Scratch Build – In Progress Level Eleven

OMG, I freaking love that board! . Subbed .

 

I guess that iPod touch did the trick or was it something else? It IS tiny. For the record, it is the exact same size as a 2.5" hard drive or SSD. They stack nicely.

Thanks and welcome to bit-tech. I remember you from OCAU and appreciate your vote in that contest. I don't reveal my plans (if any) up front. Kinda my thing. I like to improvise as I work. Planning is good and I highly recommend it but it doesn't work for me. Anarchy! Anarchy!



The power accessory cable. The tiny connector on the right is plugged into the Pico board. SATA, 4-pin molex and floppy connectors come out the other side. I won't be using all these plugs and the lengths will need to be modified.





I will call this photo "Tail Wags Dog"





Mugen meet Pico. I love the exclamation mark on the base of the Mugen. Makes for a fun photo.

"I wonder if I'll need to use that support bracket on the back of the motherboard?"


Here's a VIA video demonstrating the P820 installed into one of their AMOS cases. The most interesting thing here is the h.264 1080p demo at the end.



Note: No, I'm not going to install the Mugen. Just having fun...OK?

 

The question is do you attach the mugen to the via or the via to the mugen oh the dilemma

 

Wow, great start man! I love the Via gear!

 

Lol, trying to fit that Mugen on that board is like trying to have a elephant hump a poodle xD.

 

Me2

 

Time to do some...metal work?

Yes, one downside of working with this oddbell gear is the lack of standardized I/O plates. You have to roll your own. I don't mind doing it but it takes me a loooong time to make these things. Its been years since I've done one so I'm ready.




A little history. I got a lot of flack (deservedly so) for not including an I/O plate for my DECOmputer. My very next project used a rare AMD development board that shipped without an I/O plate so I made this for it.






Skip ahead a couple of months and here is the plate I made for the Unidyne. Fun stuff. Insane amount of time to do by hand.






A sheet of aluminum, a Sharpie and an old video card PCI slot cover for a template. I drop the proposed hole in the center somewhere and make sure I have plenty of edge metal to "trim-to-fit" later.






Drill a nice big hole in the middle.






Using my set of hobby files I form the hole by hand. I use a busted video card's VGA port to help guide the work. I probably test fit the hole 50-60 times while filing out the shape.






Result. I don't like a sloppy fit. It is important to get this port right because it anchors the location of the others. In addition to the I/O ports I'm planning on mounting the power jack and maybe the power switch to this plate. Time to finish this. See you on the other side. Thanks for looking.

 

It's a shame they don't have some kind of a template that you could go by. It would make things a whole lot easier. Via had to have done a CAD drawing on the I/O placements.

Question: Could you use a piece of clear acrylic to roughly mark off the needed hole locations, transfer that to the metal, drill, and then cut your holes? I would think that would be easier than having to measure the placement of where to drill for each hole location. Maybe its a dumb idea, but it is just a thought.

That really is incredible for such a little board to do full 1080p with such low CPU utilization. Maybe this is a dumb question, but do you just run regular Windows on such a small board, or would you go with a Linux distro instead given that most if not all of the Linux distros are much less hardware demanding?

 

Thanks for your comment. I'm not really measuring anything here. I haven't used my rule yet and really have no plans to. Working off of a drawing is not as accurate as working off the actual ports themselves IMHO. I place the aluminum sheet up against the board and eyeball where the holes will go. Pre-Industrial Age kind of work going on here I guess. Eli Whitney can KMA. It is actually kind of rare that I drew out a VGA port outline and it didn't last long anyway. Note to self: Sharpie on aluminum doesn't work.

This might appear to be a crude way to work but please realize that I'm doing all this while sitting comfortably in my Laz-E-Boy recliner while listening to Pink Floyd.

I don't know about the Linux question. I suppose that running at 10-15% CPU utilization instead of 20% would be an advantage but it's not enough for me to endure the hell that Linux brings to my simple life. I plan on running Windows 7.

 

The lighting/angle makes the HDMI port look bad. I included the last photo above to hopefully show that it is in fact not. It WAS difficult to make. The screw was supposed to be used to securely fasten an HDMI cable but I'm using it to help secure the I/O plate instead. I may just drill out that HDMI screw and install the DC power jack there instead.

Now I've got to mount this board to my plywood using this "inverse" standoff system I've been given:



Thanks for looking. Comments and random observations welcome.

 

All those I/O holes done the same way? Drill + filing?

 

"...That song from Loverboy?"

I don't know... The mugen/pico splice would be pretty fun. -Dead silent too.

 

That's for damn sure, hahaha. This should be sweet once its up and running!

 

Thatta boy....

 

This looks great!

 

Your being too critical on that hdmi io it looks spot on slot better than most. Looking sharp!

 

Pifflewax! It looks good to me in both photo's. You couldn't do better with a
guided router (lookwise at least).

 

Yes. You should try it sometime.

LOL I remember seeing a small industrial board a long time ago that had the CPU mounted to the bottom of the motherboard. The idea was that you could mount the CPU directly to any surface to use it as a heatsink. Kinda reminds me of that.

We'll see...soon.

Whadda bay?

Not much to look at yet. The fuzzy image in my head is looking pretty interesting though.

Thanks guys. I'm just fussing at myself for the poor photography. I have a light tent that I need to dig out and set up.



I took the heatsink off to figure out a better mounting system and to put some decent thermal paste on. The smaller chip to the right is actually the CPU. The larger one in the center is the integrated graphics/other stuff chip. Regular sized brass standoff posing for size comparison. In this photo I'm drilling a standoff hole into a 3" x 1/4" piece of basswood. Again, no measuring going on here.





Put the board with standoffs up against the "master plan" to figure out the length to cut. The discoloration is the left over glue from the factory sticker. Three of the four sides will be factory laser cuts. I cheat a lot.






I turned the board over and cut from the backside. A fence is clamped down and I'm using a smaller "finger fence" to help help keep the blade perpendicular. (Cheers to splelchek!)






Since the Pico is the exact same size as the SSD the mounting boards will also be the exact same size. The SSD board will go kinda right there sorta.






Align the three laser cut sides and clamp vigorously. Saw.






Still clamped together I run the fresh edges back-and-forth over a sheet of stationary sandpaper.





Result of efforts.


Thanks for looking!

 

Looks smooth

 

Love love love love love that Via setup... Makes me want to buy one just to find a use for it!

Looks like it's going to be a very interesting build log! Definitely subbed.