Ass-kicking water-cooled steampunk PC
Steampunk wizard Jake von Slatt sez, "I was checking referrers in my web logs and saw significant amount of traffic from this oversea modding forum. So I checked it out a found this incredible water-cooled Steampunk PC case mod! Damn! the bar has been raised again!" Link (Thanks, Jake!)
Ye Olde Collection of Previous Boing Boing Steampunk Linques
the latest
latest episodes
Oh, now that's what I like to see!
A lot of the "steampunk" devices posted here haven't really done it for me, because while they look cool, most or all of the cool looking bits were just added on for looks and don't do anything.
This one actually looks functional -- big water tubes that actually carry water for a purpose. And a few extra valves never hurt anyone. I love the oversized bolts holding on the side window, too: functional, and cool looking!
I wonder if the gauges on the back actually measure anything? I couldn't read the language that linked the post was made in. :-p
I wouldn't try to pronounce it, let alone read it! Looks like Polish -- probably why the case mod is so nice, it's a well-Polished design.
re: Meters
I have a number of old analog gauges that I've hooked up to computers before. I'm not that electro-literate, but basically your typical LED readout (like for disk activity) puts out about 15 milliamp DC, so if you hook up a DC milliamp meter with about 25 milliamp max, the needle nicely twitches with disk activity. Clip the LED wires and hook them up to the meter. The catch is mounting the meter somehow, thought I always thought it would be cool to have them not on the PC but around the monitor, like desktop widgets that moved outside the monitor space into real world space.
I usually look in the ebay meters section for these. The key is getting ones that have a range of 0-25 or even 0-50 DC milliamp. Figure the LED light will push it up to about 15 or so, so the closer you are to 15 the more needle motion you get.
That's much too nice to be ruined with the use of crappy PLYWOOD with a bad stain job.
Should be using birch plywood stained to look like mahogany, preferably with dovetail joints and more preferably some nice cherry veneer.
If it's a money/time thing, think about faux leather or black painted/varnished fabric, common turn of the century materials.