So, yeah, you may have seen me asking what this was in the GD section, and may also remember me talking about this being a server case... Well, this is it, the project log! Oh, and talking is in this thread here. Click me to talky! Click me now! :Starting Pictures: That’s just how dirty this thing is... Yuck. The guts... There is so little circuitry in there; it's just amazing. Another shot. Heh, I love those things... Look at the soldering job on these things; the traces are huge! But anyway, the stuff came out extremely easy, as everything is stupidly un-complicated. Just snip a few wires here and there, take out a couple screws, and it's apart! But anyway, here we can see the slots where the actual tuners fit in. They're actually held in via a small bracket on the top and bottom. Once the brackets are removed, they slide out forward. Nifty. And the back. Lets take apart one of the tuners... These literally are the most complicated things inside this entire tuner. This is why I love old technology. Simple, yet effective. That is the pile of stuff that came out of this thing. A lot more than I was expecting. I just love these feet. They start with the bit that screws to the bottom, then there is a rubber cap that fits over that. I'm saving those! arts List: One ASUS CUV4X Rev. 1.03 733MHz P3 CPU (more details once it is up and running) 640MB RAM (2x256, 1x128) PC133 6Gb HDD Nvidia 440MX video card (with TV out - important) - This is in transit 10/100 Ethernet card (ultra low-profile, just for the sekks appeal) Wireless mouse Custom keyboard (more on this later, haven't worked it all out in my head yet) And finally: a wireless G PCI card (hence the name) arts Pictures: Pictured are the lights... The two green surface mounts will act like a UFO effect. The long blue tube actually holds many LED's that flash in patterns. I'm going to adapt it so as to replace the original LED's on the tuners so they flash. (sorry for the over-brightness, I over-lit the scene and forgot to check after the picture was taken) The wireless mouse (yes, the receiver will be mounted internally, and again, sorry for the brightness!) Ethernet card (Gah! My eyes!.) The mobo with CPU and HSF installed (I'm blind!) Sekks. More in next post...
art Mock-ups: Here is the stand-in mobo. And just so you know how much actual computer stuff I have, and how little I care about it: this board works 100%, and is one of the most stable I can find. The reason I'm willing to risk damage: I am too lazy to find a PSU that'll work on it, and I've got far too many other boards. I marked out which holes I want to drill (as they'll match on the board I'm going to use) That is roughly where the HSF will sit. Again, just no care for this old board... Heh... I'm lovin' it! Hehe... And yes, they do look just as funny in a mobo as they do out. :Sizing Things Up: So that is basically how they will fit together. The PSU obviously will be mounted to the top, and the wires will be custom routed. Another angle (you'll notice how perfectly it matches up with the HSF markings) As for the HDD... I can't decide... I'm thinking #1, but I don't know... oing The Washing: Empty tub. Full tub. Dry parts. Wet parts in full tub. So, after some serious drying, this is the result. Click for huge. Remember, this is how it started. Again, this is a before shot. (don't worry about the blue sticker, it's getting replaced along with the others) OK, so the back doesn't look as good as I wanted, but I don't know... I kind of like it... Got that "decayed" look to it. So, that is how it stands now. I'm waiting for parts to come in, and it's 2AM, so I'm going to bed now. More work soonish.
Damn that looks nice for an old case. Is this going to be just a server? You should make a featre of the tuning sliders.
Well, this is going to sit in my TV stand, as I've got an open space there. What I'm going to be using it mainly for is Ventrilo, a small halo server, and the odd file or two. It's nothing special, just something that looks cool and functions type thing. Stay tuned... (I thought about that and tested it weeks ago, most of this case is going to be recycled and very little will look different on the outside)
Update the first. Some stuff done, mobo and hard drive mounted, some parts stripped... Anyway, enough with the silly talking (words are communism in it's purest form), onward to the pictures! :Tuner Deconstruction: One of the problems I ran into was that these little back-plate bits got in the way of putting the mobo right up against the front of the case. Why that is a problem is because of the wireless card. The absolute only way it will fit is if the mobo is EXACTLY against the front of the case as far forward as it can go. I'm still thinking I'll run into issues though... But I'll wait and see. Anyway, that is after. I love how modular this entire case is! It's so nice to work on! And now lets work on these bits. Very interesting things them... Cases off. Slider plates off. And basically, out of all three tuners, these are the only bits I needed (well, obviously I needed the front bits). The three sliders will be used (as pointed out in the talking thread) to control stuff, the LED holders will hold LEDs (duh), and I'm not 100% sure what I'll do with the other things... It'll be something anyway. People have asked me what I do with stuff that pisses me off, well, there you go... That is what I used to spray the removed solder onto. :Attacking the LEDs: Front. Back. Side. Notice the ring on there? Yeah, well, to remove the actual LED housing from the metal bracket you've got to remove the PCB, then slide the ring away. From there, it all just pops out. Wires gone (I'll most likely reuse those PCBs, don't know why, but I will) And there is the money shot. A nice view down into the "hole" (hehe) As the picture says... And that’s everything pulled apart. Nifty, huh? Just together until I get around to hooking these things up. More in the next post (stupid picture limit...)
:Motherboard Mounting: So, I laid the mobo in place, elevated it with some screw-driver bits, and marked everything out. Here you can see one of the marks. And drilled. Then, using some of my magic compu-voodoo, I threaded the holes without using a tap (I seriously need to get a good set of taps). And the back side. Mobo in place and mounted. Fits nicely (more on how nicely later). :Hard Drive Mounting: So, how do you make the holes perfect? Well, you lay a strip of masking tape along the opposite side that you're going to mount it to, mark the holes, then transfer the tape down directly onto the mounting surface. Simple! And drill... (bit pictured may not be one used) A very secure drive. I went for this orientation because it would allow me ample space on the bottom for some other things that are going to be added later... Bottom view. This is where it is going to be fun though... I'll have to either customize the foot, or remount it... I haven't decided yet. :Today’s Final Fitting: So I put the front back on, and I amazed myself at how closely everything fits. There is just barely enough room to put the front on with the hard drive and mobo in place. I'm just glad the HDD I will be using is a bit smaller than my mock-up. Again, amazingly close. So, tell me what you think! What do you figure the sliders should do? Where should I mount the "UFO" lights? Should the LED's on the tuner-plates flash? Feel free to comment over this way!
Lo! Bit more has happened, and unfortunately I have lost something rather important... I blew my soldering iron in a shower of sparks So, anyway, pictures: :Light Werx: I got an idea: what if I sunk the LED housings into the black feet on the front...? This would add two things: first, it would make the front of the server about 2-3mm higher, and second, it would give a bit of a different effect. So what I setup was the above: a pasta box with the two LED housings (top bit's of them covered in tape - however ineffective that was) and tested the two different orientations. The above is the first option, with the LEDs on the bottom of the feet. With lights on. With the lights just stuck to the bottom of the box, and the box elevated to the rough height that the feet would sit at. Lights on. What do you think? Option one, or option two? With option two (LEDs surface mounted, rather than in the feet) the LEDs would need to be mounted almost right at the back of the case. Option one would have them right at the front... I'll leave it to you. :Fun Flashy Lights: So, now to work on the tuner LEDs. Pictured above is the LED strip out of it's casing. As you can see, a couple of them are burnt out... Oh well, most of them will be inside anyway. Cut a couple wires (they go to a switch to change flashing pattern) And solder them to the switch (more on this in another update... ) First things first though, I needed to chop the end off (yeah, I know, crappy hack-saw, though it's the only hack-saw I know of that's lasted through shop use for roughly 6 years now ) And a test fitting. This is roughly where it will sit in the end (obviously a bit different). Also, you can see pictured a little hint about a further bit of work... That's for later So, yeah, this is where my soldering iron blew up... Basically, I had this entire thing hooked up to my testing PSU, and the PSU was plugged in (but not turned on). Unfortunately, my soldering iron is old enough to where the positive line is connected somehow to the metal on the tip. This touched the negative on the LED strip, and it went poof and blew out my soldering iron in a fit of sparks. Looked cool though. That is the soldering iron I was forced to use for all the rest of my soldering through-out this update. Stupid solder-sucker... So, after kicking my old iron's ass, I started hacking up the LED's and testing them out. That is a very close shot of one of the LEDs. Cool, isn't it? And all three are soldered. Light! Test fitting to see how it works. If you're wondering, that is the original LED stuck into the holder (as the LED's in the strip are tiny!) with the new ones just rammed into the back. (that sounded very wrong) Stupid picture limit... More in next post...
Continued from last post. The next thing I needed to do was to trim the old LEDs a bit... Can you say *slight* overkill? And the legs are off. Inserted. And a nice, final, satisfactory: double penetration. (hehe) What do we end up with? A 100% normal look to them (just a color change). These will be fitted in another update Oh, and if you're wondering on how to make properly twisted wires, there's a hint... :Tuner Slider Re-mounting: Well, I figured it was about time to hack some of these in. Pictured is a test fitting along with a hint of how I mounted them... I'm pro, all the way (and yes, I love the macro feature of my new camera, it's absolutely awesome) And done. Looking good to me!. :Getting Prepared For The Future: This will make more sense later, but I loved how the pictures turned out, so I thought I would post them (plus it's fun to make people guess). And so I leave you with that Please let me know about the lighting over here! I need your opinions!
Not much done, need to wait for the video card to come in before I do too much else, but here is what I did today. :A Start On The Keyboard: Well, I'm not going to get too far into it, but if you can guess where the plug on the left came from, you deserve a cookie. Not that I'll give you one or anything. And that is why it needs to be replaced... Soldered... :Wiring Up The Slider For The Tuner Lights: So I basically took my multi-meter and measured the resistance on the lines. Lets say the three poles are numbered one (left most), two (center), and three (right most). If I went from pole one to pole three, it would give me a small area of resistance (going from 0 to 4ohms within one volume notch on the face plate). Where as if I went from one to two, it will act more naturally, and will go from 0 to 4 ohms within the entire range (so 10 on the volume bar would equal 4 ohms). Unfortunately, with method two (using poles one and two) max brightness is at 0, which doesn't make much sense. Oh well. 0 4 10 - Looks OK to me :Flash Pattern Switch: You wouldn't believe how long it took me just to get through that much... That is some tough bloody plastic! Anyway... The flashing lights can change their pattern, and do so via a small switch. So I was wondering: how do I make it look natural, while still making it cool at the same time? Well, I'll let you guess That’s it for today (yeah, I know, not much, but look at it this way: I wasn't forced to make two posts because of how many pictures I posted ). Hopefully next update I'll have done more with the keyboard. And I'm still not sure about those UFO lights...
The brightness goes in reverse from 0-10 because the switch controls resistance[/]. 0 on the bar would be 0 ohms resistance, and 10 would be 4 ohms resistance. the resistance measures how much the material hinders electritity flow.
Yes, I realise that, but as I stated in the log: legs one and three are inverse in their resistance (IE: ten on the volume equals zero resistance) when compared to legs one and two. The main difference is how quickly the resistance goes up as you move the slider from zero (resistance).
Update number 4! So, that means: 4 times the excitement!!!!11 Woo! OK, I'll be quiet now... :New Hardware: Bit of an intro to this before we get to the pictures. It looks like I ran out of bandwidth on photobucket not that long ago (2.4gigs or something like that in 6 days for only 122 pictures with over 40000 hits), so I've upgraded my account now, which should hopefully mean that I won't be getting any more issues with hosting for this mod. Anyway, enough of the verbal communism, lets get to them pictures! So that is what I got in the mail a while ago from foundsoul. One Nvidia geforce 4 MX-440 SE. Nifty. Gotta love the fact that it doesn't have a fan, and was ran like this for who knows how long And that is why I bought it. I'm not sure if I'll be using s-video or composite... I can do either, but I don't know which will be easier... So yeah, first things first: replace the heatsink. Anybody who can guess exactly what that is off gets a cookie! That made me cry. Because I don't have a proper file or sandpaper... Basically, I took my leatherman knife, scraped off the gunk... Closed the knife... Opened the file... Then I lapped the bottom of the heatsink with the file on my leatherman pocket-knife. I've never felt more ghetto than at that moment. It actually didn't do quite as bad of a job as I was expecting... That’s not to say that it did a good job either though... Anyway, attached. Looks good on there, heh. :Attacking The PSU And HDD: Far too many cables... Dusty! Anyway, trimmed the cables down so I only had the ATX connector and four molex's. I then lined up the lid of the PSU on the bottom of the case, marked my holes, marked where I wanted the giant vent to go, and drilled/cut away! I'm not going to show you the bottom, as it looks like crap, so too bad! But know that where the vent is on the "top" of the PSU, there is a corresponding giant hole on the bottom of the case where all the hot air is going to (hopefully) vent. Heh, this was just so that I could line up the hole for the HDD on the back of the case. Basically what I did was line up one of the main holes of the HDD to an existing hole on the back, then marked out where the other two screw holes went, drilled them on the back-pane, and marked them onto the lid. This view just looks funny, so it was included. So, umm, yeah... Because of the slight change of plans (more on this in another update) I had to change where the HDD was mounted. I like it. (note that the right side will get support later, along with some dampening so it doesn't rattle all the time) : Sodomizing My Wireless Card With A Hot Iron: So I had a slight problem: my wireless card won't fit because the antenna sticks out the back of the card too far. How do I fix this? Well.... Simple really. Just turn the other way! So now the antenna will run along the top of the card rather than the back. Makes a nifty internal antenna mount. That bloody gold thing pissed me off though: it absolutely would not come un-soldered! I ended up breaking off some of the mounts just to get it out... Damn thing. Still works though (I hope). And yeah, that’s it, unfortunately I had far too much to do today, and with the battery in my drill almost dead (it died right after drilling the holes for the PSU) I wasn't able to get much done. I promise there will be more next time! Oh, and start talking in the talky thread so I don't think you're all just stealing my bandwidth (it's like when you're watching TV and the commercials come on: if you get up and take a piss you've just stolen the TV show, but if you sit and watch them and piss during the show, then it's OK. So feel free to get up and take a piss while reading this thread, but comment on it, now. Or else.)
OK, something strange is going on here... My project log thread has been viewed only about 2000 times, and yet I've got well over 50900 unique views that photobucket is reporting... I'm thinking somebody is stealing bandwidth... I've used 2743.27 Mb since feb 27th. Nifty.
I had that same problem while back with the bandwith. But nice work with the heatsink on the video card hope it works out for you.
well i cant say my balls have ever felt the need to test the stress of doing something like that to a wireless card but cheers if it works. Cant wait to see some more. /goes to pee
