What type of paracord is it and what are total lengths of each colour are you using? I have some decent quality stuff left, mainly bought from Wild Elk (genuine USA paracord). I also have Fluorescent Orange but can't remember where it's from but it's decent quality. I think I also have standard Orange. I made the mistake of going back to Bushcraft (genuine USA paracord that isn't fit for USA use so they sell it to Bushcraft who dump it in the UK) so have some of that also but mostly unusable. I also have some decent quality Japanese paracord but the finish doesn't closely match other brands and I suspect there's mainly various shades of blues left including one that would have been good if you were doing Mclaren Gulf livery. I have got MDPC-X PET sleeving left but I think although I have some Orange it's mainly Red & White. I'm assuming cable lengths will be fairly short.
I have no idea tbh dude. In all honesty I don't want to braid it anyway. I won't lie this has been, and will be, far more work than I thought it would be. If it had a window and I could see all that work every day? I would buy more. Problem is it's highly unlikely any of it will ever be seen again.
OK last session for today. Realised I can fit the light box without removing the front again. Immensely relieved. So, I took the light bar. And first cut it down. The idea I have is to run it across the top of the light box, where I can access it if an LED ever goes out. Very sensible of me, as normally I would bury it in there like Tag did and make it a nightmare. To explain. I then cleaned it, scraped down through the mask and soldered wires onto the traces. I then cleaned it again, before. I found it to be happiest at 5v. And finally.
First machining fail in an absolute age. The funny part is this was the first piece I ever machined, and it too was a failure LOL. Ah well. Lemondade.... Lemonade... I really don't know why it let go. I didn't skimp on double sided tape either. Oh well, it happens. Problem is I don't have any more 5mm in any colour. That said I think the root of the problem was using a 2mm bit. God knows why I did that. I guess I thought bigger meant best, and it would go faster. Which is daft, given it absolutely will not. So, I had to design it as I would a speaker box. And am cutting it from 3mm now.
Oh and I forgot. I spent £10 on this last night. These were 6 I have lost all but one, and it is a bit dodgy. I will keep one in the hifi box, with LibreElec on it perma. I also got these. You will see what I want them for later if they arrive with any luck !
I just had an idea. Given the PCIE slot will be free (16x long, but runs at 2x) I wanted to put a boot in there. NVME pref, get the system started fast. Thing is I did not want a big one. No point. So I got this for £9. It's a 16gb Optane and the card to fit it. That will leave the entire SATA SSD free.
A press-fit with double sided tape is not really strong. It's why I switched to blue tape glued to a sacrifice board. I rub the applied tape down on the plastic with the rounded end of a Sharpie to get an even better hold. You could probably do that with your double side tape. Also, your chips look like lumps instead of flakes or strings. You are ploughing through the material instead of cutting it, which is why the tape failed.
I've used this tape since the beginning and it has only ever let go when it is my fault. And yeah, I used a 2mm bit for the first time thinking it would get it over faster (mistake number one) and ran the machine too fast (mistake number two) and think I forgot to press the white down hard at the end (mistake 3). As we know, the machine doesn't make mistakes, you do
OK well that was really annoying LOL. IDK what got lost in translation, but it was totally too big. So after cutting it down I realised it would not fit under the 6mm DVD holder. This is what happens when you measure up a job before another is done haha. So I erm, "Adjusted" it Wrapped the inside with white 3M. Give it some of the sticky stuffs. I am very glad that is over.
Things now done. PSU cover label has been laminated with 3M helicopter tape. SSD fitted (look behind the DVD drive) Antenna cable fitted. Optical digital cable fitted and soldered. The white goo is liquid tape. SATA cables fitted. Forgot to say, I got braided ones with my Z590 Aorus Tachyon. Nice. HDMI cable fitted. The molex spare connector has been stuck to the rear. That isn't just floating around. Cable clips fitted. Power cables to the drives has been tidied, along with the digital coaxial cable. PSU is now stuck down. I *think* that is all of it, but I did have a marathon sesh so feel free to ogle the pic and see if you can spot anything else
Not much going to happen today. The board is going out tomorrow first class, so all I need to do later is fix the power button wire (one broke off). Might have a tidy tinker then, but what I do want is a better remote. I tested the one I bought on Windows and Kodi in Windows. It works fine. The problem is I can not access the area where the hole is for the IR sensor. The drive covers it. I'm not about to start trying to make it work with the original sensor (if that is even possible) and one thing nagging me is "Will it work in Linux?". I doubt it. What I had forgotten was modern remotes use 2.4ghz wireless for the signal. So I got this. It also works in Linux. It would also be very handy to have a keyboard there if I ever need to change the WIFI details and what not.
OK so I did something. I repaired the power button, then shortened the molex connector for the light box. Very tidy now. One thing I knew would be a pain was the huge RCA connector. The cable is also quite thick, so turning it 90' is a pain, and would need to go over the mobo. And so..
OK so I didn't do an awful lot today, but what I did was very important. The first job of the day of course was to fix the broken power button wire. I know why it failed, too. The solder wire I have is so stupidly thin that it is almost impossible to tin anything properly. You end up having to shove about a foot of it onto the iron. I then found my 2mm, so that was awesome. I then cut off the molex run and shortened it down to one connector for the light box. Which was then tucked and tidied to make room at the front. The "half an EPS" needs to go too. I then got out the bottom panel. It had four of the feet you see at the back on. Not original. Thankfully when I bought one of my amps the guy who sold it to me sent me two spare feet. They are not original either, but are the original colours and made from the same stuff (sorbethane). So that was cool. I had to fit countersunk bolts to those, to stop it not going down flat. Two screws no longer fit, but I can "adjust" that later. I just wanted it fitted back on. Last week I made up the power cable, to match all of the others in the system. So that was another job ticked off.
Loving this build so far and have been checking in every day What was the motivation not to use a proper USB VFD screen though? have the room and it would be a usable function.
There isn't that much room mate to be fair. Depth? OK. But the original screen sat in between and was 3mm deep. You can't mount it behind. Because of this. IE the opening is not big enough. See this angle here. So I would have needed to butcher that. And it is a wedge fit with the diffuser. Note how there is nothing there holding any of that in? the metal pushes it from behind. So it would have been incredibly difficult nae impossible. And would it be worth it? maybe. Would it work in LibreElec? I strongly doubt it. That's the thing. It isn't Windows, and it boots straight into Kodi. Also, how many times would you actually look at it? I mean, I know this because way BITD this happened. It was great for about two weeks. Then I got over it lol.
