About 11 years ago I saw an old Oscilloscope from the 1960's in a flea market and I immediately fell in love with the design and thought it would be awesome to put a computer in one of them. When I got back home I looked on eBay for an inexpensive Oscilloscope and found one for sale near Salem Oregon. So I drove down from Portland to buy it, and then I stored it for over 10 years. Multiple times I almost gave up on the dream, but finally after I finished my last mod I felt confident enough to try a project of this magnitude. The Original Oscilloscope from the late 50's un-modded: After I started the mod, I decided to add a base to the main box. The base started out looking like this:
The Wood Base I had never built anything out of wood before, so YouTube to the rescue! Watched a few videos on how to make a box, using pocket holes, and multi-layer staining, and I'm off! Done! Cut out the holes for the pipes that will attach the base to the top: And then stained the box with multiple layers of Kona and Sunbleached, sanding in between coats for a nice distressed look: Attached the pipes, added handles and ready to mod the main box: Front USB 3.0 Front VR Ports (HDMI + USB 3.0) Rear Panel I/O Done! I eventually cleaned this up a bit and replaced the DisplayPort port with HDMI, as I had major issues with several DisplayPort panel mount cables. And finally, I bid farewell to my nVidia Bottle Opener as it opened its last beer for me...
The Power Supply This is by far one of my favorite parts of this mod. A distressed Power Switch Box from a house: Cut a hole in the back for the fan intake: Cut a hole on the side for the exhaust vent, power cord and power switch: Added a Fan Grill and U-Channel Rubber Trim from MNPCTECH: Time to rest...
Cutting top and side panels on the main box Time to cut the box! Using a removable motherboard tray from a Lian-Li case The rear I/O panel on the motherboard tray will be on top of the modded box. I first made several stencils out of paper until I got the fit to be perfect, then placed it over the metal box, made my marks and began cutting. And also cut the rear fan exhaust Next the window and a hole for a large gauge It pays to measure multiple times, perfect fit! Next I made Glow-in-the-Dark paint by mixing Glow Pigment with Matte Medium. I used about twice the amount of pigment so that it would have some extra glow! I painted the inside of the case with the glow paint. The idea was that the PC lights would charge up the paint, and when I turn off my PC the case would reaming glowing on the inside. Below are pictures of the bare case in a pitch black room, with the only light coming from the glow-in-the-dark paint inside the case. This is the Gauge I was planning on adding to the side. I really wanted to mod more that I ever had before, so I purchased single LEDs and wired a white LED into this gauge so it would be illuminated when the PC was on. Installation Used Liquid Nails (strong glue) to attach the gauge. The big red button will be the power button for the computer, and the toggle switches for the lighting
The Wiring & GPU I had never made my own wires before but I wanted ALL of this Mod to be made by me this time. So although I was going to need custom wires, I didn't want anything fancy that would look new and not match the time period or rugged look of the mod. I searched online through a ton of different options and found this fantastic Green with Yellow 16 AWG striped wire that looked great against the gray, and fit the time period of the mod perfectly. I used for the entire mod. 24 Pin ATX, 8 Pin EPS (CPU), 2 x 8 Pin PCIe (VGA), and a SATA Power Connector for the Fans and Lightning. I ended up using 250 Feet of wire throughout the entire mod. Custom Wire Mounted the GPU between the base and the case using MNPCTECH Vertical GPU Mount. In case you want to check it out: https://mnpctech.com/vertical-gpu-video-card-installation-mount/ The Vertical GPU Mount was ionized black, so I painted it chalk-gray, then smudged it with chalk-black after that. The green cables going around the perimeter of the base are the actual power cables for the GPU. They go from the GPU, all the way around the base, into the base, up the pipes into the top case, out the top of the case and back down into the Power Supply. GPU Power Cables alone was 136 Feet of wiring. ATX and EPS (CPU) Power Cables come out the back of the top box
The Fans and The Lighting I used CaseLabs ( RIP :cry: ) FlexBay Fan/Radiator Mounts for the fans in the front and the rear of the case so they would match and would look like they belong together. The gun metal color matched the mod exactly, and I love the unusual grill pattern they used to use (reminds me of Star Wars). For the front intake fan, I used the Lepa Chopper in green, and it looks AMAZING! I did all custom wiring, even for the lighting. I used 3 Nanoxia UV Rigid Light Strips, cut off the ends, wired them together and then used my own wire to power them from a single power source routed through the toggle switch on the side of the case. * Big Red Button Powers the PC * 1st Toggle Switch controls the white LED on the big power gauge * 2nd Toggle Switch controls the Nanoxia UV LED Strips The UV Lights charge up the glow-in-the-dark paint, which looks really great when you turn them off
Completed Work Epic Cable Management Specs: Asus H270M-Plus Motherboard Intel i7 7700k Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR4 EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Cheesecake Toshiba/OCZ 500 GB M.2 NVMe (OS Drive) Crucial MX500 1TB M.2 SATA (Games Drive) EVGA SFX 650W Power Supply
PDXLAN Spring '19 Mod Contest 800+ PC Gamers Top 5 Mods >> 5th and 4th Place << >> 3rd Place << >> 2nd Place << >> 1st Place << 1st Place Loot
Great to see someone else with similar interests! Coincidentally, I've had the beauty shown below on my to-do list for a build, so it was quite surprising to see your post. Nice work.
you've done a great job with that vintage oscilloscope ....I love it... freaky , for sure your mod is beyond other builds in that contest ..