I remember the first time I saw the BW G3, it was 1998 and our graphic arts studio was populated by sterile beige mac clones, not even real macs, clones. 150mhz ones at that. And here was our IT guy, unboxing this beautiful tower with curved lines, rounded handles, it looked like a spaceship and it was friggen blue! There was a crowd of everyone in the office staring in awe. I was next in line for an upgrade so much to my delight this icon of design and progress went into my cubical. The tech tried to put it on the floor and I asked him to put it on the desk instead. Wow.

I bought my own a year or so later and it performed loyally until a couple of years ago when it was finally mothballed as my computer room turned into a nursery. Well forget the mothballs the old girl is back with a vengence. I am a collector of junk and every now and then I clean house. I had no less than three powermac chassis sitting around so I went to town. I used a Quicksilver chassis as the core of the mod. I added the case plastics from the BW. As the back panels are different I kept the gray back plastics from the QS. I removed the front plastics from the BW and cut out the area for the drive bays and power buttons, leaving a large gap for the components. I cut out the steel of the QS chassis to enlarge the opening for the front drives so I could fit a bit more in there. I used a 4 port USB 2 hub, A single 5.25 drive bay and a slimline optical drive from a laptop. The best part is the plastic face. I work about 5 blocks from a plastics shop that does custom laser cutting while you wait. Takes about half and hour and the results are fantastic.

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The plastic is a frosted white and nearly a perfect match for the original G3 case.

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Her current specs are a Dual g4 800 with 1.25 gb ram, 120 gig and 250 gig hd, 64mb NVIDIA card, 6 USB 2.0 A Sonnet 802.11G Wirless card and a Slot loading combo drive.

hell yea! fantastic work. ;D

It's beautiful. Well executed. I'd like to see a picture of the mounts for your gear in the front.

I will get some more pics up soon. Working on the lighting now, a nice blue glow all around...

That is downright pimpilitious! Very nice work! Pat yourself on the back!

The slot load optical and usb hub are very nice touches..


I have done some plastics trading with a couple of my macs also. I had my B&W plastics painted then put them on the faster of my 2 Sawtooth. I then put the Sawtooth plastics on the B&W. My slower Sawtooth remains stock..

Lights! A lighted 120mm fan, the Musketeer dials and two cold cathodes. Its like a shrine to geekdom...

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yea, its bad ass ;D

I will post some interior shots once I am done cleaning up the wires. Its funny how the 5.25" drive bay (if not the entire concept of the tower chassis, hello mac mini) is basically obsolete. The laptop optical drive rocks. The dials in the big bay are basically eye candy. There is even a JAE50 slimline cd adaptor to SATA now. I only wish the drive I had on hand was a dvd burner and not just a combo drive. But in all honesty I have one in my laptop and my mini and I think I have burned like two DVDs in about as many years.

Very well done, indeed! Clean and simple. Makes me wish I worked near that plastics shop too !

"entire concept of the tower chassis, hello mac mini) is basically obsolete."

yeah but on the g4 you can just pull the handle and open it without any tools or anything. the mac mini requires delicate surgery with a putty knife

love the computer by the way. this is what i want to do but i don't have a smurf to skin.