Dremel Schmemel

Now, I've finally broken out the Dremel and tried to see if I could burn out the motor (not yet). The first thing I knew I wanted to do to maintain the "look and feel" of the original VCR was keep that front panel with RCA and wired remote hookups. I haven't used a Dremel too much, but I did manage to detach it. Here is a shot of the newly detached front panel:



And for a shot of some impressive cutting action, here is the disfigured motherboard:



I definately had a learning experience in attempting this Dremel thing. I had to pry out several circuit interfaces, like molex connectors kinda, stuck to the motherboard and a few staples and soder points. A couple of those I missed and had some spectacular sparks flying up.

As planned I Dremeled the two old-fashioned channel dials to have a gap so they could be turned to allow access to the USB ports and then turned away other-wise to give it a legetimate VCR look.

Here's the two dials, post-Dremel:





And here is my (rather poor job) Dremeled front panel with channel windows partially cleared open:



Now I need to get into actually finishing out the case as well as planning out how I want it it work. For instance I had always thought that it would be cool to have either the eject or some other button (and there's a lot of 'em) pop up some sort of LCD screen. Not so much I suppose for practical use but it would be good in a pinch and would likely "look cool". I would also like to incorporate some hinges into the main casing so it could be easily flipped open to work on it.

Now I could dismiss these steps as too far out to really worry about progress-wise but I would need plan and design around such additional features at this stage. I was hoping this will get that much easier once I successfully purchase the motherboard/power supply from Mini Box. At least then I'll have real sizes to work with and design around.