Actually you can see it wasn't my fault. Both ends? are fine. The acrylic is clearly p1553d. Either way? it is more than good enough. Will file it up and clean it later.
Seems OCUK sent the wrong fans. Biggest 40mm fans I have ever seen LOL. Have contacted CS, but obviously it was pretty late. So waiting will happen. Finished the IO cover and the power button. IO needs more cleaning, traps things like you wouldn't believe. I used Kwik JB. It sort of sets in 5 mins, but takes 24 hours to fully harden. Once it has I will put the front panel back on properly and then glue the power button onto the carrier there.
Right so last update for today. Tired now lol. I first designed the floor panel. This is what the PSU and mobo will mount to, as well as the fan hub and so on. I also finished the power button. I wasn't going to put that brace bar back but I had to. Because it holds this up. That will all be getting painted satin black, but obviously not until everything has all been test fitted and so on. Otherwise I will be chasing my tail every time I scratch it.
Well I knew something was going to fight. Turns out it is the DVD drive. It doesn't fit in the carrier (miles from fitting) and yeah, it is going to be a sod. It needs an adapter cut to get the metal cover to come out far enough, doing that now. Will also need a floor under it I reckon.
OK so yeah, the drive didn't fit the sled. Unexpected, and a pain. Machined out a floor and fitted it. Yes, it is the shell of the player that is out of whack. Probably from the gorilla who manhandled it before. I then stuck the adapter I machined into the CNC tray cover and dropped it in. Note, it is not stuck on yet. That will come later. It will need shims put around the edge to keep it from catching. This arrived too.
Took the drive out and added the eject wires. Then put some electrical tape over it to stop it shorting and closed it back up. For now. Oddly the unit has 3 lenses in the front. One is for the IR, one is for the power LED and the other one does nothing. So, after finding these. I am going to remove the green one from the drive when I can power it up and find out which pin is +, then extend it into this.
Hit a big snag. I got the drive mounted OK. Hit the force eject and... Uh oh. After investigation it seems the tray itself is too wide to come out of both of the openings. I don't want to cut the tray. It is going to be extruded plastic and I will probably destroy it. The height of the tray is fine, it is the width. So, when I return I am going to have to bite the bullet and file the front panel. The inner one can be cut easily enough as it is steel. I will then have to touch up the anno.
if you want i have a slim laptop dvd drive you can have prolly easier to make it work than a fat chunky one
I’ve got one mate. I’ve got a slot loader too, but both are finicky about reading audio cds. I wrecked the drive last night trying to make the rails slimmer. Bought a used one for £8. My mate has a full sized mill so I’ll probably send the front panel down to him. I really want it right so there’s no rush. Off home now for a week so I’ll have the PSU to do when I get back.
Yup it’s going off to be milled. Been thinking about it and yeah, it needs doing properly. It’s worth being patient and doing it right. When I get back I will have plenty to do.
OK so after licking my wounds and having a rest from it I had a dig through my stash at home. As I mentioned the 20cm HDMI was not long enough which is annoying as that is my fault and they are more expensive than long ones. However, I managed to find a 30cm one (nicer too !) as well as my 1tb SSD and the ribbon I paid £35 for. So that was cool.
OK so it all started being a bit of a sod tbh. I knew it was going to be tight in there, being the height of the unit and so on. Measured up the sound card and it is hopelessly too thick to go where I thought it would. The only way to make that card fit is remove the shield, remove every single capacitor on there as well as all of the audio sockets and dangle them all on cables. It also has a copper shield splitting two areas and that would need to come out too. For what? a digital output. Not worth the bother. I then remembered I had this. And was all set on using it. I bought a 50cm cable for it, and laid it out in the 2d sketch. Thing is, it would be a shame to basically waste it just converting USB to digital. So today I went down the rabbit hole of Aliexpress. I found this for ten of your finest British pounds. It's basically a USB audio interface to Toslink and Coax digital. IDed the chip on it, and it's a Texas Instruments one. Read the schematic, and at first was put off by it being 48khz. It then dawned on me that optical and coaxial digital IS 48khz. So after feeling a bit daft I ordered it from Ali. Main benefit being it's absolutely friggin tiny. As such I can sweat a bit less about cramming everything in. I will of course test it side by side with the Asus, but tbh I don't see there being a massive difference given it will ignore the fancy part of that (the Asus, it won't use the OPAMPS or the main sound chip any way) and yeah, with any luck it will sound great and be the solution to getting digital audio out of the unit. TI claims it doesn't even need a driver. Which will be a really nice bonus. I've not decided on an OS. Not yet.
Getting random usb devices to work right in windows can be a ballache. Everything likes to load as 'generic usb' or 'microphone' for me. -Also, we've retuned to the age when you need to reboot to have HEADPHONES work.
Yeah especially when they’re Chinese. That’s why I made sure to ID the chip and read the data sheet. The Texas chip has all of the stuff on pins, so the only Chinese bit is the board which is just sockets tbh. Found some 75 ohm Van Damme coax earlier. More than enough to get it from anywhere in there to the socket on the back. I think the replacement DVD drive and PSU came today. The acrylic did too but seems to be a no show at mum’s. She said two parcels neither of which are flat. I’ve stopped asking her to open things now as she has no idea what she’s looking at lmao. I go back Thursday.
OK so one last bit for the sound part. It's a USB isolator. Also stops power spikes and etc. Good thing is it has a switch to turn it on and off, so I can see if it causes any sound degradation. It shouldn't because it has a proper Analogue Devices chip on it. I've also ordered another A3 sheet of acrylic. Mainly for the small pieces I will need, and the PSU cap (will explain that at a later date, no point now I can't design it until I have the PSU to measure).
OK so I figured out what OS I am going to use a couple of days back. It's called LibreElec and is basically, from what I can see, a type of Linux that is shaved down to almost nothing and boots straight into Kodi. Problem is I have never used Kodi. I thought it was just a way to pirate and steal, so I figured I should install it on my Fire stick first to see if it does what I need. What a wally. I've been using VLC, which is incredibly basic and old fashioned as a front end. Took me literally two minutes to access my server and be playing music. And, it does not have the audio issues that VLC does on high res flac. Obviously that will be less of an issue on a PC with a better sound device, but still. Apparently if you have a drive installed (DVD BR etc) a disc icon appears on the side and yeah, it will play DVDs too. Sorted.
