That's what I'm "Tolkein" aboot

The project now coming along rather quickly I have ordered the final part: 512 megs of system memory. Hopefully this will arrive within the next week.

I as described in a prior post I detached some LEDs from the case of an old PC, however I made the mistake of stripping the plastic coding off with the Dremel. So what I did was take a couple of the screw holes from the front of the old PC case panel, hollow them out and fit the LEDs into the plastic. Then used hot glue to attach this to the front panel of the VCR. The Power LED to where the VCR's power LED used to be and the HDD LED where the VCR's play LED used to be (oddly enough). Here are some images:






One thing I still need is an extension cable for the 20-pin mobo molex power connector (I'm sure that has an official term) because the PSU's cable simply doesn't reach. Even with that missing I decided to position the top peice with the PSU such that the cable would reach and get the memory out of my existing computer to make sure the mobo still works after the slight amount of abuse it has been through. The resulting organization of parts isn't very pretty but I had success! I was going to test on a monitor but as it turns out there is not enough room for the VGA connector in the case so I connected my video card and hooked it up a RCA cable to a regular old TV, some images:






I also managed to attach the CD-ROM throgh a rather elegant method: the built-in screw holes on the bottom of a standard CD-ROM (and most other 5 1/4" devices I would guess). I did drill one additional hole into the bottom peice for the additional screw. So the optical drive will be attached by no less then 3 screws. I don't have any spacers between the bottom peice and the optical drive so extra noise from vibrations etc. could be a concern (the bottom peice is metal).



The next problem was attaching the HDD. I finally found a solution to this, albeit not nearly as "elegant" as the above mentioned CD-ROM: I attached the HDD to the lighting panel/covering I was going to use as a shelf on the bottom and put this on top of the CDROM. Then I screwed in some extra pieces of plastic to the side screw holes of the CDROM and leveraged the shelf to attach it in place.

The follow are images of the HDD attached to the light paneling via convenient screws:






And these are some images of how the light paneling material was attached to the HDD. That material is really hard to take a picture of because it reflects light so well. That and I'm not that good of a photographer.

"Screwing Down"

In the past month or so I have finally made some progress on this seemingly stalled project. I purchased some more parts and more-or-less attached the PSU to the VCR case.

Progress:

Since the last entry I have decided there really isn't a need for the shelf I was trying to find. The holes on the bottom of the VCR case can only help with airflow and cooling down the mobo anyway.

My first task I decided to concentrate on was attaching the mobo to the VCR chasis. I already had some brass stand-offs standard with motherboards and ATX cases so I attached some of them to the mobo with some screws and tried to get the standoffs to fall into the existing holes on the bottom of the VCR. Then it was a matter of attaching the brass stand-offs to the bottom of the VCR: sure, lets try "liquid nails" adhesive. That didn't work too well.

Then it occured to me I could simply use a nut to screw in the brass stand-off, thus securing the mobo. I went to a local harddware store, and managed to get several nuts for less than a dollar. Problem solved! The mobo can be securely attached!










Next: attaching the PSU to the top of the VCR case. This was going to be an issue. I decided to buy a rather small power supply since I needed the room and I wouldn't have too many devices or monster video cards or anything. As it turns out I have several different 3 1/2" HDD holders of various types/sizes and the PSU happens to fit in that space: half way there! Unfortunately there are only 3 holes for screws on one side of the PSU and the PSU must be facing one particular direction in the case for the power cord. So I did what any rational, sane geek would do: took the PSU apart and drilled some new holes in the side of the PSU casing.


Unfortunately only one hole lined up with a hole on the PSU so I had to drill some holes in the formally 3 1/2" drive holder as well. Finally the PSU was attached to the 3 1/2" drive holder.

Some images:



Next: attaching both to the actual VCR chasis!

I knew this would be a bit tougher. After all we're talking about 20+ year-old brittle plastic. Fortunately there was some strips of plastic and screw holes I hadn't gone overboard with the Dremel on quite yet. So a few more drill holes and experimenting later I had the PSU attached to the VCR chasis quite securely. I'm still going to leave the chasis in the semi-assembled state for a while just as a test to make sure the thing is strong enough. Don't want any surprises.

The finished PSU/chasis product:




One thing still in progress is making room for a standard 5 1/4" optical drive complete with operating drive tray. I mamaged to Dremel the main chasis opening rather effectively to allow for the tray however the front panel that goes over the front is another matter (that's all you'll see on the outside after all). Some-what related to this is actually attaching the optical drive to the chasis. I could seek a more elegant solution to this or do as my roommate suggested: break out some zip-ties and be done with it. Why don't I just use bailing wire...

Currently the CD-ROM tray sticks out the opening in the front, however the actual face place is still too low. Here are some more images:

(click to enlarge)