Re: Cases

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Ronin Hyde asked:

>      At any point were people making other cases for the Apple II's? I've
>tried porting the motherboard of my IIgs over to a dead Packard Bell and it
>seems the PB isn't even useful for a housing. Trying to look into what
>materials would be needed to make an aluminum case so I can piddle with it.
>Something just grates my nerves to have to jury rig a case for the gs just
>so I can have internal drives, better power supply and some decent cooling.
>If alternate cases could be made (and haven't already) what would people
>want from them? About the only thing I've hated about the IIgs over the
>years is the amount of desk space it consumes and the time to set it up.

Although I haven't done it, a number of people have retrofitted IIgs's into
PC tower cases.  This involves drilling some new holes for mounts and
coming up with a scheme you're comfortable with for holding any
expansion cards in place with the Apple II MB vertical.  The PC power
supply is great for an Apple II, and, if you get a nice-sized tower, the
drive bays make "building it all in" pretty straightforward.

The IIgs keyboard is already external, so that's not a problem, but a
"towerized" //e would require finding a suitable keyboard housing, or
an adapter to allow using, say, an external PC keyboard.

Although horizontal "desktop" PC cases can also be used, they
often present packing problems for an Apple board, and they don't
do much to relieve the desk real estate problem.  ;-)

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
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