The Delorean of computers
...would have to be the PowerMac G5, right? It's metal, has a door that swings open from the side, and impossible to get serviced locally. Unfortunately the PowerMac G5 just isn't quite over the top enough...
I guess some people looking at the video I posted were wondering what the hell I was looking at on one of the web pages, as they weren't able to see it well, or at least not the URL. Basically its a PC mod of the highest order, called the Orac3, and I'm lusting after the thing like you wouldn't believe.
I guess it was built in honor of some 70's BBC sci-fi show which I've never heard of called "Blakes 7", and the guy just wanted something in the same vein. He out did himself. Normally PC mods are frightening, some guy with a dremel and plexiglass and neon tubes just goes nuts, you end up with something that would make Jonathan Ive want to hang himself. Imagine the worst over-designed web pages you've ever seen, but translated into hardware. They're usually really that bad.
But the Orac3... me want. We're talking using shower fittings to hide SATA power cables, liquid cooling, encapsulating all the wires from the PSU through cabling wrapped in fish-tank air hoses just for the look... heat shrinking the ends into the connectors... the shot to the right is what the freaking hard drive housing looks like (four drives).
We aren't going even going to go into those shiny oversized metal radial knobs. I have a thing for shiny oversized metal radial knobs on hardware. Don't know what it is, I just love the feel of those things on quality stereos... but I said I wasn't going to go into my big metal knob fetish.
The final product can be found at the links above, but its worth seeing how it was all put together and the components used.
The thing is Jonathan Ive meets H.R. Giger. I'm just enamored.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJuly 10, 2004, at 06:04 AM
Comments (5)
Posted by: hunter at July 11, 2004 04:10 PM
Who says all mods are ugly? Thats a sweet box. I would have preferred blue accent colors though. :)
Posted by: Q at July 11, 2004 08:58 PM
I saw this back when it got Slashdotted. I want. Many. The green really looks best with the liquid cooling apparatus. Blue fluid isn't quite as cool - too much freezer, not enough radioactive. The green plexi is nice, but it's really the metal and the green liquid that really appeals to me.
That and the shiny metal knobs.
Posted by: Mindflayer at July 13, 2004 01:34 PM
DB:
Google AdSense for:
"Cabinet Knobs And Pulls
120,000+ Pulls, Knobs & More - Find What You're Looking For Here!"?
You need to refine that a bit :D
Posted by: Peter Back at August 30, 2005 04:46 PM
Very informative site. Good job. http://www.pcmcourseware.com , http://www.drneils.com.au
Blakes 7 was the bomb. Admittedly, the quality I watched it at was pretty asstastic, but the story was just plain evil. THX-1138 meets Star Trek in BBC-controlled space.
Orac was an AI introduced at the end of the first season- the thing had a heck of an attitude, and was depicted as a clearish box filled with hoses and blinkenlights. This case mod is a definite spiriual decendant of the original- acurate on base aesthetic, and an improvement in pretty much every other way, shape, and form.