PROJECT: Denon CD to PC HTPC - ***FINISHED***

Nice Display - Did it cost you much

 

allo bob.

not as yet.. ta for the reminder

 

Nother update..

more panel work.. bane of my life this is!!

Dont have many inbetween piccies as got carried away dremel mad.. a great deal of it is just what i had done before cutting the original back panel.

reasons for new back panel:

mounted internal fan in a place it wouldnt intefere with the svideo connector out of the gfx card - then the agp riser didnt work so had to mount a new card vertically - making the fan in exactly the wrong place!

so - cut a new fan hole more to the right - using the original cut as a template.
then cut a new hole for the psu - old cut was spot on so copied this exactly


^^ old panel as template - the 4 holes togther are for the Audio 2 left 2 right phono connector which comes as 1 piece.. more on that later.

Next i drilled out a hole for the svideo connector and two mounting screws
then cut and drilled out a hole for the usb connector + 2 screw holes.

The USB connector was one of these. as i only need 1 usb port - and only have 1 mobo usb header i binned the plate and other connector.



The USB cable was much to long so i shortened it, here you can see it in place ready to mount to the panel..


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Next up was the audio connector - im reusing the old denon connector so cut up a maplins bought 2xphono to mini-jack lead and tinned the wires



i then soldered it to the connector.

as you can see from the old panel above it needed 4 holes drilled together, i did quite a bit of test drilling as it was the last hole and didnt want to f**k up the whole panel.



you can see from the pic that even though i increased the drill size 4 times it still was extruding the metal with the largest bit! - after making my final cuts i had to trim and sand for ages to get just right.

this is what it looks like with the connector in and all the holes cut (i also did the square hole for the ethernet connector



^^ the audio connector in place



USB / S-video and audio plugged in



instead of using the original screw from below and ontop to fasten the panel in i drilled 4 holes, 2 in either side that mount it to the plastic inner frame

these are hidden when the lid goes on


although i did have to trim a bit off because i mounted the fan to high.. that damn fan!



PSU is fixed in place by 1 screw, just above the kettle lead socket.

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So im just waiting for the epoxy to dry on the ethernet socket and then decide whether i want to wire up the other 2 audio connections, mic and line out i presume.

im so close i can taste it....

comments most welcome!

 

It's looking very good, keep it up!!

As for the shorter IDE leads, if the first section of the ones you have is long enough, then just chop off the second section.... works fine....

 

well i never knew that .. will do

 

You might have fixed it by now but in http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y146/quinnd/right_bracket.jpg
The molex to your DVD only has the 12v (yellow) and 2 grounds, i can't see any red 5v wire going in?

Otherwise its looking real nice. Looks real clean, as it was originally in fact.

 

indeed.. didnt take me long to spot that. one thing i have had to do is take it to pieces and rebuild it about 25 times.. to take the powersupply out for example i have to remove the dvd drive, and to remove the dvd drive i have to take the hard disk out to get to the screws etc.. and theres a certain order everything needs to go back together again, which i keep forgetting.

i have to dismantle one last time tonight to plug in the reset button.

 

ok.. finished to a point im happy at.

wont get to do much more for a couple of months due to moving out, no working space etc.

main point everything is working (with the exception of the mic socket at the front.. peh.. dont need it anyhow)

here are my last batch of images its been emotional

First bunch are with the lid off.. here you can see the last rear connector (lan) has been added - its the topmost one to the left of the fan.



and of the inside fan shot.. the fan now blows air into the case - had it sucking air out to begin with. cools the graphics card down



heres the hsf for the duron and the vertically mounted hdd, to the left is the button controller pcb



and the rather cramped extensions inside from mobo to panel



and the shot from the front showing the fan speed controller (left) and the reset button right (formerly phono line out and digital)




the jumble of wires for the psu.. one of the things in the future is to remove as many of these as possible



with the optical drive out.. would have loved a black drive, but no money for it so the dvd writer stays beige



and all together.. actually quite a lot of room considering its full atx


LID on views

from the back



and the front



and lastly its new home - well for a week till i move

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For those following this project i'd love to know what you think of it overall, how the progress went and what you think could have been done better...

 

fix the edge where the mesh is.
not much to say, great job

 

Very awesome project. Really love the finished product. Any chance we can see some shots of it working with the LCD or connected t the TV and also any chance of updating us on which software you definatly settled on and how its going.

Anyway, really nice project

 

very nice, gives me lot of ideas (I'm thinking of modding my own HTPC soon)

maybe you should add a dust filter to the rear fan since it's blowing inward.

 

Looks really nice, great job. But finish that hole with mesh with a little rubber trim available at auto supply stores.

 

Many thanks, yeah i can get some more shots later, i settled for Meedio for the software running over XP, everything is then run from inside that. It was cheap and theres a great community out there developing for it. oh.. and its not microsoft

another great suggestion that i hadnt considered, do you think a dust filter would impede the fan at all or raise the db of the fan?

Matu & Hellraiser:

yep that grill def needs fixing sometime, but not for a while.. eventually i plan to sand down and respray the hole lid as there are some cosmetic scratches that need dealing with, at that point it should be fine with a lick o paint

 

When you get around to fixing the case cosmetics, I suggest that you pull the drive tray, purchase a $3 can of vinyl dye, and dye the tray black like you wanted.

Overall, excellent work. I like the fact that you re-used the Denon control buttons.

 

cheers, is it easy to remove a drive tray to paint without muckin up the mechanics of it?

 

in my experience dust filters don't really make the fan much louder (of course they do have a small effect), but I always used them on the extremely silent Noiseblocker fans (9-11 db)...so maybe some other opinions on this would be welcome?

they don't impede the fan. Take a look at the ones on frozencpu, there are nice aluminium ones there (will fit very well with your case). Just put the filter outside the case (where the grille is now, this way you should be able to remove the mesh from the outside of the case and also removes the need for the fan grille (so the overall db level should remain the same)...you do need to trim the top lid some more though when doing this, unless you could fit the filter between the case and the lid.

 

Great Job

Does All the buttons in the front are programed and warking?

 

Great Job

Does All the buttons in the front are programed and warking?

 

just the last 10 buttons on the right work. play. ff. rw. next track, previous track etc.

although some have 2 functions with double click, one thing i may include in the future is a remote function.. its the one thing in my mind that is missing..

although the rf remote keyboard and mouse do the trick in the meantime!

 

c'est cool!