Scratch Build – In Progress Project: 2600 Update May 02 2008 Finished

Hello every one.

I am kind of new to this message board and like what I have seen so far. I have been looking over and reading some of the post here and see that their is a lot if knowledge floating around this site. I have wanted to build a custom computer case or have one built for several years now. I just have never been motivated to do so. That is until I found this site. Now thanks to every one who reads and/or post here I am trying my hand at modding. This will be my very first mod. Oh yea I will not be working on this case alone it will be my and my brother working together to make this. This is mostly because he has all the tools to do the work with.


Here is my victim. Poor little bugger was so happy that I picked him over all the rest of his friends. That was until I told him what I had planed for him. It is just a plain case with a factory window. Please take a good look because the next time you see it, it will not look any thing like this.




Now that you have had a good look at my friend it is time to start on his new look. Lets start with a little disassembling.






Did I say a little disassembling? My bad I meant completely disassemble

I plan to make this case out of wood, Plexiglas and some of the old case parts. All the wood I am using that will be visible is called black walnut.

Here is a mock up of what it will look like when we are done.




If you have not figured out what this is by now it is a resemblance of the old Atari 2600 case.

Here is the base plate that I am working with.


Here are a few shots of the sidepieces.






This was done all the first weekend. Even though the last picture have a different date we had it cut one the weekend dates before I was just unhappy with the picture that I had taken so I took another on first thing one the following weekend. I thought I read somewhere that you can only post 25 or so images per post so I will be showing what we did on the next weekend on the next post.

This is my first posting of any thing like this so please feel free to tell me if I am doing something wrong or if you have any good tips on making the project log better.

Thanks in advance for all your help and post.

 

oh i like to look of this, could look really cool, keep them pics coming lol

 

Is there going to be am ATARI simbol ?

 

hmm, i like the way this wood case is looking. keep up the great work!

 

@ -Nick- Thanks.

@ luis_pedro_Sato Yes I am going to place an Atari symbol in the middle of the top of the case. My plan is to take a piece of Plexiglas and cut it to 6” tall and something wide I forgot the measurement and then frost the symbol in to the Plexiglas. Then I am going to take some 3mm led’s and point them through the edge to highlight the frosting.

@ 500mph Thanks.

 

Black walnut, hmmmm.... That's some nice wood (and not too cheap). Can't wait to see this project progress.

 

Ok it is update time.

Here we are dry fitting on of the sides together.


Here is the other side see the red arrow if you look close you can see the wood from the side bar sticks past the front and back side pieces we are about to cut that off.


Here we dry fitted both sided to the bottom so that we could get a good measurement of the front and back railing.



Here I am cutting the tensing on one of the front pieces.


Here are all the bottom pieces clamped together. After that was done we pulled measurements to start working on the top.



First we pulled it apart and cut out for the Plexiglas.





Now here it is just sitting dry fitted together looking nice waiting on me to go get the Plexiglas.



This part was fun. What you see here is we took a board and cut in half down the long edge and then it back together to make it thinner and wider for one of the top pieces.


See how we matched the grain I am told that is called book marking the wood.


Here is one of the top back pieces.



I forgot to take pictures of this backboard after we cut it and before we nailed it. Now up to this point we have used no nails or screws but to attach all of this back part we have to because of the way I want it to look.



This is another one of the backboards.


That is all I have for now. I am only working on this during the weekends so I will have more up dates to this soon.

 

@ InferiorPlanets Yea it is costly but lucky for me my brother had all kinds of scrap left over from making some furniture and we only had to get in to one or 2 of his good boards he had left.

 

This is the hell of a project and the hell of a workshop too !!

 

I like it! I am glad to see scuh nice wood going to good use You're not going to pait it are you?

 

Nice shop, wood choice, and work! The only way you could top this idea was if you made a plug-in external hardrive for the game cartridge.

 

Pics of that shop are killing me I need to move back to the States. Korean apartment living doesn't afford me space for all of my tools.

You going to stain it around the same darkness as the Atari 2600 woodgrain?

 

@ alonso_bistro
Thanks.

@ Thacrudd
Thanks and no I am not going to paint it I am going to clear coat the wood.

@ Cheapskate
Thanks that is a good idea but I am planning on using my optic drives where the cartridge went. I like the idea of a plug in external hdd I may try something like that with the optic drives if I can figure a way to make a tray that will allow me to plug and unplug with out any trouble.

@InferiorPlanets
Thanks

@every one I am glad you like the mod and the shop thank you much.

 

No need to thank me Bro. I can't wait to see how this turns out. I was an Intellivision kid back in the day...now a collector. I have 8 fully functional Intellivisions and was going to throw a comp into one, but didn't have the heart to tear up one of my babies. This mod has given me the inspiration to build a giant Intellivision case that is, when I have access to a shop like I used to.

Damn my job!!!! $25k a year pay cut & have to pay taxes to move back to the States...but I'd have a shop again...hmmmmm

 

Well it is update time.

First let me show you a tool we used for scribing the Plexiglas and/or Lexan. This is called a mortising scribe. I used it to scribe the mortising for the wood and also when I had a straight line to cut out in the Plexiglas.



This is the liquid cooling system I am going to be using. This will be my first liquid cool system to ever put in a computer so I am just going to keep it all together as is from the factory for now.


We made some grills for the video exhaust just because.




This is the back piece of Lexan just after cutting out for the video cards. We decide to go with Lexan for the backside and front because we broke 2 pieces of Plexiglas trying to cut some of the holes out that or when we mounted stuff to it we would over tighten the screws and crack it.


Here we started mounting every thing and getting ready to cut more holes, squares and rectangles out for the power supply.




The holes you see in this picture are for the sound card that came with the motherboard.


This is a design I picked for the 120mm fan grill that I am going to put in the back plate later when my order of filter mesh comes in I will put it in-between the fan and Lexan.




Here it is mounted and running with lights on/off.



Here is the back with every thing mounted but the sound card I had to work on some block to hold it steady and to the back plate and had not worked on them as of this point.



Hers is a close up of what we did for the power supply.


Here is the mounting block I cut and used for the sound card. It was made from 3/16 Plexiglas before I polished it and after. You will see a screw in a few of the pictures I used as a reference to how big it is. This is a standard screw that comes with the fans for mounting them.






This is what I am using to polish the Plexiglas with. I tried some other methods and well I failed at them and I have done it this way before so I am just sticking to it for now.


Well that is it for now I will have more updates next week sometime and I think I should have quite a bit of work done to it for the next update or I hope I will.

 

Brilliant work dude... haven't a clue what direction you're going with this, but teh handiwork is supreme. *subscribed*

EDIT: Note to self... the clue is in the title. And reading. That helps too.

 

@ Idioteque
Thanks glad you like it.

I would have sketches but I am not good at sketching things up yet that and I am more of a fly by the seat of my pants type person. I get an idea and just go with it.

 

sweet timber work bro cant wait 2 c were this is going

 

I shouldn't comment on this just yet (you'll see why tomorrow) - but in memory of the 2600, I hope you would consider using a dark plexi as the insert pieces - maybe a smoke color. It would be almost like the black plastic that went along with the faux wood of the original

 

@ Da Dego
That is a good idea I had not thought of that but I was going with clear because I have some lights that I am putting on the inside and wanted to see. Maybe I can get some tent and tent it a little I will have to check on that idea thanks for the comment.