I wasn't sure what topic to put this under tbh. Case mod? hmm, sort of? scratch build? hmm, sort of? IDK. Any way, this is my latest project. And it is going to be very small, but with a serious eye for detail. If I get it wrong? I won't use it. If I get it right? I will use it forever. So recently I bought a Tag Mclaren CD transport. I could tell it was bad... Someone had spray bombed it to match a system. Because of this I did not want to pay the £100 being asked. Foresight and all that, as I had no idea what was waiting for me on the inside. Turns out I was right, too. Long story short I removed all of the paint with alcohol and after a lot of work, some epoxy, some touch up paint and etc I had this. I then fitted a replacement laser but no worky. I had already seen some of the horrors of the inside, but figured maybe it would work. Nope. It's OK, I already had plans. To give you an idea of the artist at work? have a look at this. Mmm, yummy bodge wires all covered in hot snot. As well as a lot of duct tape and so on. In short? the issue was quite clear to understand. This is what it should look like in there. However, a dingus had cut out that cover with side cutters and yeah. You can see here that said dingus then replaced a few caps. Badly. I am not an expert on board repair. I'm not. What I do know though? is that to work on that you need to remove that board in the middle. To do that you need to unsolder the legs holding it on, and then work on it. Instead Mr Dingus pulled the whole thing apart, damaged it, botched it, and then replaced the caps. The real problem though? Look, like I said, I am no expert. However, I would bet my hat that the problem was the controller chips. See, when you plug in the laser the motor tries in vain to spin up the CD. It fails. The laser moves incredibly slowly, then the screen says ERROR and it stops. By this stage? the tray will not open. It opens about 20mm, then crawls to a halt before another error comes up. If I was a betting man I would bet it is the Philips branded micro controller chips at fault. As such? it would have needed expert attention, not Mr Dingus and his side cutters and soldering iron sans botch wires. Oh well. There is no way I would have sent it to an expert, because that expert would have probably called me a Dingus, so it was time to put Plan B into action. Media PC. Running Kodi, prolly. With a decent sound card, that blends into my system without sticking out like the old one I had. That's why I have been looking for a "Tag Mclaren anything cheap" for about three years. I only wanted a shell....... OK so after stripping out and seeing the real horrors I knew I had made the correct choice. First step. Find a PSU that will fit. I have 55mm of height in there. So, I found this, brand new, for £22 posted. 350w gold. More than I will ever need. I then needed to create an internal plan. So you may be wondering why it is laid out like that. Simple really, I do not want to hack up the shell in any way or form. As such? I am going to wire it "remotely" like I did with a NAS I built a few years back. This is what I mean by remotely. It needs.... Network out. Got that. HDMI out. Got that (the NAS in the pic is now no more, replaced with a 12 bay server) Power socket. Got that too. Solder kettle lead to original socket on back, winner winner etc. Optical out. Got that too. This will run from the sound card inside, to the original socket on the back. Good eh? This means that the only hole I need to make in the rear that shouldn't be there is a slim HDMI hole. That's it. I might even go mini, which means I can use one of the original round holes. IDK, we will see. I then needed some brains. Impossible ask maybe.... However, I sold my last HTPC to @Arboreal . Not because it was bad. It was actually brilliant, but because I had no space for it any more. So, because of a "matey swap a dop" thing recently he is giving it back to me free I HOPE he's getting a new GPU, so I would say that is fair? Quad core Celeron. It will fit, it doesn't get hot, it doesn't throttle. Brill. It's also completely passive. Most of the work here will be in the PSU. I want a full braid, but I also want it completely custom length so there is no rat nest. I will then braid the whole thing in black, with a wee flash of the Tag Mclaren orange. OK so onto some work. Last night I removed the panel from the front. I then very carefully removed the LCD panel in there by cutting each leg one at a time. Took bloody ages tbh. I may cut the middle out to give me more room for my plan, IDK. Might be better left in (that is what the arrows are for) I am going to use some of the buttons. I will wire the open close button into the DVD drive to,well, open and close it lmao. I will probably do something with the others too. Reset perhaps? IDK. Those are easy to use. I will also wire up the original power LED too. You can also see there the blue filter that was below the LCD screen, and the opaque acrylic diffuser. Looking at the screen it is tinted. Kinda like a piece of tinted acrylic I may have just bought. Now take a look at this... If I cut a negative out of matt black vinyl, say, IDK "Tag Mclaren HTPC" and make it look like this. It will look like, totally original. Ideas and work to come.
OK so it is ready. Gosh, what a total SOD that was. I first left the protective film on, but it just bunged up the blade and yeah RIP attempt 1. On attempt 2 a few of the dots came out, but did not jam anything thank god. I couldn't do it all in one go though. Far too fiddly and small, and my eyes are so bad now. I nearly threw it at the wall several times. Obs it is now covered in finger prints, but I am not going to clean it until it is fixed down.
OK so wifi is out. I had the wrong board. Asrock do a B version with no wifi socket. Have cancelled that !. I just did one of the few mods the actual chassis needs. There is an area where the original PSU is built in. I needed it gone. I thought about cutting all the way along and getting the welded in bolts out, then I realised it was spot welded. It's kinda in reverse. I was too busy thinking about doing it than taking pics. But this is what I removed. That side wall ruined the layout, and yeah welded in posts and a bolt. It looked something like this.
I realised earlier the acrylic I bought (the see through) for something else is nowhere near dark enough. Before it goes into the bin bin I pulled it out of the waste basket and had a look (the original). It is verrrry dark. I don't want it looking too blue or too bright, so I got an A5 of this. Was £4. I mean really, at that price it is well worth doing properly. Whilst I could theoretically mount the original LCD back over it holding it in place would be very hard. And I can't exactly drill small holes in it being glass.
Mornoon. So before I went to bed I wanted to sort the rear IO. I said that I may need to cut a hole for a HDMI socket. I was sort of wrong. If you look at the back of the unit you can see it has a round hole for a balanced output. Hmm. Square thing in a round hole...... Bear in mind both of the optical sockets will be there and fully functional. I may need to make it a little larger, but it is by far the cleanest solution. So I got a 20cm HDMI cable to patch between it and the board.
OK so today's job - start thinking about the drive. As funny as it sounds it will probably be the hardest part of this. Well, other than the LCD which I already did. What I mean is, getting it in there in the correct position with the cover panel on the front and all lined up and working will be the most work. Well, that and removing said front cover. The first thing I wanted to do was remove said cover. Thing is, the drive is heavy and has a whacking lump of metal attached. So, I removed the metal. I then took the entire drive apart, removing all of the annoying dangling wires. I then started to pry and poke. I had to get a little rough, but eventually I heard that "schloop" noise as glue starts to let go. So, I pulled and pried a little harder. POP ! You can see what they used there. Yup, that is 3M tape lmao. What amazed me? it is solid. Like, that metal cover is a solid piece of billet that has been machined and it is *heavy*. I then started tossing it all in a trash bag. However, I was being nagged by the carrier. So, I got out the ruler. See that? 5 and 1/4 inches LOL. I decided to keep that. I will use it to hold the drive, once I cut some hole rails in it. I've also decided to paint the insides, and make it all look nice. For no other reason than I have absolutely nothing better to do I then went and bought a drive. Thought about getting a used one, but given I need to customise the drive itself and would hate for it to die I got a brand new one for £17. Not worth the risk over a tenner, given the amount of fiddling it will require.
-Send it to the local expert saying some dingus bodged it. -Local expert was probably that dingus. Looks like a promising project. I was recently contemplating replacing the tape deck in my van stereo with an integrated mp3 player, but 3 completely unlabeled messy circuit boards was too much for my brain.
There's a guy on Youtube called Mend It Mark. If I was going to send it absolutely anywhere? it would be to him. The thing is, what I may not have divulged is that if I had it working I would use it maybe twice a year. It would just be the ornament to finish the stack and fill every shelf. As such? I have resisted paying £350 for one. If it was cheap? yeah, I could have entertained it then, hence why this one. Thing is though I *do* need a HDMI DVD player. My movies are all Region 1 USA, and there are a lot. And they are all 70s movies like Cannonball and Hooper and stuff. So they will never look much better even on BDrom. Plus being HDMI I am sure I can upscale. Mostly though? I can rip them straight "into it" which is far more appealing. Like I guess I could hook up a external to one of my PCs and do it that way, but it's something I just keep forgetting to do. By the time I got it all repaired? not worth it. It is much better as a reasonably modern thing I can use. I mean, I can even play CDs in it if I wish. I have a choice of sound cards, but my fave is this one. Of all of the sound cards I fitted into the PC when I had it last (when it looked like this) It sounded the best. I also have an issue with the Fire TV Cube where I get popping when streaming very hi res sound files. I would imagine this is because they are not supported properly? IDK. Problem is the system has grown. Like, since I used that I have a bigger TV on a much bigger TV stand, as well as two sets of front speakers and yeah there is no room anywhere for a PC. That's what I meant when I said if I can get it in there and working whilst looking at home? I will use the snot out of it. I used it a lot before, but yeah no space. The sound card will live on top of the PSU. I should have this somewhere at my flat... So the sound card will be mounted remotely, and then a single 70 ohm coax cable running out of it into the socket on the back of the unit (the original) which I will extend to the other funny looking one too. So either can be used to take the sound into the AV32, which has lots of DACs in it.
BTW. I am also hoping I can mod the original signed Tag Mclaren shield and put it over the sound card.
Oooo I forgot. KEWLING. First the PSU fan will go. I will then weigh up whether to use the other two I bought for £4.50 each. Got a fan hub too, I know the board is very low on connections. They are even the right colour lol.
Hmm actually no, let's sort the power button. First thing I did was dig for anti vandal switches. Seems I had two in my drawer 'o crap. This project is a funny one, because it is almost like it has been waiting for me. I only had to file for around 30 seconds. Ignore the braid. That will get replaced with black. So the issue was getting the original button to work with it. I stuck it on, but it is too big to press the button. Well, I say stuck it on, I just used the adhesive still left on it. It came straight off after. I then measured the travel of the original with a vernier, how far it needed to be from the button and the diameter of the button. I need to CNC an adapter to sit between the Tag power button and the momentary button. 11mm circle. Will calculate the thickness in a minute, but will no doubt need to make one of out 6mm and then machine down some 3mm to get the right thickness.
Right, so I threw that into Easel. Been a while ! The shim needs to be 7.5mm long with a diameter of 10.5mm. So I welded two scrap bits together. a 6.19mm and a 2.91. So I need to machine that down to 7.5, then cut a circle out of it. Will set the machine up tomorrow. Also asked my pal to 3D print me a new, non gorilla attacked one of these.
so the machine is all ready for the job tomorrow. Still had loads of the double sided masking tape thank goodness. Annoyingly? I also found this. Annoying because I just bought the exact same, yet not annoying because it means I can machine out the tinted cover for the screen.
Actual board. Ugly IO. Elaborate IO cover that is 1.5 hours of machine time lol. Currently being machined.
OK that is done. Not the best, I could have calibrated the bit better (didn't go as deep as I wanted) but I will take it. Needs some file work, will crack that out later and get a pic. Given the board does not have WIFI M2 I got this. I just wanted a USB one with a proper antenna socket. I then ordered this. So I can put a socket on the back of the unit.
