Modding An amazing case saved from side of the road, but I need tips.

I just wanted to say that my dad had this exact case housing our main system a long time ago. It was a 486 with the same double 5.25" HDD monster and a tape drive. Best part about it was that the guy he bought it off had installed Doom on it, so I could play that along with my modded 3-player QBasic Nibbles. I think it also had a door on the front. Thanks for the memories.

 

Is that a turbo button I see???

 

Yeah, I noticed there were plastic hinge like things on the front. The door on this case appears to have broken off. It's a bit of a shame since that would have been a very cool add on.

Yup, I don't know exactly what I'm going to use it for though. The "reset" button will be for power (since its momentary) and the big red switch will be for turning on some LED lights which I am still deciding where to place.

I've been meaning it put a worklog up (I've taken many pictures) but I don't know if this mod is good enough. I mean all I'm really doing is adding a window, painting it black, painting a stencil, modifying a DVD drive faceplate and adding LED's. I look at other worklogs and everyone else is doing something spectacular like completely changing the shape or building the case from scratch. I'm also having second thoughts about the watercooling idea, mainly because the hardware I'm putting in there is going to be brand new and I really don't want to risk anything getting damaged. I understand how it works and I've done a bit of plumbing before but I don't really have any experience using watercooling.

So I don't know, should I post a worklog or what?

 

I'm curious.. What exactly was the Turbo button used for when the computer was operational if anyone knows?

 

The car heater core that someone mentioned is a mini car radiator located in the heater box.

i recently had to find brass adapters due to the unavailability of the heater hoses for my 1977 Madza, a visit to the hardware store plumbing section and i found brass barbs that would screw together to mate each size i needed then with various bits of hose and clamps job done. (i actually soldered the brass bits together to make one less potential water leak)

it might seem messy using adapters but if you place them where they aren't going to be seen then thats not a problem.

i look forward to seeing what you do with this huge case, good luck

 

Yes back in the 'old' days (by this I mean the 386, 486 days) the 'Turbo' but was used for backwards compatibility. For when software that relied on the processor speed for the timings. By pressing the button the system would turn off the CPU's cache and force it to wait for the timings from the main system memory, which was a lot slower.

The name 'turbo' always bugged me as what it actually did was slow the system down.....

For more (but not much more) check out the wiki entry.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing how this one pans out!

 

Ah, thanks

 

same thing I was thinking

 

Turbo buttons, as I've seen, overclocked my processor to a much faster core speed, sort of like a power-saving thing. If you didn't need the extra power for Word '89, you would run in non-turbo mode, and if you were playing a game, you would press the turbo button and the little LED display would show you 90mhz or whatever as your new clock speed. It was pretty damn cool IMO.

I think thats how it worked. I don't know any details of it, but we have similar things nowadays with software. My e6600 automatically drops from 9x multiplier to 6x when I'm not doing anything. Something with windows power settings I think.

 

That would be retro as hell making that button work as intended again.. Ollthough that would require tapping into the BIOS or some OS software with a PIC i guess..

 

I have a worklog up now with lots of pictures. It's right here: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=137512

 

I salvaged a turbo button and 3 digit led display from an old case, and will hopefully find a use for them. The display is tied in with the turbo button so that it would show fast and slow cpu speeds. The numbers on the front are controlled by jumpers on the back.

 

The heater core is what you'll be looking for, and IIRC the send and returns are commonly around 1/2 inch diameter. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt them.