April 6th, '03

Hi all, I just finished making my G4 '1337'. I made the plastic panels all clear (translucent) and then I put glowing aquarium tubing-type-stuff around the inside of the case.

Ok, so it wasn't quite that simple...

Most of the plastic was reasonably simple to get off of the case, but the side panel with the latch had problems. The four screws came off just fine, but under the apple there is a plastic snap reinforcement assembly connecting the plastic to the metal underneath. Darn Apple for making their cases sturdy. Anyway, I happened to have a nice sharp wood saw handy that I slipped between the inner metal and outer plastic and made short work of that. (It is actually much tougher to cut than it looks...)

That paint on the inside of the plastic is a real PITA to get off. I ended up soaking each panel in iso. alcohol for a few hours. A tub full of pure iso. alcohol is expensive, so I ended up putting the part to be de-painted and a few bottles of alcohol in a garbage bag, then floating that in my bathtub. Worked reasonably well. Then I scrubbed the inside of the plastic piece down with steel wool (SOS pad as the case may be, same diff...) and a toothbrush. I had no intent of making the case see through, so the steel wool gave me a nice translucent effect. If I was to do this again, I would find some nice gloves because steel wool pains the hands. Also, this would have taken hours instead of days if I had started out using 90%+ quality alcohol (instead of the standard 70%) and several layers of garbage bags.

I then used a hot glue gun to glue lighted tubing around the inside edges of the plastic. I got 15 ft of glow tube on sale for $44 at some local dept. store (norm $50). It was intended for use in cars, but I figured the tubing wouldn't notice the difference. For future reference: 15 ft of tubing is good, but 16 ft is better. It was originally to be powered out of a car, so what I did was mate the car power adapter to a regular computer internal power plug.

The computer's standard power supply has 5v, 12v, and two ground lines (as diagramed on the back of many CD-ROM drives). I spliced the 12v/ground in the computer to the car plug. The car plug's center is the 12v, and the rest is the ground. I then plugged that apparatus into the spare HD power cord in the comp. Set up the way it is, the light turns off when it is sleeping, and on otherwise. It is now rather easy to tell if it is sleeping, or the screen is just shut off.

Then, for added effect, I put the case back on the computer.

N3kkid G4

Panel being scrubbed

Glued tubing

Me putting the case on the comp without ripping apart my tubing job (too much. of course what did come apart was the most visible corner, I may fix that later. It looks sufficiently 1337 for the time being.) (and yes, the one behind the camera bought me that shirt)

Misc. pics

Back in the home I made for it.