Hi all! This is my first mod. The Reliant was the ship that Ricardo Montalban stole in ST2, The Wrath of Khan. I chose this ship because it was the only one that was compact enough to fit on the table after being stuffed with all this desktop sh... stuff. The Enterprise would have been a good foot longer... I'm building it from Masonite (aka hardboard, wood fibers pressed under high heat), as it's very easy to work with and cheap LOL. The hull will contain the mobo, hdd, cd/dvd-rw, and lots of lights. The base will house the power supply, a second "stealthed" hard drive, my Platinum drive, and all switches and ports.
very cool man, glad to see another trekky. looks like a very good idea but watch for the masonite dusting (i work in a building with it on the walls, so much sweeping!). what size mobo will you use, full size? have fun dood *you need a [/img] at the end of your pic*
The engines aren't built yet, but the whole thing will be 34 inches long when complete. 12" blue cold caths in each engine nacelle, along with various leds. I'll probably use some small incandescent bulbs for window lighting, and leds for nav lights etc. In the background on the right you can see the Ertl model of Reliant that I bought on EBay as a 3d blueprint. I also used some three-way drawings pulled off the web. The cool part about that was using Photoshop, I could resize the drawings in inches, and add rulers to the pic so that I could take measurements right from my screen! I can also print out full size plans of any part I need!
Here is a simple layout diagram. The hole is one end of a "dogbone" made of pvc tubing and two hollowed-out wooden balls. All cabling from psu to mobo, lights etc. will travel up the tube from the base to the hull. The cabling from the mobo to the monitor, sound, usb ports and second "stealthed" hdd will go down the tube as well. The ball joints are to allow the ship to be tilted at various angles, about 30 degrees per end (well, it HAD to be able to be played with LOL). Where the hdd sits in the pic will be cut out and covered by the bridge. As you can see, the top deck of the saucer slides forward to allow access to the dvd, and the top deck of the "square" after half of the hull slides aft for mobo access.
Here's a shot with some old "practice" parts used for fitting. My signature holds the actual components to be used, but I'm using them now, so installation has to wait until their new home is complete. The saucer section is approximately 20.5" in diameter. The dvd drive is actually about an inch shorter than the cd drive I'm using here. The dvd drive drawer will open a small hatch in the saucer when it slides out. I'm planning to have some lights in there to give that blindingly bright "Close Encounters" look to the opening hatch. I had to make the mobo section of the hull a little deeper than scale in order to fit the sound and video cards on 90 degree risers, so no doubt the hardcore Trekkies will give me crap for that LOL. I'm sure someone will "steal" this next idea once I write it down, but hey it will save me the trouble of figuring out how to do it myself, so have at it guys! I'm going to rig up my drive activity light to run laser pointers in the phasers! I'm still trying to decide whether to fire them through rotating crystals or not...
Here's the inside of the base, with an old cannibalized psu for fitting purposes. My Antec Smart Blue will go in there, along with its two led fans. Also in the base will be the Platinum Drive with all the connectors for my Audigy 2zs sound card, 4 usb ports, sound and monitor connectors, keyboard connector, and some yet-to-be-determined backlighting panels for the Platinum Drive and the switch panel. Probably recessed side-lit lexan fascias, with sliding hatches to cover them when the computer's off. So whattya think? On the left are the beginnings of the engine nacelles, also cut from Masonite.
Why not make the defiant? changing woulnd't be possible now, but you're going good now. The shape of the defiant is just another good one. cclf's in the nacelles is certainly a good idea, Keep up the good work
I've got a question about stealthing my second hard drive... What I'd like to do is place a hidden switch that will cut/add power to the second drive before boot-up. Which molex wire should I place the switch in to allow me to cut the power to it so that Windows doesn't see it when I boot up? Thanks for the encouragement guys! mooooooo
If it's not powered when you boot the machine the BIOS won't see it and you won't be able to read/write to it. Why don't you want windows to see it? If you want to make it hot-swappable you'll need a drive cage with that feature or some sort of external enclosure that uses USB 2.0 for interfacing the drive. You turn the drive on or off if you power the hard drive and the USB controller from your PSU via an in-line molex.
If you want to disable a HDD while the POWER IS OFF: The 2 ground wires are 1, there is no difference in them, so either loose one, or wire them together, then have a switch SPST and then to the PSU ground wires, or to the frame (its grounded right?) I would do that, or use a DPST switch to cut both the 5v and 12v line asue i wouldnt want the drive with one or the other. So either cut both power leads, or both ground leads, wichever ones you want to. And be sure not to cut power while the computer is on, i dont think the HDD or windows would like that very much.
cool... would like to see where this goes... ive wanted to build a startrek case.. but when you mesure it all up it comes out pretty big..
If the drive is on an IDE channel and is turned off during the boot sequence, turning it on again later will not allow you to read/write from it since the BIOS didn't recognize a drive as being on that channel. What he needs is a hot-swappable connector for the drive, which allows the BIOS to recognize the channel as active whether a drive is plugged in or not. An easier solution would be to use USB 2.0 or firewire.
Yeah, it's wicked big! I don't however intend toting it around to lans or anything (wouldn't even know where to find a lan party around here LOL), so as long as it fits on the table, who cares? Big is cool with me, more room for lights! I also wanted to be able to use regular components instead of expensive mini stuff.
