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Crazy Idea

Author	Topic
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 04 Apr 2002 : 17:42:40 I had this crazy idea just after the SanFran Expo this year for a nice addition to Apple's low cost Mac line. Take a Mac Colour classic and redesign it in White/Chrome like the iPod. Add a 12.1" iBook flat panel LCD, a 40GB Hard disk mounted behind the screen and a slot loading CD drive in the front where the floppy would be on a CC. In the tray at the bottom you take a logic board similar in size (square tho) to the new iMac logic board and put a 667 or 733 MHz G3 on it and PC133 RAM and hey presto you have a super compact, maybe even a candidate for the 25th Anniversary Mac, due this year (yeh right)? -- Mark Benson Visit FlatPackMacs Online http://fpm.gotdns.com
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 04 Apr 2002 : 17:54:08 quote: hey presto you have a super compact, maybe even a candidate for the 25th Anniversary Mac, due this year (yeh right)? i'm hoping for a retro 68060 based TAM in 2004. i think an apple //c-lcd gamer would be more appropriate for the 25th anniversary apple. but as mine are entirely insane, your idea sounds great, as long as the freakin' monitor will allow it to do portrait format wordproc duty for the NEXT 25 years! TAMs would still be awesome for that with a pivoting monitor! cubes too with a portrait capable display. but i'm not as smart as apple marketing i guess. jt ™
~Coxy Leader, Tactical Ops Unit Australia 2822 Posts	Posted - 04 Apr 2002 : 18:35:29 I heard that Steve-o hated the very idea of anniversary Macs: if so, that means we won't get any more... ~Coxy - Leader, Tactical Operations Unit 00014 Macs liberated
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 04 Apr 2002 : 18:58:44 quote: I heard that Steve-o hated the very idea of anniversary Macs: if so, that means we won't get any more... the idiot in the black turtleneck strikes again! =8-P hubris, hubris, thy name i . . . jt ™
Wonkothesane Full Member USA 506 Posts	Posted - 04 Apr 2002 : 20:46:50 Maybe Steve hates the idea because the last anniversary mac they made was a complete flop? Then again, I'm sure that he will do something, like slap the words "Special Edition" on an imac, maybe paint it silver...... Wonko The Sane Engineer-in-training 3 Macs Liberated "You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool."- Wonko The Sane
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 05 Apr 2002 : 05:09:54 Steve Jobs has some really great ideas, then again he has some really crap ones too, like engraving on the back of the iPod I think my idea has some good things about it: 1. It's based almost entirely in current iBook technology, which makes it easy for them to build 2. The display is exactly 2x the size of the original Mac and the same size as the iMac, maybe an 800x600 option could be promoted for people with bad eyes 3. It's a Compact Mac, but it has an LCD so there is no danger of getting fried working inside it which will save Apple tons of support costs. 4. It's a Compact Mac for the 21st century (that's a good marketing line - hold onto that one!) If they can cram a G4, a hard disk and a CD-RW/DVD into the iMac P80 they can get all that into a Colour Classic with acres to spare, look at some of the projects people have undertaken to do just that.... Anyway, I'm rambling..... -- Mark Benson Visit FlatPackMacs Online http://fpm.gotdns.com
AnubisTTP Junior Member USA 308 Posts	Posted - 05 Apr 2002 : 07:23:12 They could fit the guts of a G4 cube behind the LCD without too much trouble I would think, and it would leave plenty of room in the base for expansion. That would also recoup some of the development costs of making the G4 cubes innards by reusing them in a 25th anniversary Mac AnubisTTP 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Macs Liberated:15
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 05 Apr 2002 : 09:04:13 quote: They could fit the guts of a G4 cube behind the LCD without too much trouble I would think, and it would leave plenty of room in the base for expansion. That would also recoup some of the development costs of making the G4 cubes innards by reusing them in a 25th anniversary Mac I think they threw a lot of the Cube development ideas into the iMac. If you look at the dome's volume and the Cube's volume they are virtually she same. It is also the same bus speed and ATA speed, suggesting the same board. I hear what you say though, the Cube guts are only 7.75" cubed (ish) so they'd easily fit behind the 12.1" LCD screen. Also they would be a bit thinner in one dimension if you put the hard disk under the CD drive at the bottom. What is more if you used Cube technology and packed it at the top of the case you could make it convection cooled, provided you didn't use Seagate UATA hard disks. Do you think we could fit a proper PCI slot in there, maybe PCI on either side of the CPU on a right-angle card in the base, make it a bit more expandable than the Cube and maybe offer a dual monitor option like the TiBook. It's have to have a GeForce 4MX of course . Cool ideas, can't see it happening though. -- Mark Benson Visit FlatPackMacs Online http://fpm.gotdns.com We have feets
Wonkothesane Full Member USA 506 Posts	Posted - 05 Apr 2002 : 09:57:32 Sad, isn't it? It sounds like such a cool idea, but we'll never see it get implemented. Maybe if we Photoshop up some designs and send them to Apple we would have a chance of seeing something like it? Wonko The Sane Engineer-in-training 3 Macs Liberated "You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool."- Wonko The Sane
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 05 Apr 2002 : 16:57:51 Don't be daft, Apple'd have to sack the entire design department if they did that No, seriously they employ a whole design team to come up with cool designs like P80, why would they listen to me? Especially seeing as the idea i had was the first thing they did in 1984? -- Mark Benson Visit FlatPackMacs Online http://fpm.gotdns.com We have feets
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 08 Apr 2002 : 06:08:57 quote: 3. It's a Compact Mac, but it has an LCD so there is no danger of getting fried working inside it which will save Apple tons of support costs. Just as long as you stay the HELL away from the following components with the power on: Inverter board Inverter cable Display backlight In a PowerBook, (or any other LCD device that uses a backlight), there is a board called the inverter board, which converts the low DC voltage to a higher AC voltage, sometimes upwards of 400VAC. This, in turn, powers the backlight on the LCD, which is why LCDs with backlights are so bright. When i was putting together my 145B, i learnt this lesson the hard way, as i was putting things back together in the display assembly (hooking the inverter cable up to the display), and i had the power on, and forgot about it. Needless to say, i soon got a shocking experience, a burn mark on my index finger, and a broken inverter cable. Lesson to all: Never screw with LCDs and inverters unless you are COMPLETELY sure you have the POWER OFF, and DISCONNECTED COMPLETELY! -------------------------- Pizzabox LCs RULE!!!!!!! Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6!!! QFW68KPB Project SUCCESS!!!!! Edited by - maclover5 on 08 Apr 2002 06:14:31
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 08 Apr 2002 : 06:31:53 quote: In a PowerBook, (or any other LCD device that uses a backlight), there is a board called the inverter board, which converts the low DC voltage to a higher AC voltage, sometimes upwards of 400VAC. This, in turn, powers the backlight on the LCD, which is why LCDs with backlights are so bright. When i was putting together my 145B, i learnt this lesson the hard way, as i was putting things back together in the display assembly (hooking the inverter cable up to the display), and i had the power on, and forgot about it. Needless to say, i soon got a shocking experience, a burn mark on my index finger, and a broken inverter cable. Lesson to all: Never screw with LCDs and inverters unless you are COMPLETELY sure you have the POWER OFF, and DISCONNECTED COMPLETELY! wow! another fried comrade! maybe we need an EMS page on the site with all the hazard warnings and links to health related info like RSI's and other (painful!) crap like that! have we got a todo list for budding content creators, i'm just an idea guy, (LAZY AS ALL H*L! [;D]) comrades might actually volunteer to DO something if we had a hazardous duty detail listing or some such nonsense where they could look for stuff to help out with, whadda ya think? dunno, it's . . . . playtime! realizes he's awefully tired and on the verge of an extended run of incoherence!* ! jt ™
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 10 Apr 2002 : 04:46:18 quote: wow! another fried comrade! Yep! And guess what? I still haven't learnt my lesson. Teee heee right now next to my iMac, i have one of those funky external 1.2 gig Apple hard drives in the funky cute little tower case hooked up to my PowerBook 145B, which is defragging it. I have the case off the hard drive, which exposes the high voltage power supply components. Dangerous, i know, but hella cool. -------------------------- Pizzabox LCs RULE!!!!!!! Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6!!! QFW68KPB Project SUCCESS!!!!!
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 11 Apr 2002 : 16:44:48 quote: Yep! And guess what? I still haven't learnt my lesson. Teee heee right now next to my iMac, i have one of those funky external 1.2 gig Apple hard drives in the funky cute little tower case hooked up to my PowerBook 145B, which is defragging it. I have the case off the hard drive, which exposes the high voltage power supply components. Dangerous, i know, but hella cool. Nothing to be scared of really, I have an old Symbiotic Challenger 20 case, modified to fit and 50-pin SCSI hard disk, which spends most of it's working life with the lid off being used as a test bed for drives I get from others via post or courier. It's damn convenient to just undo two plugs and plug them into another drive, I even mad up a daisy-chain cab;e for it so I can use it in tandom with my equally botched external 4x CD drive I haven't fried myself yet but I have had a few close shaves operating inside open SE/30s, I brushed my hand over a metal plate on the analog board once but nothing happened, didn't stop me jumping a mile out of the way though! I hear what you are saying about the HT stuff for the LCD but it can all be housed in a little metal box where no-one can get in unless they feel lik invalidating their warranty. I'm still puzzled about fitting the logic board in. People have fitted 5400 boards in existing CCs so they have workable PCI slots (via a PCI right anfgle stacker from a scrap PC) and it seems to be a good system and produces 1 PCI slot for an external monitor, which is cool. I have this vision of the area behind the LCD panel being lined with moulded plastic with jus a pair of PCI slots and the cables and mounts for the hard disk poking out so you could change the hard disk and add PCI cards. I am also considering mounting 4 RAM slots up there somehow (conceptually of course) to allow easy RAM upgrades. This would mean either mounting the logic board vertically (the lack of analog CRT board would allow this) or making the logic board in 2 halves with a seperate inferface board with one ATA, RAM, PCI and the PRAM battery on it. I prefer the former myself.... The area behind the LCD would have a hinge-off coverthat allowed users to get in to change the user servicable parts but keep them away from the HT stuff. -- Mark Benson Visit FlatPackMacs Online http://fpm.gotdns.com We have feets

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