My brother gifted me a terrarium built into the case of a Macintosh SE. It's a pretty cool little art piece that will fit pretty well into the shop's display corner. He picked up the Mac on eBay hoping for a functional computer, but it arrived with it's innards shattered. Amazingly, the case was relatively intact so he decided to repurpose it.

It reminds me very much of the very fun Macquariums making the rounds in the 90's as variants of the Mac Plus / Mac 128 type all-in-one beige machines from the 80's were being retired and making their way into scrap bins.

As is often the case with projects like this time was tight, so he didn't have time to install LED lighting into the case before x-mas. But that gave me a chance to open it up and tinker a bit. I also took the opportunity to give the case a once over to clean it up a touch. I think it looks great.

Here's the case opened and terrarium tank extracted. You can see the wood base under the tank that supports the tank inside the case. Here I'm positioning the LED puck lights.

I stuck the LED puck lights in place with a bit of double sided foam tape after cleaning the case and back of the light with alcohol.

The case had a fair number of scuffs and a bit of embedded grime. My brother got the bulk of the old tape adhesive and dirt during the build. A light pass with simple green and a melamine sponge took care of the remaining bits.

Before:

After:

I stuck the power/dimmer switches to the back with a bit of tape, taking care to avoid taping over labels.

Lights off:

Lights on:

I think it looks pretty good! I'll get some shots of it in place in the display/audio corner of the shop once I tidy up that corner a touch.

More to come!