Hadlock's Journal: LC case mods....

Well fuck this. I'm getting my fucking work done; I'm just bored and relaxing. I would have this fucking shit done by now if I hadn't goddamned fucked up with the whochamacalit. Chapter 7 instead of chapter 5. Grrrr. Spring break in like, 3 days. Sigh. Umm what else to talk about? After looking at case designs for my mac, I looked at the case for my mac, and specifically noticed that the fan on the bottom sucks in A LOT of freaking air. Wow. So that limits my positioning of the fan. I guess I could mount the fan as an exhaust fan pressed directly up to the power supply, as the only thing I really need to worry about is the powersupply, it gets fairly warm without any decent airflow. Warm isn't really a problem; but I want things as cool as possible. Maybe mount a heatsink or 9 on it? Hmmmmmmm. SCSI drive is just going to run hot regardless. Put it near the convection vent on the bottom, and let the cool drafts passively cool it. I don't really have to worry much about the motherboard, as it doesn't create enough heat to warrant active cooling. If it's not warm enough for apple engineers, it's not warm enough for me. Hell, it's $5 hardware. Crazy that it used to be worth $1200. Crazy. I really need to go get that $5 LC II from allen, and build a mockup of what I'm going to need to do for my final case design. At least if I fry that hardware, I still have a backup or 2. The only things I'm worried about are my HD and NIC card; the rest are pretty easy to get as salvage. Well I have an extra hard drive, so I guess all I need to do is buy a spare NIC card and I'm set. Some foam on the lid and back would probably provide decent sound insulation. In the final model made of aluminum and plexiglass, I could probably make some metal mounts and epoxy them to the inside of the aluminum cover, and then have the hard drive pressed against the lid. I'd need a slightly longer SCSI cable, so I don't tear up the motherboard when I open the lid? Internal lighting (blue neon light) would be bad-ass. Need to work on a way to run power cables up to the case....hmm. possibly that external SCSI CD rom drive's powersupply; that could potentially power both a second HD and/or a neon light. I could power it off of the LC's powersupply, but that would really just be overtaxing the power supply and a dumb design flaw on my point. I guess the dealy-o (yo), would be be to have a tube of some sort carry the power cable for the LC, 12 DC wires running up from a wall wart, and the RJ45 connection all inside a black or white, possibly light grey flexible tube. I think you can buy this at places like home depot. One idea I've been throwing around recently is that if I'm going to light this case internally, a frosted, or textured type of plexiglass, instead of the really hella clear plexiglass that shows srcapes and scratches really easily. I might have to sand blast my own? Hmm another idea- make the case out of clear plexiglass, and then tape down a cardboard picture of an apple, and sandblast the whole thing, removing the cardboard to give a relief of a clear apple. Kinda cool, but not exactly what I'm looking for. What I want is the front of the server case to look like the back of my powerbook - glowing white apple surrounded by brushed metal. I'd have to get the metal laser cut and then stick in some opaque plastic to be backlit. It'd be tight.

On an unrelated note, you could potentially cool a system with chlorine or argon gas, as they're element numbers 17 and 18 on the periodic chart. Instead of nitrogen, #8, with an atomic weight of 14; while chlorine and argon have weights of 34 and 39.8, respectively. Nitrogen makes up something like what? 72% of the air? 78% according to my envy sys book (I knew it would come in handy for SOMETHING. Sigh. CO2 and O2/3 make up something like 21% of the remainder. Nitrogen weighs the most, at 14, oxygen 12 and carbon not far behind. By effectively changing the density of the air, in theroy, that should increase the heat absorbtion factor. Of course, you can't just buy argon, BUT, you can buy an argon something something canister for your inert gas wielder. My plan would be to create a closed system with some sort of radiator picking up the majority of the heat in a closed system. It seems damn complex though; still requiring a water pump - the only advantage is that you don't have to worry about condensation on the processor, as you'd flush out 95% of the o2/h20.