Righto, its summer hols and I have some moddage time My original project log seems to have fallen off the edge of the pages, but the general jist of it is on my webby using the link in the sig. The two cases im modding are my main PC rig and my Amigas case. Theyve both had some work done already, the Amiga isnt even mounted in its original case, but i left some things unfinished on the PC before i left for uni, and the amiga needs tidying. Anyway, less text more pix Both systems working together in harmony. The camera doesnt pick it up too well, but the lightage at night is pretty pimp IMO courtesy of 2 LED fans and LEDs in the molexs. Plans: For the PC, i am going to enlarge the window (what was i thinking ), create a blowhole at the front, and also add some top fans. Ive got some sweet aluminium mesh to use to cover them up too. Once the metal work is done i then want to spray the sides to match the blue front too. The fan wiring is a mess so i also need to finish off the fanbus so i can wire them up separately. For the Amiga, im going to put a window in, and also a windowed hard drive. I was originally going to window the 2 actual drives in there, but i have a dead one and have figured out how to control the arm, so will use that instead, pretty much the same as Zaps mod. Its also going to get some blue treatment too. Modding has already commenced too over the weekend. I have just finished cutting the new window in the PC, and will finish that tonight. The drive bay fans in the Amiga have been replaced with some carbon fibre panels i had lying around (as you do ), i just need to dig out the holesaw to finish that. Oh, and i also found some neon gel pens yesterday, results are looking good, i just need to finish it off tonight and see how it looks. <runs off to mod>
My first post although I have been lurking here for a while. Anyway, nice to see another Amigan, and another Amigan who mods! My current Amiga tower has a massive perspex window in it, and a badly chrome sprayed finish on the metal work. Some day I`ll fix it. Good luck with Amiga case modding.
w00t another Amiga modder from Wales! I have finished the new window, and just taped it in temporarily so i can remove it to paint the panel. I just have the top fans to do then painting can commence. I also cut a blowhole out in the front panel, which has definately improved airflow, and the neon gel pen work looks good, will sort pictures of the progress out later.
Pics as promised The mesh i used is aluminium mesh usually used to bodge up rust patches on cars. My dad put used some on the air inlet on the tractor and i borrowed what was left. Its held on at the front with glue and tape (needs a little more cos its pulled away at the bottom) and the top one is just pressed btween the fans and the case. Unfortunatley the camera dosent pick on the neon gel pen on the top card (WinTV card) but it does look pretty good. I also put some orange on the tips of the CPU fan, which makes them look like theyre glowing. Thats about all i can do on the PC atm, so tomorrow i think the Amiga deserves some attention PS: yay 100 posts
Been giving the Amiga some love (no not like that) and have been remaking the drive bay fans. The ones in the pictures above are a bit shoddy and and cracked, so I cut up some carbon fibre panels to replace them and have started drilling out the big holes. I attacked it yesterday and have one and a half holes done as the drills battery went flat Also I need inspiration ! Im going to paint both of em soon, but think i need something on the right hand side if the PC, its a big flat area and i want to do something to make it look a bit more interesting. Im thinking of painting some design on there but have no idea what. For the amiga im going to put a big Boing ball on the side and the Amiga logo on the top, but for the PC im stumped. Suggestions welcomed...
Me again and i have a pic of teh completed carbon fibre panels: Theyre just held in with blu tack atm till i finish a more secure mounting. Luckily the picture doesnt show up the mistakes as the drill slid down slightly on the right hole so it cut right through the cf. Luckily the fan holds it all together. At least its not as shoddy as the last one. Theres also one extra hole due to some dodgy marking out on my part oh well. need to wait for paint and some vinyl dye so the CDROM matches.
I have mounted teh 1337 carbon fibre panels securely, by glueing a 10mm strip of plastic to the case on either side and screwing each panel to it, something like this... Also I have started on the windowed hard drive for the Amiga, first off pics of the progress: The edges are a little rough so tomorrow i will be smoothing them off and cleaning the whole lot off with some wet&dry, as theres some marks left from the glue used on the stickers. The wires are connected to the coil that moves the head, and atm im sorting a circuit that will move it around during drive access. It will also drive two LEDs mounted in there, one blue one red, so they switch from blue to red on access. I think it was bard who did this and inspired me
Are you sure it wasn't me? http://www.zapwizard.com/real_hd_indicator/ http://www.zapwizard.com/Laptopwindow/ The project looking good, are you going to paint the case or use more carbon fiber?
Ahh yes apologies Zap I couldnt remember whereabouts id seen it done before. Unfortunately I dont have any more carbon fibre. It was part of a uni project to make a small test piece of sandwich construction, which was 2 sheets of cf with aluminium honeycomb in the centre (mine failed the load test btw). I have a bit left over but not really enough to do anything with. I will be painting the PC blue, and I was going to do the amiga the same colour, but I think I may risking blue overload, atm Im going to leave it as it is. However, i do want to dye the CDROM black to match, and possibly the floppy too. im also getting hold of some switches, and will have a row of 5 on the top piece of carbon to control the lights and fans. The power switch will also be moved up there too. Also looking at the pic the lower opiece of carbon is a bit wonky so ill have to sort that out too.
Hehe long time no update! The whole project has sort of fizzled out as I hit the usual £££ problems, as Ive also had to spend on uni things like rent etc Hopefully Ill be able to save up and get little bits done here and there. However I have done a little mod on the Amiga case. I found a small sheet of self adhesive errr stuff, I cant think of the proper name for it, we used it in school to make labels for projects. Anyway, i found some I had left over from my GCSE project, and had an idea how to brighten up the side of the case. A quick simple mod that only took about an hour to finish. I did a mock up with paper, then used that to transfer the design onto the sheet, it was just a case of cutting and sticking the stuff in the right place. The only problem areas were the lip on the bottom edge of the front which was tricky to get around, and some prices didnt like sticking to the plastic front. Plus I have some more left over to do something similar elsewhere.
raaarrrr Im BACK! Just when you thought it was safe... Fed up with having this project 'on hold' in my sig, so decided to get off my arse and get modding Good few months since the last post and quite a bits changed... PC: Hmmm yeah, tidy eh? Pretty much all the hardware I started with has been replaced, now running: Abit NF7-S 1.2 Thunderbird & Coolermaster sink 256Mb TwinMOS PC2700 Sapphire 9200 64Mb Adaptec 2940UW + 2 9Gig drives WD 80gig IDE drive WinTV card Enermax 365W PSU Already started buying in bits, have a Zalman nb cooler waiting to go on. Amiga: Pretty much the same except ive ditched the old half height SCSI drive in favour of 2 1.2gig IDE ones. Heres a couple of old pics i probably should have shown earlier: Modified Motherboard tray Mobo in. Current Spec: 4000 motherboard with modded tray in midi tower case 16Mb fastRAM onboard 25Mhz 68040 2x 1.2gig IDE (workbench & Debian) DKB RAM board with 16Mb HyperCOM3Z (serial card) GVP HC8+ SCSI controller + 4x CDROM Going for a Red theme with this, still waiting on some LED's before i can finish it off. Decided against a window as the insides aint too pretty, its all PSU and SCSI controller Watch this space....
With the Amiga in limbo as Im waitin for the last few bits to arrive, I started on the PC. Firstly the top fans. As you can see from before, I only have 4 screws holding the two fans in as they were glued together Next I decided to convert them to LED fans. Luckily Id already drilled the holes, as my dremel wont do 5mm drill bits. I hot glued the LED's in postion and wired them in two sets of 4 in parallel. Power is taken from the 12V line on the fan and the neg side is wired as an extra line (just need some more wire to finish that) so I can turn the lighting of independatly of the fan itself. All lit up Lot brighter than they look, theyre 4000mcd Red&Blue 5mm. Camera doesnt like low light levels Next job was the paint id always promised the case Went for blue to match the front, but wanted to break it up a bit so went for a stripe following the window and repeated on the other side. I sanded the side and top panels down lightly, then masked and sprayed. 3 coats later and the cans on its last legs. Had the usual problems assocaited with spraying outside (ie crap landing on the panel) but nothing to noticeable. I can live with it A little tip is to wait for the paint to dry before you go diving in trying to save a fly drowning in a coat of Ford Ocean Blue Saves messing up the wet paint. Here we are checking the colour match with the front: Not too bad considering I choose it from memory. Depends a bit on the ambient light. A couple of days drying later, I peeled off the masking tape to reveal this: Not to shabby if i say so myself, much better to look at than before Only problem was the masking tape 'seeped' a bit around the edges, but its not too bad (from a distance). The right hand panel is a mirror of the left one, will get pictures later with it on. Thats pretty much where I am atm. Need to get this last exam outta the way then I can press on. Stay tuned....
Soo, been without internet for 2 days now as the main PC's been in pieces Apologies for any spelling mistakes, had a coupel of all night sessions trying to finsih things off, flux does strange things to you Heres where we're at: Amiga: Got the LED's in so stripped it down to install them. Id already fitted blue ones but they just didnt really fit with the theme. The power LED is fitted behind the front grille pointing down, gives a nice glow behing the grille and the floor. Also replced the IDE & SCSI access lights with 3mm red. Camera cant pick them up too well, Ill try for pics later. Whilst I was in there: Connected up a CR2032 coin cell and clip to replce the original NiCad. Even though Id removed the old one when I first bought the system, It had already leaked and it looks as if the RTC is still buggered I also hot glued the SIMM's in as the classic 4000 crappy plastic sockets had broken. And finally: Did this ages ago but never got pics of it Half an hour witht some black insulation tape and a craft knife. PC: Make some good progress here. Completly stripped the sytem down then painted the frame. I used white primer then clear coat, couple of coats of each. Came out quite nicely, I was very impressed how much of an affect it had on the whole look of the system Spent a few hours with a soldeering iron and came up with this: This sits on some self adhsive pcb mounts under the rear fans. All the fans and LED's plug into it, and although you cant see in the pictures, theres a 25way socket on the back which sits in a handily placed knock out on the case. A control box (still being built ) plugs into that and controls all the fans and lights The pots are to adjust brightness, and the IC's are opto isolators for the hard drive access lights, so i can fiddle with them and run any LED with risking blowing the mobo. All seems to work atm, thought I had a Disater mods post coming at about 4AM when it refused to work, but it turned out to be a dodgy soldering joint hew: phh333r the ghetto wire dispenser work in progress The PSU is my testing PSU, wasnt going to risk my enermax All fans are connected using 3 pin UV blue molexs (thanks m00ie.com ), and all the wiring to the pcb is routed uder the motherboard, all wrapped in bling grey braiding. i also separated the LED connection on the LED fan, so I get full brighness no matter what volatge the fan is on. w000 messy, I have some carpet i think somewhere ..... Another internal shot. Note the Zalman nb sink, which I was so chuffed about snaffling on ebay then finding them cheaper new Just about make out the braided wire running underneath the motherboard. Thats about where the pc is now, Ive just thrown the drives back in to check its all still alive and to post this Need to rig up this control box and tame the excessive enermax PSU cables.
so you're going to put them on top of eachother? or are you just modding both of them? looks cool so far
nah im just modding them both at the same time, thought itd easier to have just the one log, not quite enough going on for two
PSU braiding = complete I chopped the monster Enermax cables down and used used balck wire, some 90 degree molexs and lots of zip ties and self adhesive bases Heres the 1st prototype of the controller box: Left to right we have the audio mixer controls with LCD hole above, then knobs for PWM control (not wiried in yet) and switches for fans and lights. The 3 case fan channels (front, top and rear) can be at 7V, 12V, off or PWM controlled, and the GPU fan can be at 12V, 7V or off. Te cardboard isnt permanent however have some alu sheet but it was sent home not to me in uni, so have to wait til I get back there. Some night shots: (damn ****ty camera) Got some LED's behind the power and reset switches by dremeling a hole in the plastic backing of the switch and hot gluing a 3mm LED in. Also have a red LED in the heatsink, a couple of blue in the case and 2 blue lighting the grille on the side panel. Need more in there, the controller circuit can handle quite a few more yet