DLZ-3

by Devin Durham

Here are some pictures of my Macintosh. Please excuse this minor dip into self indulgence, just keep in mind that I am very proud of what I have created.

The Macintosh DLZ-3 is built into a Zenith radio case (circa late 40's). As I was putting it together I was really rather amazed at how well the various components fit into the case.

As you can see, the top opens easily, giving total and free access into the inner workings of the Mac. I could possibly have the easiest to open Mac ever made.

The DLZ-3 is built around a 7600 logic board, and as such can be easily upgraded to the latest technology. (No, I haven't gone G3....yet). If you look on the right, you can see the various wiring running about, and the shiny object on the far right bottom is the Hard Disk Drive (1.2 gb) mounted sideways....velcro'd into place! Once again, when I decide to upgrade I can pop that drive out faster than any other Mac ever made.

Another view of the DLZ-3. Notice the large radio dial. When I was building it, and showing it off to my friends, several people mentioned that the dial was almost exactly the same size as a CD.... And so this came about:

My CD ROM drive is a vertically mounted unit now. It is an apple 8X CD ROM, heavily modified to work sideways, and with the tray totally removed. The functioning of the door was tricky at best, but it works amazingly well.

Any time I show my Mac, or show pictures of it, people tell me that I should be manufacturing these things for sale. All I can say is that if someone out there wants a totally original Mac, they should let me know, I would be more than happy to work something up. The price? I have no idea. We'd have to work that out. (Conversion of an existing Mac would be much easier and cheaper than buying all the pieces parts).

One last picture, this is of my office. The radio (a 1948 "globetrotter" portable RCA) that you see sitting on top of the DLZ-3 is my portable hard drive (no, I am not kidding).

When I show off my Mac (especially to PC people, who have been suffering from terribly designed econo-box looking cases for years) I have a "groan factor" that is very satisfying. It usually goes something like this:

"Your computer is in there? uunnghg."

Incidentally, the DLZ-3 is currently being powered by a 200mhz 604e. It has 48mb of ram, 2 1.2 gb hard drives and an ATI Rage Pro video card.