[geeks] Case-Mods

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Frank Van Damme wrote:

...moving to geeks because it's drifing so far off-topic isn't not even
funny...

> problem with some peoples creative hobby of changing a sting-in-the-eye ugly
> boring beige box you'd rather put away in a closet like this one:
> http://www.rjross.com/ever_mid_e4252_beige.gif (yawn) into something that at
> least fits nicely in a teenagers bedroom, that is, without coughing up for a
> 50000 $ sgi box?

Well, my problems with it are:

  1) Replacing a large chunk of the side of the case with a "window"
     means your machine is no-longer FCC class B compliant.  This means
     you're broadcasting a lot of EM noise.  I'd assume that if your CPU
     is running at 2.4GHz, you're going to be putting out a lot of that
     crap in that band, interfereing with 802.11 nodes nearby, cordless
     phones, and the like.
  2) Neon/florescent tubes in the chassis is just stupid.  That's just
     -adding- to the EM noise, causing only slightly dodgy/weakly-
     shielded components to exhibit their erratic behavior more often.
  3) Most of the time, it just looks tacky, but that's, of course, a
     matter of opinion.

But, really it doesn't -bother- me of someone wants to make an
unreliable PC into an even more unreliable PC that's spewing EM all over
the room, so long as it doesn't kill my 802.11 signal.  What -does-
bother me are the people that convert working or easily-fixable Real
Computers (NeXT systems, O2s, Octanes, Alphas, etc.) into PCs running
'doze and whole bunch of neon lights and windows and shit all over.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  *)  Q:  What do you call the hum of a rack of Apple
Thorndale, TX      (*      XServes?
                   *)  A:  The Al Gore Rhythm.