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My last project (FlexATX in a toaster) never really got off the ground, but I'm looking for something to occupy me for the summer so I thought I'd start another, somewhat simpler project.
NeXT laserprinter to PC conversion.
A cube would be nice, but they're not too easy to get ahold of & somewhat expensive and the laserprinter was free. It's not quite as fancy as the magnesium framed cubes but still has the look & the original logo. The end result is something about the size of a thick desktop case with a spring-loaded lid allowing access to the internals
I've got the printer gutted (not as easy as it sounds) & ready to start working on, I'm just kinda unsure about what I should stick into it. There's plenty of room in the case for a full size ATX power supply (well, almost... might have to hack that up a tiny bit). I'm just not sure what to use for the guts.
There's always the mini-ITX EPIA boards. A popular option for doing these sorts of conversions, relatively inexpensive but kinda gutless. Using one of these would relegate the finished project to being a show-off piece; nothing I'd really use for serious computing.
The other option would be to use a microATX board with a P4, Athlon XP or Athlon64 CPU. The problem here is wether I should go with onboard video (since I want to run Linux on this, that pretty much limits me to nForce2 IGP, the ATI 9100 chipset and Intel's Extreme Crapics) or a full AGP graphics card. Going with a full graphics card & a nice motherboard would result in a 'real computer', but would result in a bit more work (not -that- much... I'd have to use a rackmount-style riser to put the card in sideways tho; an upright AGP card would force me to cut through important structural bits).
The most important question, tho, is what color of neon light do I want to put in?
NeXT laserprinter to PC conversion.
A cube would be nice, but they're not too easy to get ahold of & somewhat expensive and the laserprinter was free. It's not quite as fancy as the magnesium framed cubes but still has the look & the original logo. The end result is something about the size of a thick desktop case with a spring-loaded lid allowing access to the internals
I've got the printer gutted (not as easy as it sounds) & ready to start working on, I'm just kinda unsure about what I should stick into it. There's plenty of room in the case for a full size ATX power supply (well, almost... might have to hack that up a tiny bit). I'm just not sure what to use for the guts.
There's always the mini-ITX EPIA boards. A popular option for doing these sorts of conversions, relatively inexpensive but kinda gutless. Using one of these would relegate the finished project to being a show-off piece; nothing I'd really use for serious computing.
The other option would be to use a microATX board with a P4, Athlon XP or Athlon64 CPU. The problem here is wether I should go with onboard video (since I want to run Linux on this, that pretty much limits me to nForce2 IGP, the ATI 9100 chipset and Intel's Extreme Crapics) or a full AGP graphics card. Going with a full graphics card & a nice motherboard would result in a 'real computer', but would result in a bit more work (not -that- much... I'd have to use a rackmount-style riser to put the card in sideways tho; an upright AGP card would force me to cut through important structural bits).
The most important question, tho, is what color of neon light do I want to put in?
