Introduction Hello everybody! Time has come for another project to start. I wanted to do a unique build, something thathas never been seen before and as I was walking around the house looking at old stuff I noticed the beauty that would be housing this project, for all you radio lovers, it's a Grundig 4066 radio made in Germany in the late 50's. This project will be mostly used as a regular daily driver PC and some light photoshop use, it's entitled to my cousin that has been really nice to me helping me take the final pictures for my latest build Chernobyl And also giving me her Nikon D40x camera to take pictures in this project! Speaking of my latest project, Chernobyl will actually be recieving a makeover sometime next week where I will be replacing some watercooling stuff and redoing some details like cables and such. But enough of that, you'll have to read that in the Chernobyl buildlog. I completely understand that some of you will be a bit annoyed or even furious that I will be "ripping" apart such a pretty old radio but it no longer is required and will just start to collect dust so I decided to give it new life instead, if you're wondering about the history. The radio has been in my family many years originally from my grandfather, and I did not want it to be forgotten. That's why I gave this project the name, Vintage Reborn. Components All components are not decided yet but I will be updating this list as the components get updated. PSU: Bitfenix Fury 550G MOBO: MSI Z97i AC CPU: Intel i5 4690k RAM: 16GB HyperX Fury SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 120gb HDD: WD Green 1TB CPU Cooling: BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3 Case Cooling: Bitfenix Spectre Pro Lighting: Bitfenix Alchemy LED strips Big News Bitfenix has jumped in and decided to sponsor this build. A big thanks to Bitfenix for supplying me with things for my build. I will be covering their sponsorship a bit more in detail as the project goes on. So let's get to work! I decided to start with showing of the radio before disassembly and also show of what Bitfenix provided me. Ofcourse I am still pretty new regarding photography so please bare with me if I got some bad angles etc, but I promise you they will become better as the build continues. Here we have some pictures of what Bitfenix provided me with. I must say that being sleeving directly from the factory, Nanosleeve is one of the best premade sleeved cables I've seen actually, it feels quite soft and not as "plastic" feely as other factory sleevings. And ofcourse I have to show a wide picture of the radio and some components Excuse me for the photobombing but I really wanted to showcase all of the aspects of the radio, now onwards to what I've planned for the PC itself. The project is expected to be finished by mid summer so it might take a while before you start seeing components dropping in but that does not mean we will be taking it nice and easy, full speed ahead! I wanted to keep the Retro feel in the PC so I decided to simply not show the IO or the PSU back cover that you normally would find on the back of the PC, instead I will be using some wonderful things called Panelmounts. You simply extend the cable and mount it on the outside of something sort of the way most PC cases have on their front panel. Unfortunately I haven't got a lot of time to work with during this week and the coming because I have my main rig Chernobyl to redo and a lot of studies. I started picking apart the radio and I can say this right from the start, it wasn't a pleasent experience. The radio hadn't been opened since the purchase which meant I had about 50 years of dust to deal with. very well, onwards. The radio is completely disassembled and I started planning where to drill and where to cut holes for all the panel mounts and I also started deciding the component layout inside the radio itself. Here's a picture of how the radio looks without all the trim. Also an early version of what the drilled holes will look like REMEMBER This is not the final product as I still have a lot of touch ups to make the holes look nicer. The project will be a bit dry on updates for the first weeks as I have a lot to deal with right now but I assure you I will update the log as soon as I've got time for it, ofcourse you should not have to wait. Here we have some renders in the early stage of the radio that I rendered using Visualizer. All models were made using the program Sketchup. Sadly this is all for this update but more will be coming next week!
Hi, looks very nice but could you please resize your images, there is a max size allowed and these look to be 4k images. it's taken nearly two minutes to upload them on my crappy connection. I personally resize anything I post to around 800x600.
Agreed. I have a faster connection, but anything over 1200 pixels in one dimension is overkill for forum posts. Complaints aside, I'm looking forward to more. I love old radio builds.
Thank you for joining in, I'm sorry about the pictures and yes, they are above 4k actually. I'll try to have them resized for the next update.
First Update! The time has now come for a new update, I have not been able to do a lot of work with the radio itself because of this busy week of studies but I've gained some time off and I guarantee a lot of things will happen the comming week. I haven't been taking it easy this week ofcourse, I started sleeving all cables that will be included in the build for the panel outputs, I also sleeved the fans from Bitfenix. I will be heading away soon to purchase some aluminium for some custom fabrication but I won't tell you too much about that, you'll have to wait for the next update. I recieved my package with some Teleios Sleeving from E22 and got started sleeving. Here we have some pictures of the Spectre Pro fans from Bitfenix. Some pictures of the USB and AUX cables So what do you guys think of the pictures? in my opinion they are getting better and better but I need some honest opinions. unfortunately that was all for this update, I will see you guys at the next update!
Photos are awesome other than the size, I use mspaint to change the biggest dimension to 800 & let the rest auto size, changes 4MB pics to 200KB or less & doesn't degrade the picture quality so is much more forum friendly & who doesn't like antiques being updated for current tech.
Photos are a bit big but I made them a lot smaller in quality via photoshop instead, Perhaps I can downsize them to "forum" size for the next update. Thank you for the feedback!
Tbh I don't bother looking at threads of any kind with huge pictures like that if it don't fit on the screen then I cba looking at it, spoils the whole thing for me
If you're linking from imgur (which you are) then just choose the "Large Thumbnail" option (or alternatively add a L at the end of the image URL as that will do the same thing. We don't need 10mp pictures of a fan. GK Edit: I've done the first one of this post http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=3748362&postcount=5 for you so you can see what I mean. Alternatively you could choose the "Huge Thumbnail" which would still be better than what you currently have - add a H at the end of the URL instead of a L
I had multiple threads open and this one crashed me. Remember the golden rule: Don't destroy the outer appearance of the unit. Many years from now, it could be the only one of it's kind.
Here we go! All pictures have been resized, sorry for taking so long. My goal is to keep as much of the look as possible! Thank you
Update time! Hello! I'm sorry for the lack of updates the recent weeks but I assure you I haven't been taken it easy. It's been quite a hectic week but I am at last on my feet again and it's time for a new update. A whole lot has been done the previous weeks, aluminium coverplates have been cut and filed, these will act as small coverplates for the USB, AUX and all the other contacts. I've gotten my hands on some brass thread to line the outsides of the aluminium plates in as well as some small details. I managed to find a pair of 20W speakers to the radio for some better sound, but I'm still a bit curious whether I want to put a subwoofer in the radio or not. Sata cables have been sleeved and some other minor things such as the memory card reader and the new start button. I bought a vandal switch to act as a new start button for the radio which you can see further down in the update. While I was doing all this and was in the "vintage-feeling" I decided to make myself a new USB-mini usb for my keyboard, you can also see that below. The next update will be arriving shortly and will contain some product overview as I have some new things coming in. Enough of that, let's get on with the pictures.
Hello fellow modders! The time has come for a new update, all the components I've been waiting for are now sitting happily at my desk, everything has been tested and works just fine. I've acquired a Dark Rock Pro 3 cooler, and I have to say this has to be one of the best looking air coolers I've seen. The new amplifier for the radio is home, it's a Lepy LP-V3 for those of you who are interested and will be powering 2 20w speakers. I'm thinking of doing something unique with the cooler to make it fit the build better and I came up with the concept to put the old speaker grills over the fans on the cooler, but I'm not quite sold on the idea yet so I need your help deciding, what do you think? I've purchased some 2.5 square transparent copper cable for the speakers as I really see them fitting the theme of the radio, everything's starting to come together and I will we will see some components in the radio very soon! I just have to figure out where to put the amplifier. Here are some pictures. This is the time where I need your help, I can't decide whether I want to put the grills there or not, of course the "Volvo Sound" logo will be sanded away but apart from that, what do you think? please give me some feedback!
Update! Directly I'll start with saying I'm terribly sorry for not updating the build logs for almost a month. I've been having it really rough in school and life overall, so I haven't been able to put any time aside to working on the radio, but it's not all bad, I went to the second biggest LAN in Sweden called Birdie and showcased my Project Chernobyl in a modding event! But I've manage to get some things done, all the custom aluminium brackets that acts as cover plates have been fastened as well as all the cables for the computer. I had to solder the copper cables for the speakers to make them stick to the speaker as they didn't quite fit the speakers cable holes. All the audio equipment has been tested and is working like a charm, thought I think the sound will gain a lot more depth after I've put the whole radio back together to create some resonance. What's up next is fastening the motherboard plate, fastening the fan grills to the CPU cooler, fastening the amplifier and doing some cable management with the cable clips! Here are some quick pictures. My sweet P-clips box that I will be using to fasten all the cables. As you can see both the custom plates and cables are fastened down. At last some pictures of the cables.
