FYI: For something along the same lines that I forgot about. A friend
of mine who lives in Katata built a 5 board Linux cluster with a trash
can as a case. The project is fully documented, and the system actually
works fine. http://ca.geocities.com/garbage_can_cluster [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com/
William Case wrote:
Thanks Rod;
That gives me a lot to think (and dream) about.
On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 09:48 -0400, Rod Giffin wrote:
William Case wrote:
Hi;
Starting with the case, I would like to do one of a couple of things;
1. Build the case with fine wood finish (mahogany, dark oak, dark
walnut or Quebec Maple) . Has anyone heard of this being done
before? I haven't googled for HOWTO sites yet, but am trying to
collect my thoughts, and yours, about pit-falls and/or
suggestions on how this might be down. And, how I might trim my
monitor, keyboard etc. to match? Or,
2. Re-paint (colourize) a vanilla case and trim, in a non-standard
colour scheme with some kind of paint or whatever that would be
durable. I had in mind, what I call 'mustang yellow' like the
mustardy yellow used on sporty cars.
Any thoughts, suggestions or additions?
There are quite a few good computer case designs based on wood. If
you're a good carpenter, you can actually make them look like a piece of
furniture. There are two things to keep in mind though - ventilation,
and shielding. Wood is a good insulator, and can make an otherwise
noisy computer fairly quiet in comparison. But it also does not provide
any shielding. (Even plastic computers are coated with a metalic film
inside.) What you can do though, is laminate a metalic film to the
inside of the case to provide that shielding. Aluminum foil is often a
choice, but in fact brass foil would be better, a lightweight (24 guage
or thinner) steel lining would be even better. Home Depot or Rona might
have some metalic melamine, but make sure it's actually metalic. Other
than that, you can also go to Cohen's on Merivale and pick up some
relatively thin brass sheeting.
This is along the lines I was thinking.
The nicest simple designs I've seen replaced the metal case cover with a
maple door skin veneer. Thin wood, but exotics are possible, and it's
usually knot free so even if it isn't an exotic, it can be stained to
look that way. On the front of the computer, the guy replaced the
plastic bezel with one made of wood and plastic, in order to have the
shaping in places where it was required. Stained in cherry and
varnished, it looked like an expensive piece of furniture. He actually
used the metal frame of the original computer case to mount the
motherboard, power supply, drives etc.
I'll see what I can google for. Somebody probably already has a set of
plans and materials list available.
Another guy I know made a beautiful full sized desk/computer, that
looked like a mahogany bankers desk. I think the wood was actually
poplar or birch. The lower left hand drawer was actually the computer
case. The monitor was embedded in the surface of the desk, under
non-reflective glass, and he'd made a flip top sort of cover for the
front drawer for the keyboard. That desk was a work of art. All of the
wires were routed through a plastic conduit inside of the desk,so that
all you could see sticking out was one power cable and the ethernet
cable. Everything else was internal - but accessible through removing
the glass covering the monitor. When he switched to a LCD display, I
think a small modification was required in order to mount the monitor at
the front of the glass instead of way down in the bowles of the desk.
I have longed wondered why that kind of thing wasn't available in the
'high-end world'. I would sure be a great piece of furniture to have,
if it wasn't gimmicky but reflected genuine classical furniture design
and construction, and was rigged so that motherboards etc. were
replaceable. Hang the expense.
Enjoy yourself!
If you're just going to paint an existing chassis, you can use an
air-brush or find some kid who's good with an airbrush and do some
incredible designs. Use an enamel paint, and this can also look really
cool. I had a couple of photos of one of the fighters my Dad used to
fly painted on the sides of a case of a computer that was in my living
room. (friend of my son is really good with an airbrush, but he lives
in Calgary now.) It got lots of comments, and looked really good.
Something I just thought of something that can add to the "look" of a
wood computer case. Neon or argon light bulbs, the ones with a soft
orange glow... They'd give the computer a sort of 50's look of having
tubes inside. I'd personally avoid ultra-violet... unless you're going
for an ultra-modern look (in which case just buy an all black chassis
and go with that.)
Rod.