The Classical Imperium
yet another completely
over the top pc case mod
as biult by Ralph Klimek
somewhen about 1990
The Imperium case mod was created to address a specific need.
Sometime about 1990 she-who-must-be-obeyed decreed that there were to
be no computers in the house. At this time when I still
cared,
obeying every merest whim I complied but still sadly missed my
computer. So i biult this cabinet, without specifying its purpose to
anyone but myself. The PC innards are attached to a metal plate on
roller guides which pull out the back for servicing and upgrades. It
started off as an PC XT and over the years not a trace of original
electronics remains. It was biult before CD roms became commonplace and
internal horizontal space does not admit the installation of 5 1/4
drives mounted horizontally. This is its only design
deficiency.
The wood is all second hand building material, the wood material is
excessively thick and ridiculously over engineered. It was biult for
appearance sake only. The monitor for this version was
smuggled
into the house under the pretence of being a television. This
trangression of mine went unnoticed for some 5 years until two and two
were placed together but by then the original commandment had been
forgotten. The Triton permits you to cut perfect mitres in the hardest
of old scrap hardwood. The top piece is cut to fit perfectly into a
rebate into the top mitred frame. There is a fan at the bottom blowing
cold up upwards. This is good thermally but in practice the fan inlet
is close to the floor and seems to blow in a lot of dust, an easily
serviceable fan filter is a must.
There is some router work here, but it involves only the creation of
decorative edges. The roman ogee bit gives a very handsome finish and a
somewhat otherwordly feel.
It is also fitted with castors to permit easy movement.
The Classical Imperium,
a
PC case mod for the discerning gentleman of rank , power and humbug
front door allowing access to the floppy drive
In its PC xt configuration the back door used to completely close. By
the constraints imposed by my not very well thought out interior design
I can no longer completely close the back door. You can see part of the
roller rails holding a metal plate to which the motherboard, PSU and
drives are attached. There is no room for a CD drive...that my fault
for not looking into the future. There were no such things in 1990 at
hobbyist prices.
If I was to do this again I would have used lighter grade of plywood for the sides, proper provision for optical drives and
naturally, a design to take the ATX style device. This did not exist
when this was constructed. An upgrade to the micro-ATX format
would require new metal work and then the back door could be closed. At
this point in time its hosting an old pentium 3 and running Doze-98,
but only so it can run some old favourite PC games that cannot be
convinced to run on XP.
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