Day 1 Yesterday I moved my PC from beneath my desk to atop my desk. Unfortunately, it's too loud up there, so I decided to build a custom case to quiet things down. This is my gaming/desktop PC, so it needs to hold a full complement of gear. This being my first mod of any kind, I naturally decided to zip right past my realm of expertise and build a case from scratch. Since I like Nero Wolfe books, and would like my office to be decorated in a similar 1930's theme, the first thought that came to mind was the old cathedral-style desktop radios. I search EBay and discovered that I couldn't afford a cathedral-style anything. However, my father-in-law used to repair CB radios, so I paid him a visit to see if he had any antique CB cases that might work instead. He had none large enough, unfortunately. I asked him to keep an eye out for any old cathedral-style radio cabinets, and he said, "Oh, there's one in your attic. Brand new, never used." I married into this house and had never searched the attic, so I had no idea anything like that was up there. This morning I climbed a step-ladder to the chimney ladder to the trapdoor to the attic and side-stepped across many rafters buried in insulation to the porch roof that was too weak to hold my weight, and found a beautiful 1939 Philco Model 60 radio cabinet: The outside dimensions are 16" high, 11.5" wide, and 8.5" deep. The interior dimensions are about 0.75" smaller, and a lot of space is lost at the top due to the arch. It's not "never used" but it's in great shape. The white stuff is attic insulation. It took 30 minutes with damp paper towels to wipe the grime off of the case. Then I spent an hour experimenting with component layouts to see what would fit. The cabinet is 1/2" too short for my full-sized ATX motherboard (because of the arch), but I have a micro-ATX Biostar M7VIZ that I recently bought for my Linux server, so I'll swap them out. I'll have to drop to 512 MB of RAM from my current 768 MB, cause I don't have enough DDR, but oh well. The 350-watt power supply will have to be dismantled and a new case fashioned that will fit into the limited space. I spent $12.41 at Wal-Mart for sandpaper, paint stripper, scrub brush, foam paintbrush, and sanding block, then spent 90 minutes stripping off the original finish, in the dark, on my front porch. Well, not completely dark. I had a 40-watt bulb 6 feet over my head, but that hardly counts. I had to really glob the paint-stripping gel on thickly. It takes about 20 minutes to do its job, then I scrubbed it with a stiff brush and wiped off the residue with paper towels. Though I wore protective gloves and took care not to touch the stripper, I have several irritated patches of skin in places I'd swear I couldn't have got it on. I'll let the cabinet air out overnight, and tomorrow I'll begin the laminate repairs and the sanding. Project hours to date: 3.75 Project cost to date: $12.41
hey nice project. Being a fan of antique radio project, theres no way I can't subscribe to this thread. looking forward to updates!
i love those old radios =) they make great project boxes for this kind of thing. cant wait to see how this progresses.
old radios are cool, my dad has three of em, 2 of them work perfectly, 1 of them will turn on and then die in about 10 seconds. http://mywebpage.netscape.com/legoman666/radio1.jpg http://mywebpage.netscape.com/legoman666/radio2.jpg http://mywebpage.netscape.com/legoman666/radio3.jpg can't wait to see how your project turns out, should be great!
Day 1 (continued) Here's the case after stripping the finish and drying it for a couple of hours: Project hours to date: 4 Project cost to date: $12.41
looks sweet, is there going to be a nice plexi window? I think it would be neet if u had a black tinted plexi window, that'd just look sw00t
My current plans are for a generally-stock appearance from the front. Here's what the Philco Model 60 is supposed to look like: I'm going to use a dark red stain and a black grill cloth. I have no idea what I'll put in place of the teeny, tiny dial on the front center. It's about 5/8" square, too small for a useful meter. I may or may not be able to find an original dial. Status LEDs would fit nicely, but wouldn't look right on an antique radio. I might consider a retro meter in the lower part of the large panel of speaker cloth. It seems like such a large area to go unused. The back of the cabinet will have a plexiglass panel, and the interior will be full of blacklights and UV-sensitive components. My desk is in the middle of my living room, so the rear will be easily viewed. I'm open to ideas about any of it. I only started planning this yesterday.
Awesome, that radio is quite a find, and a terrific idea. If you want an idea, I would suggest keeping the whole thing looking very much like the original radio, like a steathing job. Maybe make all of the plugs and drives very discrete. Though that could be tough with the space limitations. The retro meter could be very nice, keep with the theme well. I will definately be watching this one closely. Good luck!
Can't wait to see this mod. You could replace the whole metal peice in the middle with an analog dial of some sort. keep us posted.
for the center part: What about a really, really small VFD... excesssolutions had a 1line x 8 char a while ago. If you put a red filter over it i think it would fit nicely into your theme. Also, hidden indicators (behind a piece of dark black plexi) would be cool too. I small piece of dark black plastic doesn't break from your theme too heavily because a lot of what was made in the 1930s was shiny black metal... who's to tell
what about the VU meters that the Musketeer uses? I'm sure you could soder wires to extend the fan controller to the VU meters, then have the fans behind the black cloth...not ON the cloth, but behind, and that way you have a filter. Just my $00.02 And by the way, great find!
Day 2 I started out with laminate repair. Here is one of the spots that was peeling back: The laminate was actually cut too long, which was why it was under pressure to bow out. I trimmed it back a hair with a razor knife, and then I pushed Elmer's wood glue into the gap with the knife, and clamped it between two cauls: After drying and sanding, it looks like this: Then I sanded for two hours. Here's the top in progress: And here it is after all the sanding is finished and the dust wiped off: Now it's time to work on the insides. In the last picture, you can see an old label on the inside of the case. I'd like to remove that somehow and preserve it to be reinstalled later. By the way, I misread the label, this is a 1939 Model 60. Project hours to date: 7 Project cost to date: $12.41
A nice case deserving of a good mod... Excellent! If you are going for the cloth option, remember that you can still hide all sorts of lights or VFD displays behind it... Of course, now you need to get a retro-looking keyboard and mouse!
I think it would look kind of cool with a heavily tinted window in front, which was only possible to see through when the lights were on inside.
Day 2 (continued) I spent $24.03 at Lowe's for some sticks of 1/2" x 3/4" wood for building the interior frame, a can of red mahogany oil-based stain, a miter box and saw, a measuring tape, and a tube of glue. Then I spent $1.28 at Wal-Mart for 6 sheets of black felt, to line the interior of the case. I want it to be as quiet as possible, and I want the non-computer parts of the interior to be invisible under the blacklight. Although they did have some black felt with purple sparkles in it... When I got home I went to work on the power supply. My desktop has a 400-watt Allied unit, while my Linux box has a 300-watt @-power. The @-power has higher output at 3.3V and 12V, but the Allied is of much better construction, so I went with it. It's worked just fine for a year. I dismantled it completely, then took a hacksaw to the case. I cut off the sides & top, leaving a bottom plate just large enough to mount the circuit board: The PSU now measures just 2.5" high, down from 3.5". This gives me badly-needed space. Before, the PSU, motherboard, and video card had a combined height only 1/8" less than the depth of the case. Shortening the PSU gives me just enough room for the motherboard mounting plate and a little air space. The @-power wouldn't have been as short, due to taller heatsinks. I managed to find a layout that allows me to cram 2 hard drives, a 400-watt PSU, an mATX motherboard with 3 cards, a full-size CD-RW, and a floppy drive into the cabinet. I'm not sure I'll be able to use the 120mm fans that I want, though. I downloaded the TrueSpace program and tried to model it for you guys, but I think that would take nearly as much work as building it, so I gave up. I'll try just describing it. Imagine the cabinet in front of you, face-down, arched top pointing away from you. Two layers of components will be installed, one against the face, one against the back. Two 120mm fans will be mounted against each side, intake on the left, exhaust on the right. If space is too tight, which seems likely, I'll have to go with separate 60mm on each layer. The PSU goes in first, against the face of the cabinet, on the right side. To the left of the PSU the hard drive rack will sit, also mounted flat against the face. Control boxes for the knobs and dial will be at the bottom. Over this will go the motherboard tray, hiding the front layer. The motherboard is flush against the bottom of the cabinet, leaving just enough room at the top, under the arch, for the floppy drive and CD-RW to perch. They both will open to the rear of the cabinet, unless I come up with some way to open them through the front speaker cloth (I haven't given up!). Mounting the CD-RW will require that the power connector be removed and reinstalled on the bottom, as the cabinet is just 1/8" deeper than the drive, leaving no room for the Molex connector. My wife has expressed distaste at the idea of a plexiglass back with wild glowing lights and wants me to put a plain wooden back on it. Decisions, decisions...perhaps as a temporary measure, since I can't afford the pretty lights anyway. The motherboard backplane connectors will be relocated to the rear bottom of the case. I'd like to use old-timey connectors like Zap's LanPC, but those are expensive too. Plus I switch my monitor, keyboard, & mouse to other PCs frequently, so I'd have to make up adapters for the normal connectors, further adding to the cost. Project hours to date: 11.25 Project cost to date: $37.72
motorise it! as it boots, some servos could pull down a wooden sheat from behind the front part, revealing the beautiful insides. perhaps just a few bright led's used as spotlights could highlight certain features of the insides? i've done that in my dedicated dvd-r machine. works really well.
Unfortunately, I am going to change this project significantly. I was amazingly lucky to find this radio cabinet, but for my purposes it's about an inch too small in each dimension. Though all my parts fit into it, I'd have to perform surgery on nearly each one. The motherboard will require removal of the backplane connectors and remote connectors installed, because the side walls are too short to allow the motherboard to butt against it for a side backplane, and it isn't deep enough for the motherboard to lay down inside it for a rear backplane. The CD-RW will need the connectors removed and wires soldered in their place, because of the zero clearance behind the drive. The video card and sound card will need remote connectors as well. Though I'm willing to do the work, and have a great electrical shop behind my house (my father-in-law does CB repair there, and could even tutor me in the hard parts), I'm financially unwilling to do so. How could that cost money, you ask? Well, a lot of my computer parts are scrounged or hand-me-down. My main PC is built from a new part or two plus a bunch of old components. When I can afford one new component, I buy it and swap the old one to my Linux machine or a family member's PC, or sell it, etc.. If I monkey around with everything in order to fit it into this case, I won't be able to recycle any of it. As well, my primary reason for building a new case was to make it as silent as possible, and the fans I wanted to use won't fit in this cabinet (1/4" too tight, darn it). So I'm going to halt work on the 1939 Philco cabinet before I do any permanent damage to it and instead build a replica cathedral radio with slightly larger dimensions that can handle stock components. I'll probably put the Philco on Ebay to fund the project. I'm sure someone else who's willing to hack up their components could make a beautiful case. Tonight's project is to measure all my parts and build cardboard copies for test fitting in a cardboard case. I'll continue the project log when I figure out my new layout and case dimensions.
OMG I WILL BUY YOUR RADIO!!!!! Seriously, email me at pistolbiotch@hotmail.com!! All I need to know is how much do you want?
iStormy.. why don't you elongate the radio a bit? It's just a too good case to get rid of It should be quite easy as well, and without too much work it could also look really good. I have a gif drawing of what i mean, but just found out that i can't attach pictures here.. (no webpage sadly)
