casemodding

4 Articles

An art deco style computer made of several grey/blue boxes with silver grates on top of a maple platform.

Clean Slate Is A Vintage Amplifier-Inspired PC

December 9, 2022 by 9 Comments

Hacks that bring a vintage flair to modern electronics never get old, and [Jeffrey Stephenson] delivers with his Project Clean Slate inspired by vintage tube amps.

Thinking outside the traditional single box PC, [Jeffrey] built his computer into a series of component-specific boxes all attached to a platform housing the Micro ATX motherboard. The base is made of plywood with a birds-eye maple veneer and each of the component boxes features two different sizes of wire mesh to manipulate the viewer’s perception of the dimensions. Even the I/O and graphics card plates are custom made from aluminum for this build.

If you really want to dig into how this PC came to life, there’s a very detailed build log including every step of the process from bare board to finished product. We love when we get an inside look at the thought process behind each design decision in a build.

We’ve featured [Jeffrey] before with his Humidor Cluster, and you may also like this PC inside a vintage radio.

Continue reading “Clean Slate Is A Vintage Amplifier-Inspired PC” →

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Hackaday Links: June 14, 2015

June 14, 2015 by 8 Comments

You know we’re running this gigantic contest to build hardware and send someone to space, right? We’re doing community voting right now. If you’re on Hackaday.io, head over there and pick the best project. We’re giving away t-shirts and $1000 gift cards to people who vote. The drawing for this round is next Friday.

MicroPython is a pretty interesting development in the area of interpreted languages running on microcontrollers. It’s Python, the BASIC of the modern era, and now it’s being funded by the ESA. Great news, there’s going to be a port to SPARC, and it looks like MicroPython is going to be in a few satellites.

[EloquentlyMawkishBunny]’s calculator stopped working on the morning of his AP Physics test. It was the ribbon cable for the display. What did he do? He grabbed some magnet wire and made it work. If I’m reading this right, he did this the day of his AP test. Wow.

[Will] has made a name for himself by building roller coasters in his backyard. He’s also worked on the ProtoPalette, and now he’s building a hackerspace in Concord, California.

[Josh] needed to drill some very large holes with his mill. He decided a hole saw was the easiest way to do this, but his hole saw has a hex shank. He ended up chopping the shank of a hole saw extension, basically turning it into a hex to round adapter.

Did you know the Arduino IDE on Raspbian is stuck at version 1.0.5? The newest version is 1.6.4, and there’s useful stuff like autosave in the IDE now. Amazing. [CRImier] got the latest Arduino IDE working on the Raspberry Pi 2. Yes, there’s an issue up but if for some reason you’re programming Arduinos on the Pi, you should probably do this yourself.

Oooohhhh, case modding. The Intel NUC is a pretty interesting platform for case modding; it’s small, and I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of all the cool case mods that were created when the Mini-ITX format gained popularity in the early ‘aughts. [Femke] got herself an Intel NUC, made a case, and the results are amazing. How’d she get that metal bowl? Metal spinning. Very cool.

Xbox 360 Modding Case Details

June 23, 2008 by 15 Comments


If you’ve been wondering about what changes Lian-Li implemented in their commercial XBox 360 casemod called the PC-XB01, they’ve recently updated their product page.

The case does not add any new functions to the console, but it improves its efficiency on several levels. To deal with the noise produced by the DVD drive, they installed sheets of sound insulation foam around the drive, greatly reducing the sound it makes when it spins up. They did even more for temperature control, replacing the standard dual 70mm fans with a single 120mm fan that cools more efficiently and quietly. The case is also larger and features a frontside grate, allowing for vastly improved airflow. Lian-Li designers even left opening in the back for option water tubes in case you want to add a liquid cooling system.

[via Xbox-Scene]