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Date Posted: 23:52:27 04/16/01 Mon
Author: John Stocker
Subject: My 3rd Power Color Classic (in progress)

I thought I'd post some info and images of the machine I'm building at the moment.

After thinking long about how to improve my existing PCC, I came to the inevitable conclusion that the old power board and CRT simply HAD to go. They take up too much room, and can be replaced with much smaller substitutes.

This is what I've come up with:
http://www.glowsoft.com/sfs/temp/ppc1.jpg

This machine is nearly finished. I'm waiting on 2 parts: a slot loading Pioneer SCSI DVD and an 8.4" LCD screen. For now there is a 10" LCD wired up externally just to verify that everything works, and an Apple 12x CDROM sits inside as a temporary placeholder. The DVD loading slot has not yet been cut in the front plastic panel of the classic.

In this image:
http://www.glowsoft.com/sfs/temp/ppc2.jpg

you can see the changes made. Gone is the old CRT. Gone is most of the old power supply - all but the rear 1" has been cut away (the remainder I kept for the switch and power plug). In their place is a CD-ROM *above* the floppy drive, and above that a sheet metal casing. This casing holds a 6360 power supply and an IBM 75GXP hard drive. The 6360 power supply gives ample power to everything in the case. Above the casing (sitting within the "bubble" at the top of the color classic) is the speaker and LCD controller board. For now the LCD is wired to the internal video. When all is finished, the LCD will be driven by an ATI Radeon PCI card, and the onboard video will be delegated to external displays.

http://www.glowsoft.com/sfs/temp/ppc3.jpg

This image shows the remaining portion of the old power supply, and how the CD Rom drive fits into the case. The CD drive sits centered directly above the floppy, mounted with steel plates that slide along the plastic rails that used to support the old power supply. The slot loading DVD drive will eject through a thin space above the LED/button board and beneath the lower edge of the 8.4" LCD.

http://www.glowsoft.com/sfs/temp/ppc4.jpg

Here you can see roughly where the DVD slot will eject (again, I'm waiting for the slot loading drive - what you see is a placeholder apple drive I use only for measurements)

http://www.glowsoft.com/sfs/temp/ppc5.jpg

This picture shows the leftover space within. Roughly a quarter of the useable space within this color classic is now empty. I've measured this carefully, and there's room for a Magma 4 PCI slot expansion board and PCI cards. Adding one of these would give this machine 5 useable PCI slots.

To summarize, when this Color Classic is finished it will have:

8.4" 640x480 LCD screen
6500 motherboard with A/V, external video, and 10baseT
500MHz G3 Sonnet upgrade
128MB RAM
5 PCI slots via an internal Magma PCI bridge
ATI Radeon graphics
Slot loading DVD drive AND floppy drive
IBM 7200RPM 60-gig hard drive
Speaker/Mic/usual bells and whistles

all fit snugly within a color classic case. My only regret is that this machine really isn't a color classic anymore. With the old power supply and CRT gone, all that remains of the original color classic is a fan and a plastic shell. I'm not entirely sure what to call it. In any case, a couple unexpected benefits are that this computer has become much lighter without the CRT, runs much cooler, and uses much less power.

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