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Dual Logic Board Tower ?

Submitted by MacTrash_1 on July 1, 2004 - 4:24am. Hardware Hacks

Anybody ever made a tower with 2 complete systems inside ?

I pulled an old monster PC Tower out of a dumpster. It's almost as tall as my desk and looks pretty cool with a door and lock on the front. Room for 5 optical drives, 3 floppy size slots and tons of space for hard drives.

I was thinking this thing is big enough to hold a beige G3 logic board and what else.....another logic board and PSU ?

It's gonna be so heavy it will need wheels and handles after I load it up. I'm also thinking of a rusty industrial look paintjob with yellow and black warning labels and stripes or something like that.

Any ideas ? Thoughts ?

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Jon's picture

I've got some ginormous cases

Submitted by Jon on July 1, 2004 - 4:37am.

I've got some ginormous cases in the lab. Of the one's I measured I seem to remember one being about 3' tall or more. Plenty of room for multiple MLBs. I know there was a PC/Mac hack done but I don't have a link handy. Back in the day I saw someone who put an Amiga and a PC in the same case.

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

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AmigaPC

Submitted by word03 on July 5, 2004 - 9:05am.

Actually looking through an old CU Amiga magazine it looks like PC/Amiga hybrids were fairly common and readily available... it's a shame we can't buy Mac/PCs... :\

(yes I know its strange for someone to have an aging british computer magazine under their bed...)

»
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MacTrash_1's picture

Re: I've got some ginormous cases

Submitted by MacTrash_1 on July 5, 2004 - 2:54pm.
Jon wrote:
I've got some ginormous cases in the lab. Of the one's I measured I seem to remember one being about 3' tall or more. Plenty of room for multiple MLBs. I know there was a PC/Mac hack done but I don't have a link handy. Back in the day I saw someone who put an Amiga and a PC in the same case.

Here's one I found.....the handmade case is a little rough but he's got the right idea.

http://www.macmod.com/content/view/70/2/

There's even a mini-ATX Linux set-up in the box and it's all networked together and uses a custom made KVM switchbox to run it all through one monitor and keyboard.

» Krow,

Apple Art & Project Black Mac LC5500/225 at:
http://krowmagnum.4mg.com/photo6.html

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About 2 months ago I had the

Submitted by Macintrash on July 6, 2004 - 12:03pm.

About 2 months ago I had the same idea of puttin 2 complete systems into one case. It works, but there was a problem with overheating.
I put a Mac g3 into a Compaq server case I bought from school, and a complete P3 Dual XEON system. I put the listings of both systems "Guts" below...

MAC G3
Processor Speed: 400Mhz
RAM: 164Mbs
Video Ram: 64mb
HDD: 40gb IDE
Network: 10/100 ethernet

DUAL XEON'S
Processor Speed: 2GHZ (Ighz Each)
RAM: 1Gb
Video Ram: 256Mbs
HDD: 2x 180GB SCSI Seagate Barracuda's
Network: - Still havnt installed network. Built in 56k modem

Both machines are running well in the same case, however 4 power supply fans had to be installed as a lot of heat was being emmitted. I had to drill some holes in the rear of the case for extra ventilation.
However I still have to network both machines.

So yer It's possible.

MaCiNtRaSh:macos:

»
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Waaaaay back in the day . . .

Submitted by jt on July 6, 2004 - 2:01pm.

. . . I thought the perfect rig would be Mac and PC motherboards installed on opposite sides of a case. They'd be networked over a double ended "NIC" that would look like a standard ISA or VLB NIC to the PC side and a standard NuBus NIC to the Mac.

The notion came from QuickShare, the SCSI link I had installed between Mac & PC. The networking/hardware conceptual model was based on the Radius Rocket's Appletalk over NuBus hack. Mac & PC would communicate across the "NIC" at something like today's 10/100 or GigaBit Ethernet speeds. An actual NIC/Hub/Whatever for both CPUs and a KVM setup would also be built into the interface card.

The PC would act as a Data/FAX/RIP/Print server and inexpensve PC drives as a backup server for the Mac. This was back when the Hackintosh, FrankenMac, CatMac, etc. were actual articles/projects in the Magazines and first edition books. Things like the JT-FAX card installed in my PC were available months/year(s) ahead of external "FAX-Modems" for the Mac. Cutting edge "low-end" (how's THAT for an oxymoron!?!) hardware like cards that'd backup to VHS and interface cards for high capacity FDDs were readily available for the PC platform due to the available slot capacity of standard systems . . . but that's another rant . . .

jt Smiling

» Perpetrator of the 68kMLA's text format impaired: Peripherals Links Project(tm)
. . . and LinksProjectClassic(tm)

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MacTrash_1's picture

Re: About 2 months ago I had the

Submitted by MacTrash_1 on July 6, 2004 - 5:24pm.
Macintrash wrote:
About 2 months ago I had the same idea of puttin 2 complete systems into one case. It works, but there was a problem with overheating.
I put a Mac g3 into a Compaq server case I bought from school, and a complete P3 Dual XEON system. I put the listings of both systems "Guts" below...

Got any pics of the project ?

I know I'll have to deal with the heat issue. I'm planning on at least 4 case fans. I'll put 2 in the back of the case and one on the top and one on the bottom of the case just to keep things cool.

I'm planning on laying it out with the PC board at the bottom part of the case where the PCI slots will line up with the case. I'll add a piece of plexi or something to separate the top and bottom half of the case into 2 independant air flow zones kinda like the G5's are made.

I don't plan on runng huge fast drives so that will help keep the heat down and I'm only putting an old AMD CPU and intel board on the PC side (bottom)

I'm using all free or cheap parts for this thing because I just can't bring myself to pay for intel junk. I'm planning on running either the x86 version of BeOS or some version of Linux on the PC side anyway. I'm not trying for XP or any MS OS cause I really dislike Windoze.

» Krow,

Apple Art & Project Black Mac LC5500/225 at:
http://krowmagnum.4mg.com/photo6.html

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performaman's picture

Heh. Cheapo Tape Backup.

Submitted by performaman on July 7, 2004 - 12:02am.

I've always wanted some kind of cheapo system to back up stuff to tapes (VCR, Reel-to-reel, cassette, whatever) just so I could say "Let me check the data tapes" or something like that. Also, it looks cool when recording data.

» Egg freckles?

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blah

Submitted by zorgitron on July 8, 2004 - 6:51pm.

I've also been wanting to combine all of my computers into one, mega computer. It would be big and imposing and when you turn it on, the lights dim for a second because it sucks so much electricity. I've want to rackmount them though, you all seem to want cases, but I think it looks cool when you can look at all the mobos and hard drives and such

» "If you don't like my products, don't use them."
- Bill Gates
"So I don't!" -Zorgitron

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Jon's picture

As Chef Emiril would say: [ur

Submitted by Jon on July 14, 2004 - 6:51am.

As Chef Emiril would say: Bam!

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

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