Mac Classic II Lamp
Submitted by iDweeb on September 2, 2006 - 7:49pm.
Hardware Hacks
Check this out. What you see here is NOT a working Macintosh, despite what it looks like in the photographs.
http://timcdesigns.com/mac_lamp/maclamp.htm
A few months ago I had aquired a Mac Classic II with a junky burnt-in CRT monitor and a case that was written on with permanent marker- the poor thing was ugly and barely usable .I couldn't bear to just trash it so I sold the Motherboard and Hard drive on ebay, then gutted the CRT and power supply and disposed of them at the local electronic waste collection place. I took care to research how to safely handle CRTs. (Do the same if you tinker with them!)
This left me with an unused Mac Classic II and a girlfriend with a fast-approaching birthday. Interesting ideas began to fill my head, and the Classic II Lamp was born.
The light on the top is comprised of a shade, a bulb holder piece, power cord, and all-thread lamp rod covered with a chrome finish sink phlange cut to size.
The image on the screen is actually a bit of trickery-
What you see is a glossy inkjet printout of screen shot taken from a working Classic II that was upsampled and manipulated in photoshop. It turned out razor sharp and resembles an actual screen quite nicely.
It is backlit by a 27 watt Flourescent light bulb located inside the mac case. The printout is sandwiched between a piece of white lexan behind it to diffuse the bulb's light, and a piece of thinner clear lexan to protect the printout and give it a good "monitor" feel.
The whole thing is attatched to the mac's front bezel using the original CRT monitor's screws and mounts, the mounts being trimmed to the right height to accomidate the plastic. I also had to do a little trimming on the case around the monitor to make the plastic lie flatter.
The Piecé de resistance:
Call me a geek, I couldn't resist...The light on the inside of the screen is turned on and off by a toggle switch very similar to those on the back of working Classic IIs machines. Kind of adds to the whole "booting up the mac" experience.
:-D