Re: Big Time IIe mod

["Liam Busey" <buseyl@yahoo.com>]

Bill Knight <admin@ghettogamer.com> wrote in message
news:WgZPa.14758$C07.13925@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
- snip project hacking PC into IIe case while retaining IIe motherboard -

Interesting project. I like many here would love to have an Apple II with
the power of a modern PC. You seem to be doing this literally. ;) May I ask
if this is to be a conversation piece or a workhorse? If it's to be used
regularly reliability is a major concern. The biggest issue that pops into
my mind is heat. The idea of an Athlon, Nividia GPU and a IIe sharing a
small poor ventilated case seems to work against that. Fully loaded IIe's
are known to be toasty and many people ran/run them with their lids off.
Your proposed design would likely be much warmer. In order too cool it
adequately I imagine you'd have to install multiple fans virtually requiring
you cut holes in the IIe case, deterring from the visual appeal of the hack.
To avoid that, why not dump the IIe components and use an emulator in there
place?

If your heart is set on have a dual architecture machine, why not try
swapping one or both of the motherboards for more compact/cooler running
variants? A IIe case is vertically challenged so you'll have a rough time
putting any expansion cards in even with a 90 degree adapter. How about
using a IIc motherboard in place of the IIe's. It has all the standard IIe
peripherals built in and has a fairly small footprint. You could jam the IIc
power supply into the case and not have to worry about monkeying around with
a PC powersupply. For the PC end have you considered use one of the VIA
mini-itx (smaller than micro-atx) boards ? They're cheap integrated PC
compatible motherboards with CPU that run far cooler and use much less power
than Pentiums or Athlons. There's a whole community jamming them into all
sorts of  interesting things www.mini-itx.com. It seems feasible that a
combination like this could live together peacefully in the same case.

Just some thoughts.

- Liam