2 Sep
1998
2 Sep
'98
2:44 p.m.
Uncle Roger wrote:
I was talking to someone recently (Rax?) about
building a custom
wood-glass-and-brass case for a computer. Not that hard to build your
first one in a plywood case, then worry about the production cases once
you've got financing. (Of course, just make sure that cable going to the
vax behind the curtain doesn't show! 8^)
Back in my youth, Ma Bell (a monopoly at the time) displayed at a
travelling show (where I first played tic-tac-toe against a computer)
a demo model of their upcoming standard phone with the dial in the
handset -- but the case wase was transparent plastic so you could
actually see the transisters and relays and such inside the thing.
They never produced such things for customers, and by the time other
companies could sell clear telephones the circuitry was modern and
therefore boring.
The Tandy folks from Fort Worth used to bring a Tandy 6000 to the
computer shows in LA (which I naturally had to help with, as they
rarely brought anybody from central tech support and I was the closest
competent available) with a big chunk of the case cut out out and a
piece of plexi showing it off. I'd have loved it if the entire case
made of plexi was an option. Especially since one of my local
customers (a company that was making the cases for Tandy, desired to
computerise, and sent a dozen folks to several classes I taught
before they actually bought the machines) would have made them, and I
might have been able to snarf a few manufacturing seconds.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright