Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
WAAAY coo! Very glad to hear it's cool too. Tape is good, but replace that clear stuff with duct tape and suddenly it's an official prototype!
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Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.
Homemade Mini Case for LC, P475, Q605
- Thread starter bigmessowires
- Start date
bigmessowires
Well-known member
Cooling update: after a few of hours of use, the case temperature with passive cooling crept up to 112 F / 44 C. That should still be fine, but it was enough for me to be curious how much a fan would help. Not much, as it turns out. I mounted a tiny 1-inch diameter fan over the bottom vents, in the same spot where I had the speaker earlier. I could definitely feel some warm air blowing out the top vents, so it was working, but it had an annoying high pitched sound. After an hour or so with the fan, the warmest spots were around 100 F / 38 C. A difference, but not a dramatic one.
I'll probably remove the fan. I'm not sure how hot is "too hot", and I'm not sure my temperature measurement method is the best, but I'll arbitrarily define 140 F / 60 C as the red line. Although as long as the computer is still working and doesn't glitch or crash, isn't that the true test?
What's interesting is that the hottest area isn't the CPU or the power supply, but a couple of the support chips near the SCSI and serial ports. They run about 10-15 degrees F hotter than anything else I measured.
I'll probably remove the fan. I'm not sure how hot is "too hot", and I'm not sure my temperature measurement method is the best, but I'll arbitrarily define 140 F / 60 C as the red line. Although as long as the computer is still working and doesn't glitch or crash, isn't that the true test?
What's interesting is that the hottest area isn't the CPU or the power supply, but a couple of the support chips near the SCSI and serial ports. They run about 10-15 degrees F hotter than anything else I measured.
joethezombie
Well-known member
Absolutely amazing. Great job, tomato man!
bigmessowires
Well-known member
Hehe, you can do it yourself, it's easy! I used Inkscape, which is a free vector drawing program. The only really critical measurements are for the locations of the screw holes in the bottom plate, so you can screw down the logic board. But even those could be fudged a little if you make them small slots instead of round holes, so there's room to slide the screw back and forth as needed. The rest is just:Feel like commissioning one for a G4 board? []
1. Draw a rectangle of desired size
2. Add tabs to the sides of the rectangle, that stick out 3 mm
3. Add slots to the mating rectangles, with 3.3 mm width (10% fudge factor)
You could also use a "box maker" tool for the initial layout, then tweak it: http://www.makercase.com
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
Corrugated G4 prototyping! That's a big board! If you're serious about it, there's another thread in the making.
You're looking at something the size of the PEx In a Drawer. Using an ATX PSU to replace the big honking 9600 PSU in that thing would reduce the width by a lot and the height to MoBo components under any given PSU case.
Quadra700/8500/G4 is a nice format wit a significant cubic reduction.
When you've got vertically oriented expansion cards you're pretty much defining your form factor's limits. Not using them at all is one option. Using a pair of them on U-risers would be another.
610/6100 build seems promising.
You're looking at something the size of the PEx In a Drawer. Using an ATX PSU to replace the big honking 9600 PSU in that thing would reduce the width by a lot and the height to MoBo components under any given PSU case.
Quadra700/8500/G4 is a nice format wit a significant cubic reduction.
When you've got vertically oriented expansion cards you're pretty much defining your form factor's limits. Not using them at all is one option. Using a pair of them on U-risers would be another.
610/6100 build seems promising.
bigmessowires
Well-known member
The final (?) update for the Little Orange Monster:
1. Even though I don't think it's necessary, I added a tiny 1-inch fan. It was annoyingly loud and whiney, so I rigged it to run from +5V instead of +12V. Now it's much quieter, but also turns more slowly and moves less air. After several hours of run time, the hottest internal temperature is 113 F / 45 C on the bottom of the logic board near the serial ports. The CPU temperature is about 90 F / 32 C.
2. I relocated the speaker, using a very professional scrap of cardboard to float it above the RAM. It's sandwiched tight when the case's top is installed. I thought this might cause muffled sound, but it's not at all.
Here you can see the fan and speaker placements:
3. Added some stick-on feet to the case bottom, so it sits about 4mm above the desk. This provides a little more airflow to the bottom vents. I went overboard with the feet, and used 10 of them!
4. Stole some RAM from the detestable Performa 6205, so now this machine has 36 MB.
5. Now that I know how to transfer software to the SCSI2SD card, I loaded it up with everything I could find. That includes the Tetris Max source code, other strange pieces of shareware that I wrote, Hypercard stacks I made in 1989, SoundMaster audio recordings I thought were hilarious when I was 18, and other gems.
1. Even though I don't think it's necessary, I added a tiny 1-inch fan. It was annoyingly loud and whiney, so I rigged it to run from +5V instead of +12V. Now it's much quieter, but also turns more slowly and moves less air. After several hours of run time, the hottest internal temperature is 113 F / 45 C on the bottom of the logic board near the serial ports. The CPU temperature is about 90 F / 32 C.
2. I relocated the speaker, using a very professional scrap of cardboard to float it above the RAM. It's sandwiched tight when the case's top is installed. I thought this might cause muffled sound, but it's not at all.
Here you can see the fan and speaker placements:
3. Added some stick-on feet to the case bottom, so it sits about 4mm above the desk. This provides a little more airflow to the bottom vents. I went overboard with the feet, and used 10 of them!
4. Stole some RAM from the detestable Performa 6205, so now this machine has 36 MB.
5. Now that I know how to transfer software to the SCSI2SD card, I loaded it up with everything I could find. That includes the Tetris Max source code, other strange pieces of shareware that I wrote, Hypercard stacks I made in 1989, SoundMaster audio recordings I thought were hilarious when I was 18, and other gems.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
Yay, finally some cardboard! Got duct tape?
Next time you pop the top of that very orange crush can, have a Variable decibel output level control unit ready to pop in there under a cooling slot so you can punch its buttons.. Gotta give mine a spin. [] ]'>
Next time you pop the top of that very orange crush can, have a Variable decibel output level control unit ready to pop in there under a cooling slot so you can punch its buttons.. Gotta give mine a spin. [
] ]'>
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LazarusNine
Well-known member
Just wanted to add my congratulations for a job well done, BMOW. It's a really cool project and I look forward to seeing where things go from here. The LC has always been near and dear to my heart.
One thing that really makes me smile is the inclusion of your Retro USB in those pictures. I'm really enjoying mine and it's currently connected to a beige G3 desktop, which will become my primary machine for producing screen capture videos for my channel. Just dropped a hefty sum on a VGA to USB 3.0 capture device for that purpose. Was getting tired of the relatively limited software options on classic Mac OS. Capturing anything over 640x480 or anything remotely CPU intensive was impossible. Still, the G4 MDD did a pretty decent job of it for a while. =P
P.S. what 'other strange shareware' did you write and can we get our hands on it?? ????
One thing that really makes me smile is the inclusion of your Retro USB in those pictures. I'm really enjoying mine and it's currently connected to a beige G3 desktop, which will become my primary machine for producing screen capture videos for my channel. Just dropped a hefty sum on a VGA to USB 3.0 capture device for that purpose. Was getting tired of the relatively limited software options on classic Mac OS. Capturing anything over 640x480 or anything remotely CPU intensive was impossible. Still, the G4 MDD did a pretty decent job of it for a while. =P
P.S. what 'other strange shareware' did you write and can we get our hands on it?? ????
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bigmessowires
Well-known member
I made a game called Dr. Max, which was a sort-of clone of Dr. Mario. It wasn't very popular, but I think it was the best and most polished shareware game I ever did. I think it's on Macintosh Garden if you want to check it out.
Lots of other stuff was just for my own amusement. Puzzle games, half-finished adventure games, fractals, stuff like that. I made a Hypercard stack using a 1-bit digitized image of myself (from a Thunderscan), cut out and animated the jaw in a crude sort of talking dummy effect, and loosely synced it to some audio so it looked like I was talking. Then made it say various amusing/inappropriate things.
Lots of other stuff was just for my own amusement. Puzzle games, half-finished adventure games, fractals, stuff like that. I made a Hypercard stack using a 1-bit digitized image of myself (from a Thunderscan), cut out and animated the jaw in a crude sort of talking dummy effect, and loosely synced it to some audio so it looked like I was talking. Then made it say various amusing/inappropriate things.
Trash80toHP_Mini
NIGHT STALKER
Love Tetris Max, great soundtrack. What was it again?
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