I am just thinking of a G4 server with the 5 inch screen running top or a visual network tool so you don't have can glance at it and see what is up. Modding can be cool, pratical or just a learning experience. Most of the time it is a waste of resources but out of it can come some good ideas. The touch pad mac and so on. But anyway I am rambling so I will leave it there. Positives and negatives in most everything.
      • >I think a case mod topic might be overkill... I
        >mean does it really matter what the case looks
        >like? I only ever look at the monitor and
        >occassionally the keyboard (when I spill coffee on
        >it...).

        Well if you don't like case mod stories, you should hope they break these stories off into their own topic! That way you could auto-ignore them via your preferences.
    • With all these casemod stories, Slashdot is just trying to get a foothold in the nu-geek community -- the kind who was raised by Windows, is addicted helplessly to online gaming, always wears Slipknot t-shirts, always believes all the hardware and game hype that every crap site out there says, and doesn't even know jack shit about coding or computer science as they only care about spurious issues like ATI vs. Nvidia -- but they try to pass themselves off as a Linux hackers and anti-Microsoft rebels, and somehow gravitate towards slashdot after they run Linux for a week and give up on it.

      They're the kind of people that glittery casemods attract, and they're the exact people slashdot should NOT cater to, as they're alienating their core audience, and old timers with low uid numbers are leaving the site in droves.
  • It's a sad commentary that at 02:22 PST when I first saw the story, that that site was already slashdotted. Don't we have anything better to do in the middle of the night than harrass some poor guy that is probably hosting this off of his frame-relay connection...

    At least I wish I had something better to do than browse /. at work...
    • Don't we have anything better to do in the middle of the night

      Well, for you it might be in the middle och the night. But in Europe it's the middle of the day. But no, I don't have anything better to do in the middle of the day.
  • from the outside looks like a doll, from the inside looks like a disease.

  • Here's an idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Troy H Parker ( 600654 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:43AM (#4587423)
    How about a "functional" case design? Something that isn't a pain in the ass to open and get into, something where I can easily open it up and move a hard drive into without having to shut off the computer and unplug all the cables first? All these casemods are boxes, the same clunky boxes we have now, with the addition of pretty lights and windows, but no function.

    • Re:Here's an idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Peridriga ( 308995 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @07:56AM (#4587531)
      Ummm... Then you want an Apple :D

      http://www.apple.com/powermac/expansion.html

    • Re:Here's an idea... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zakabog ( 603757 )
      Well here's a case [newegg.com]. I've had one for almost a year now, it's great. I can take out the screws in the back of the case for the side door and leave them off forever. The side door has a handle type thing, and you just open it like it was a door. It rotates out and you pull it off, VERY easy, and it's just as easy to put back on. The hard drives have removable trays, you pull the latch back, and slide the tray out. Very easy to do while the computer is on and everything is plugged in (although for your hardwares safety I wouldn't recommend doing work in the computer while it's on.) You put the new hard drive onto the tray and screw it in, then you slide the tray back into the case and close the little latch, it locks into place. There are also rails for the 5.25" drives. You screw the rails onto the drive and then slide the drive into the case, it locks into place. Then you can squeeze the two rails and slide the drive out if you want. It's very simple to do anything in this case, and it's very large so it's easy to work in. The only problem I have is the mother board tray isn't removable, but the case is big enough for that to not matter.
      • Ditto that case. I picked up the steel version nearly three years ago when Antec started making (or OEM branding) them.. Sturdy, roomy, and very easy to work with. I have about 15 of them now, and haven't really found a better substitute.

        Note that I have also found that the aluminum versions of this case, although very light, are absolute shit for shipping. They fall apart. Trust your shipping needs to steel!

        ~GoRK
    • I agree, why doesn't someone come up with something really simple for once and just functional, no fancy lights, just a silver box, minimalization...
    • Not that i love compaq or anything, but i have one of their last series presario cases, the kind with the swapable color face plates. If you take the one screw out of the back, the side panel is held in by just a locking slider thing with a hole in it for a padlock. All i have to do is push the slider and the side panel pops off, easy access to everything.

    • I think the G4 mod is very functional. The G4 is already a functional box. I would love to run a CPU meter on the face LCD he added then you could run it headless with useful feedback.

  • Case mods can be a good thing, and can look really cool if done right; however, many of these new "extreme" case mods are just a waste of parts that flaunts the money that these spoiled kids burn on trying to look cool to their friends, just like non-geeks do spending their money at Hot Topic or on Tommy Hilfiger.

    You could never expect fragile computer parts to survive for more than a week inside a typewriter, a pumpkin, a cardboard box, etc -- it's only for show and has no practical purpose, and obviously the hundreds of dollars worth of computer parts is of no value to the spoiled kids who build these things. It's ironic that many of them are leftists -- one cheap $500 computer today that they throw into a pumpkin or a typewriter is more than what a third-worlder makes in an entire year.

    "Casemodding" has gone too far, and all it shows is just putting easily-assembled PC parts in strange objects for fashion's sake.

    All these casemods do not deserve front page news here.

    • You could never expect fragile computer parts to survive for more than a week inside a typewriter, a pumpkin, a cardboard box, etc

      Computer hardware is a lot less fragile than you seem to believe. Okay, it probably wouldn't work well in a pumpkin (moisture), but I don't see how a cardboard box or typewriter would be a problem, other than the grounding problem for a cardboard box. Obviously steps will need to be taken to make sure there's not too much dust accumulation on exposed parts, but then most people don't have dust filters on their intake fans anyway, and the insides of their boxes are covered in dust.


      It's ironic that many of them are leftists -- one cheap $500 computer today that they throw into a pumpkin or a typewriter is more than what a third-worlder makes in an entire year.

      And I should finish my entire meal because there are children starving in Africa. Talk about comparing apples to oranges. Sure, third-worlders may make the equivalent of $500USD, when the exchange rate of their currency is compared against dollars, but within their local economy, that $500USD is equivalent to probably $20,000USD. These people aren't buying computers, fancy cars, etc (they've got other problems they need to deal with first).


      I do agree with the comparison between the case-modding community and the "boy racer" or "rice racer" community (not to be confused with "sport compact enthusiasts", who I would define as caring more about the actual performance of the car rather than just the looks). However, if these people want to spend money on idiot mods for their cars/computers, good for them. The mods may be completely worthless (or worse -- they could even hinder performance), and they almost always look stupid, but it's not affecting me in any way so what do I care? (Well, it doesn't affect me until a boy racer tries to get me to drag him at a stop light, which is just plain stupid. I usually just laugh at him, play along, and then turn when the light goes green, rather than actually racing.)


      All these casemods do not deserve front page news here.

      I wouldn't go that far. They do, however, need their own topic so that those who don't care to see case-mod topics can easily filter them without losing any interesting hardware stories.

    • With all that bizarre off-topic ranting, and the coup de grace about starving children, I think you meant to submit that to Kuro5hin. This kind of politibabble is common there.

      • Case mods: a liberal myth

        Case mods can be a good thing, and can look really cool if done right; however, many of these new "extreme" case mods are just a waste of parts that flaunts the money that these spoiled kids burn on trying to look cool to their friends, just like non-geeks do spending their money at Hot Topic or on Tommy Hilfiger.

        You could never expect fragile computer parts to survive for more than a week inside a typewriter, a pumpkin, a cardboard box, etc -- it's only for show and has no practical purpose, and obviously the hundreds of dollars worth of computer parts is of no value to the spoiled kids who build these things. It's ironic that many of them are leftists -- one cheap $500 computer today that they throw into a pumpkin or a typewriter is more than what a third-worlder makes in an entire year.

        "Casemodding" has gone too far, and all it shows is just putting easily-assembled PC parts in strange objects for fashion's sake.

      People have hobbies. People like to talk about their hobbies and show off the resulting concoctions. People spend a portion of their income, or their parents' income, on unproductive tasks that please them. So what? Tell me one good reason this actually hurts humanity.

    • Case Mods Bitching = Pretentious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by disc-chord ( 232893 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @10:39AM (#4587812)
      I seriously cannot believe anyone here modded this nonsense up. It's a decent troll, I'll give ya that... but it's not a very convincing one and has several blatent contradictions.

      Your assertions that '"extreme" case mods are just a waste of parts that flaunts the money that these spoiled kids burn' is completely off base and not even worth touching on, anyone who knows a casemodder will tell you this picture you're trying to draw is false.

      Your "vast left wing conspiracy" is quite confussed, and leads to some pretty concerning questions about your sanity and maturity. I am trying to think of any alternative explinations, but none come to mind... Let me see if I've got this straight.

      Let's say I'm a socialist (as left as it gets) and pay 50% of my earnings in taxes so that government social programs can flurish and no man, woman, or child goes hungry or homeless (See Also: Sweden) it is selfish of me to spend $500 of my remaining income however I chose instead of feeding the hungry.... how?

      Your whole premise is lacking a clue, and if you really want to find a reason to spread this politically motivated hate you're going to need to aspire towards some sort of education.

      I am truly left to wonder how this got modded up, probably by yourself on multiple /. accounts.

  • Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jesus IS the Devil ( 317662 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @07:04AM (#4587458)
    What do you do with your computer case? You stick it underneath your table. How often do you ever look at it? Like never.

    So why mod it? What's the point? Your friends won't see it, chicks won't see it. It's like trying to design the inside of your closet. How pointless.
    • A good point. Apple computer sales did not increase when they made them pretty, because, quite frankly, no-one cares what they look like.

      Worryingly enough, there are people who will not recognise this as sarcasm.

    • There's a lot of money in designing the insides of closets... if you've never had a really well designed closet then you really don't know what you're missing out on.

    • Yeah, you also never have to change the CD/DVD in the drive, and you have given up on floppies a long time ago anyway. You also don't plug in external hardware from time to time.
  • Right on! A spoiler on the back! That's what I'm gettin' baby! Nothin' says class like a hot rod with a spoiler. Ooh! I wonder if he's gonna paint on some flames...Hey MA! Get ouch'ere, you's gotta take a gander at THIS...and fetch me a beer whilst yer at it (haaawwwwk-ptooie)

    And the Mac mod looks kinda cool too

  • Mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03, 2002 @08:37AM (#4587591)
    A copy of the page - minus the pdf and ads - can be found at
    http://s218a.studby.ntnu.no/www.ahleman.com/Elec tr iClerk.html
  • Nice, but what would be cooler than "Brazil" terminals would be working versions of the speakwrite terminals from the John Hurt/Richard Burton version of "1984". You could even set up the interface to do voice recognition of Newspeak: "times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling"
    • I just finished working on a chapter about the Mac OS X Speech interface, also known IMO as one of the most annoying things you can use on a computer when you don't have a private office [1]. Anyway, the OS X Speech interface is pretty good, honestly: add some terms in the custom dictionary and it should be at least mostly achieveable.
      [1] Decided against opening the chapter with my real opinion, which was "Speech is the worst built-in feature to enable on your Mac unless you live and work alone, and it should only be reserved for shoegazer albums by Radiohead and that ilk." [2] The editors would have just deleted it.
      [2] Don't take that badly, I like Radiohead. Their use of the "Fred" voice on _Ok Computer_ was the reason I referenced them.

  • Practical Case Mods (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why are none of the featured ones actually useful?

    My old Amiga 3k desktop was case-modded to:
    Accomodate a Video Toaster
    Accomodate a 5.25" drive (Syquest)
    Accomodate 2x 3.5" full-height hard drives
    Accomodate 2x 3.5" half-height hard drives
    Oh, and HD floppy
    Accomodate a second power supply to run all
    those drives
    Accomodate all of the above at once.

    The case as designed held three 3.5" drives. Nothing more. And Commodore wasn't selling anything else (except the 3k tower, which also had to be modded (we called it hacking, then) for a VT). This was a major power improvement over the stock machine, not a cosmetic one (my boss, another Amiganaut, said my machine was the silliest thing he'd ever seen). Where are the power case mods?

    The best they do now is a few more fans. Whoopee.

  • Slashdot's posting of an old nemepool post came early this month! This was posted to memepool.com [memepool.com] over a week ago.

  • I thought they were Apple II's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @10:37AM (#4587806)
    I always thought the video on the Brazil terminals was obviously generated by an Apple II. A Mac? There weren't any freaking icons on the screen!
  • So I can finally disable them.

    Not that I find them entirely stupid, but it's a bit like if music news site reported new musicans' hairdos: funny for one time or two, but childish and boring if done on a regular basis.
  • Thats site was slow even before is was featured on Slashdot. I got the story from www.crackbaby.com, on oct 23 and it took ages to load even then.
    But that prop guy is truly amazing... Check out his other work when to page come back. I mean i'd buy his racer helmet with race google if he made more of them (and even that computer)
  • After I saw the Electri-Clerk link on memepool.com last week, I went by the local State Auction Surplus warehouse and found a Mac SE w/keyboard that boots up fine for $1 and an Underwood Number Five manual typewriter (I'm guessing 1960s/1970s, but can't find any actual data on its age) that also works for another $1. So I've acquired two of the core parts for $2. The Fresnel lens will run more, and replacing my Dremel will be a lot more than $2. See how it goes.
    Universities, at least in my area, also have surplus warehouses of gear they sell cheaply. If you're doing something a bit (or a lot) retro, check them out.
  • That typewriter isn't from 1923. More likely sometime in the 30s or 40s.
  • On Max Headroom. Some of the terminals the controllers used in the Network-23 building were manual typewriters that had been retrofitted with microswitches to serve as computer consoles.

  • Awesome but dangerious!?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -Harlequin- ( 169395 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:17PM (#4590466)
    I've wanted to do a Brazil terminal for years. That mod is awesome. The thing that held me back - and that doesn't seem to have been addressed, is the danger from exposing a CRT tube - there are high voltage components. I know that caps in even a small TV can hold enough charge to potentially kill someone weeks after it was last plugged in (and certainly enough to give you one hell of a jolt). Is the mac CRT monitor safer somehow? (I haven't been inside one recently - I was looking at tiny ancient PC greenscreens).

    My feeling is that this mod may be dangerious - the exposed CRT means you can put your hand in the wrong place while it's turned on. Perhaps add a glass dome/enclosure to it? Does anyone know more about the innards of the mac CRT and safety?
  • On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
    There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
    is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
    non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
    several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
    best, write it down and make that the standard.
    The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions
    from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
    committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
    with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
    something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
    So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
    then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
    it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
    after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
    committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
    it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
    -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"

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