Project Stack-On LAN Box *Lesson Learned*

What no market research?

Totally kidding. I personally think this is an area ripe for invention. It is a niche market to be sure, but aside from LAN gaming, there are implications for ohter high-power markets like video (HD content no play back well on wimpy laptop hard drvies),animation and sound production.

On the custom computer end of things I also see a solid entry in this, even if all you end up making is your prototype. There are plenty of examples of briefcase PCs out there, but I doubt that they will have the same level of detail it looks like you want to put into this.

In any case (pun intended) it is clear that you have a penchat for thinking outside the box (also pun intended ) and I wish you luck. I will contiinue to watch this closely as well I imagine plenty of others will.

 

Very neat mod, can't wait to see end result.

 

lookin good . keep it up

 

Actually the case is already built and working great....I'm just going through the photos and describing the procedures I took. You are correct about interference with the LCD screen though (if I understand you correctly). I will discuss that in the near future.

 

Well shoot man...is that first pic the money shot then?

If not, get em up!

 

That box put the eet in sweet

 

Next Installment

I took on the dreaded speakers in a full days worth of work by securing the Labtec speakers onto their respective plates with JBweld along with some pipe for ports. Wiring the PCB to everything I had ordered took forever but was finished well with sleeving. I decided to skimp out on a few things though just to cut down on my time spent on this project which included not wiring the microphone port directly to the PCB and not wiring the power switch and decided the speakers can just be on all the time when the computers power supply is on.









Installing all the components onto the top plate was relatively easy and I was able to accomplish quite a few things. I needed to first wire up the Bulgin Vandal Resistant Switches (Power, Reset, and one to turn on and off LEDs for someone else to modify). I also wired up the touchpad by removing the USB plug that was on the end of the wire and doing some research on the internet so I could plug the touchpad directly to the motherboard USB header. First the touchpad was installed by drilling four holes around the edges of the touchpad and securing it to the top plate via four hex screws and lock nuts. I then secured the Cyrstal Fontz LCD screen using again hex screws, thread lock, and a few nuts. The next things were the vandal resistant switches and the volume and bass/treble controls. You also may see I used some of the modders mesh MNPCtech after cleaning it and spraying it with a clear coat. The Modders Mesh was very simple to cut with tin snips and secure using rivets, but next time I will plan on a longer piece so there is no split line down the middle of the vent on top.















I will post more later this week. I am also currently working on adding friction slide rails to the top so a person can get a good angle on the LCD screen.

 

awsome mod man. I love the idea. Gr8 work and keep it up.

 

Very nice, I'd love to bring on of these to a LAN .

 

REDUNDANCY ALERT! REDUNDANCY ALERT!

lol jk

lookin good

 

Great looking mod man! i hope some manufacturer buys your ideas... its very inspirational and id love to take one of those to a lan

 

indeed looking good, love those buttons! really looking forward on the LCD part!

 

looking great... keep'm coming we are hungry for more!

 

Very nice looking - is that bulgin buttons ?

 

wow, thats coming along great.

 

that looks wary nice man.... looking forward to the next update

 

Just recently I added some friction slide rails to the outside of the case. Yes I know that it would look better on the inside of the case and unfortunately I didn’t plan that far ahead or even knew I could buy them till now. I have redesigned my drawings to include them on the inside of the case so they will be hidden and also they will be black instead of brass. I also want to add knobs to the final design to adjust how much friction there is to hold the LCD screen in the correct angle for viewing.





For mounting the speakers and the LCD screen I ended up drilling holes though the lid of the toolbox slightly larger that the actual hex screws I used. By drilling the holes slightly larger I was able to easily see the holes to insert the hex screws and compensated the hole size with some washers. Unfortunately the overall width of the metal plates I had laser cut ended up being slightly wider than the width of the toolbox top. I fixed this by overlapping the LCD plate on top of the speaker plates and it hides the error very well.





Down to the exciting installation! I installed the ATX power supply I had modified earlier with no problems at all. I then began to install the Aopen motherboard I had bought brand new only to realize that it didn’t have SATA capabilities so I ended up swapping the board for my Gigabyte K8VT800M MicroATX I was currently using on my main computer. Fortunately for me I had designed this case for any MicroATX motherboard so I had no problems swapping them out. Next I took that brand new Connect 3D ATI Radeon 9800 I had purchased and installed that with a little fumbling of the screw and the typical screw falling where you don’t want it to fall. I then proceeded to secure the amplifier for the speakers and wire everything up. While wiring everything I realized I had really made a mess of making it hard to install the lid of the toolbox. Every wire possible in the case had some connection to the lid and made it very difficult to arrange wiring. So I decided to go back to my design once again and rearrange connection points of hardware, to eliminate the hassle of ALL wires with the top for ease of installation.

 

very nice

Keep us updated on the development. Im loving this thing.

 

GREAT MOD!!!

 

Can we c this case next to some objects plz, and its actually fairly hard to gauge the size off this, im thinking about 2 shuttles long?