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ShiggyMiyamoto

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 29, 2004
620
31
Just outside Boston, MA.
Hey all. I rarely post here anymore but I have a question. Has anyone 3D modeled a modern (tower or low profile, though tower prefered, alike) Power Mac 8500 case? I have an OG Power Mac 8500 that I've upgraded its CPU to a PowerPC G3/300 MHz and its RAM to 512 MB (maximum supported by Apple at the time), though I still have the 2GB HDD it came with when I got it for my bday a few years back. I do plan to rectify that with a BlueSCSI that's sitting in its anti-static bag as it arrived in the mail.

With all that said, I'd like to use my aforementioned "90s supercomputer" to natively play and stream some old school games to Twitch (I'm aware that it'd be tricky to upscale/get the right video refresh rates to allow for capture with modern hardware) and otherwise capture its video output for other things. I could get the necessary upscaling equipment needed to make that part happen, but I'd first want to be able to open it up when necessary to do maintenance etc on it, but as it is right now it's got its original plastic and it's very brittle. I've already broken some of the supports and brackets and stuff inside (namely some bezels and the front power button) and I thought it'd be fun to rebuild it into a new, reimagined case to give it a new lease on life. I do plan on getting a 3D Printer (the Bambu Lab P1S) in the hopefully near future to print the bezel(s) and the power button assembly, but if I was to attempt (given there's a printable model available) to print the case myself it'd have to be in multiple pieces that I'd have to glue together, and that's less than ideal. I'd gladly pay someone to design and print for me the new case.

Has anyone done this? Is there such a model anywhere out there? As I said earlier I wouldn't mind if it's in tower or low-profile form, but I'd like a new less susceptible to cracking case for the old gal of a Power Mac I have there.

As a bonus question, has anyone made an FPGA'd recreation of a Power Mac 8500 logic board with modern video out and the regular "PCI" CPU daughter card slot so I can use my G3/300 upgrade with it? THAT would be cool and it'd solve part of my problems with the projects I want(ed) to do with it.

Finally, if this isn't the right place to ask about this, of course feel free to move it where it should go.

Thanks,
ShiggyMiyamoto
 
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