YACH (Yet Another Case Hack), this a nekkid B+W G3

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YACH (Yet Another Case Hack), this a nekkid B+W G3

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/macdan/nekkid_g3.html

dan k

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Sweet! :macos: I've taken

Sweet! :macos: I've taken panels off of several differnt PC machines, and none of 'em came close to looking as presentable as the G3.

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I think you may have gotten y

I think you may have gotten your inspiration from something on the old AFF, mainly my Nekkid 6400 Hack, heh, looked almost exactly like that, but the pictures were so bad you couldn't really tell. Too bad that machine is now defunct. Oh well, great job of reworking my hack into a G3!

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re: I think you may have gotten y

Great minds think alike, or so it seems. TomtheMacMan, I've not seen your hack (or at least have no recollection of it), but it's nice to know we think along the same lines. Biggrin

Got a link to your nekkid 6400 posting?

dan k

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Looks way cool. The only thin

Looks way cool. The only thing I would have done is covered most of the front panel with a sheet of plexi painted white on the backside, and cut holes for the drives and buttons. The empty slots and PCB on the front just look a little too rough for me.

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Rough??!?

Yeah, it is a little rough. The current face was initially just an experiment using a stripped PCB as raw material. I had intended to cover the entire center face area including the opticals but this was all I had ready when nephew arrived to pick it up. It does IMHO look better in real life than it does in the pic. Anyway dammit, real artists gotta ship sometime, don't they?!?!

I had earlier tried another approach. I sawed out the center part of an original blue polycarb faceplate, including a lip around the edge. This cutout part just covered the middle front area and overall looked pretty slick. But in order to install the second optical I would have to make up a second (lower) drive tray flap, and ran out of time. Also, I wasn't keen on re-using the original blue, though of course I could have painted it.

dan k

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Paint it with an acrylic high

Paint it with an acrylic high gloss paint, and make some sort of front panel so the PCB isnt hanging out in the air, and so the drives look more finished, and it could look great. But the bare case just looks like a bare case to me :/

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re: Paint it with an acrylic high

Ahh, but that's counter to my intent. I was 'inspired' by the raw galvanized steel and wanted to focus on that rawness and simplicity. The G5's plain metallic exterior follows the same esthetic of raw industrial metal.

Also, maybe the pics don't convey the excellent quality of this case. It's beautifully constructed and finished. For metal that's mostly hidden under those polycarb panels it's really amazing Apple built to such a high standard.

I completed this awhile ago, before I started playing with my sandblaster. One decorative element I would add now is a large sandblasted Apple logo into the front above the opticals.

dan k

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the 6500 looks like crap with

the 6500 looks like crap with no case.

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6500

The 6500 looks WORSE than 'crap' when stripped down to the bare metal... lumpy, ungainly wreck...

Show us this nekkid 6500 damnit! Biggrin

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Look in my image gallery. It'

Look in my image gallery. It's all there, and all badly taken. Acute God, I hate that old digital camera I used to use. ::)

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Surprised by what's inside . . .

When I first got this particular G3 it was really beat. Missing a couple handles, all the external panels were scuffed and cracked. Generally it looked really shabby.

But when all the polycarb is stripped off, what's left is a remarkably well-finished piece of steel, something you actually want to touch. So part of my appreciation for the form derived from the surprise; a beauty hidden inside a beast. Well, if your idea of beauty is nicely formed sheet metal that is. Biggrin

I've stripped 64/6500s and was never impressed with the quality of the metal. The surprise inside is the chassis is so cheap and nasty, with sharp raw edges and awkward protrusions, not something you want to handle or touch. The 6400 form-factor was designed to be stamped out at the lowest possible cost and under its ABS skin it shows.

The G3 was Apple's top-of-the-line product and even under its polycarb skin it shows. Perhaps you need one in hand to appreciate it, the pictures don't well convey its tactile appeal.

dan k

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It's verra nice

I really like the industrial look of the case. In the pic with the circuit board front visible, you can see the case has a nice shine. Did you steel-wool the case at all while it was all apart? Kinda like cleaning a DeLorean Acute
A super PITA to do depending on what tools & toys you've got, but some case metal scavenged from a PC might make a nice face plate that matches the bare metal (like that handle - schweet!)
I'd seriously consider going this way, if not for the noise (see my recent hard-drive sandwich hack).

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The case is glavenized steel,

The case is glavenized steel, if you where to take steel wool to it you would remove the galvinzed surface of the steel, and it would it in turn rust.

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galvanized? I'd be surprised

I don't believe the case is galvanized steel, though if you can find information that says otherwise, please correct me.

Galvanizing leaves a rather unattractive frosted and dull surface thanks to the sacrificial zinc coating. AFAIK, even what's called a 'shiny' coating of zinc should not leave a pure-looking surface like we see here, or in PC cases in general.

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It's galvanized

but very 'soft' feeling, almost as if it were waxed or lacquered or something, though I'm sure it's not.

I didn't do anything with its finish, it's lovely just as it came. I did scrounge up some matching galvanized steel scrap with an eye to using a similar metal for the face, but didn't end up using it (yet.)

Hmm, galvanized . . . rust . . . how about deliberately rusting the case, by using the sandblaster to remove the galvanization in pattern(s). Eg: a big Apple logo on the front: sandblast down to the bare steel, apply some salty water to the area long enough to get some rust going, then wash it and wax the rust over to keep it. Eh?

dan k

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Yeah it may not be galvenized

Yeah it may not be galvenized, I havent taken one of the El Capitan cases down to nothing like that to inspect them.

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64/500s

Funny how the 6500/300 was the most impressive-sounding(in more ways than one!), high-revving, beautiful Mac Apple had out for some time... but simply removing a few panels makes it look like the cheap **** it really is... whatever I still love good ol' Sparky(my 300MHz 6500/225 ;))

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Side panels

How'd you get the fixed and the door panels off without damage, and please how do you get (non-destructively) to remove and replace the CD drive and Zip?

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re: side panels

Easy peasy, once you know how:

http://www.zone6400.com/manual/6400manual.html

and/or

http://www.sfa-us.com/rav/6400open/takeapart.html

dan k

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6500s

Actually it IS very easy to take the plastic panels off(and replace them)- but the metal chassis... well when I went inside mine to remove the stupid cardboardy shield thing which was severely vibrating from the subwoofer, I spent 1 hour removing and replacing that darn metal panel- and 10 seconds actually fixing the problem. Those screw holes will not line up unless I actually SIT on the thing. Bah humbug. >:(

PS- I plan to stuff my toy iMac(333)'s guts into said 6500 at some stage... this should be fun Biggrin Anyone know how possible it might be to wire up the iMac's internal sound to the 6500's amp-type device?(I'm probably gonna need to remove the speaker box and use a more powerful speaker to save space and keep sound quality.)

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