Some of my accomplishments in the press, thanks to everyone involved! Check out some of my other projects by clicking PC above. Soon there will be a collection for you to browse through. One of the upcoming projects is a Quake III arena Railgun mod, built from a SFF case.
My new (TINY) office, with new Callisto secondary satellite machine at bottom
Yep, thats a 15" LCD behind the glass.
Framed PC version 8.0, December 2003
The side view everyone asks about
9 fans
7 windows
10 bright green LED lights
2 blue cold cathode lights
19 thumbscrews
10 usb ports
4 removable hard drive frames
4 IDE ports, 8 total drives possible
20 custom aluminum and brass brackets
24 custom drive mounts
3 liters of water
11 custom wire harnesses
36" x 30" x 8" footprint
Soyo Dragon Ultra p4s-645DX mobo
1.7 GHZ P4
512 MB DDR
128 MB ATI All In Wonder 9600, dual output
Soundblaster Live! 5.1 Digital
Hardware 7 band EQ for headphone use
Callisto Secondary PC (400 PII 320 MB PC100) as auxillary sound input
Raid 1 (mirrored) bootable array
2 Seagate 60 GB Barracuda ATA IV
Seagate 40 GB Barracuda ATA IV
Lite-On DVD-RW
HP CD-RW
Linksys WIFI Router/Switch and cable modem
More detail here.
I have the perfect finishing touches planned out. The first one is to make a custom desk, and build it into my tiny office/entryway, nicely curved and useful. It will have three tiers in the end: the main desktop, the monitor/wraparound upper shelf, and the dual monitor cover-top. This section will live underneath my model cabinet. I'll stick my printer/scanner on top of the monitor cover-top, between the model cabinet and Framed 8.0. I was planning to use some more Plexi to cover up the monitor faces, blending in the screens to the rest of the office. I think this will work wonderfully even if it might have some glare, it will be worth it for the look! Keep in mind this image is an approximation of my planned desk, in the end it will be different.
The second "finishing touch" is to mod my secondary machine, in the same way as Framed 8.0. Now that its done, both machines add up to a total area of 36" wide and 45" tall!!!
The machine is a 400 MHZ SECC2 PII, on an AT-style mobo with two video cards- an All in Wonder Pro 8 MB, and a 3d Prophet II Nvidia GF2 32 MB. I have a decent sound card in it as well as the typical Intel Pro100 network card. 256 MB of ram or so and a 13 GB 7200 RPM HDD round out the package. I tried to upgrade the CPU to a 600 MHZ slot 1 P3, but the motherboard I am using doesn't support p3's properly.
I used an old 15" DSTN LCD module for this project, the same one that used to be mounted to the dash of the Audi 5000 Quattro. You can also see it hanging from the Framed PC 1.0 after I sold the Audi. I kept it around for a while, then I gave it to a friend who used it as an MP3 display at his work, attached to his Snap-On tool chest! Boy, this thing has been around... The display isn't good for full-motion video, since it does not refresh quickly. But for Text, pix, and a general monitor it is perfect. The module is three pieces including the circuit boards. All the pieces can be installed easily with four bolts or studs, therefore it matches the rest of Framed 8.0 in its easy to remove format. Underneath the LCD I mounted the power supply, CD-ROM and floppy for this machine. All of these items are hidden from view, unlike the Framed 8.0 method. But the CD ejects the same way as Framed 8.0 from the same side. The small box in the middle of the edited pic below (above the mobo) is the planned Crystalfontz 634 LCD display. I never got it, since it costs $100 and I need to do other things before I can spend that money on such a luxury.... I think it looks great and it ended up very close to what I had originally intended it to look like in the photoshopped job. The addition of the windowed hard drive is a nice feature and eventually it will have LED's for activity lighting up the read/write armature. Edit: The windowed hard drive died so I needed to replace it, I will be windowing the new one soon!
The last thing is to mount my old Tacoma passenger seat to an office chair base.... Sounds weird, but the seat is comfortable and much better than my "leather" chair. I hate the arms on it!
What happens when you mix a little yankee ingenuity with modern electronics? In my case, the mod bug hit me in 1998, six months after buying my first computer. This current project is the culmination of my PC modding skills and what I think is an original set of ideas. I guess this just goes to show what a little time and a few solutions will bring to the table!
Considerations of design:
Low profile wall mount
Maximum storage potential
Artistic yet purposeful appearance
Low-fan count cooling
I needed a machine that would take up less space since my office is now a 6' x 4' entryway!
I have a desk and office chair, plus a filing cabinet but there is little space for anything more. My desk became a bit cluttered after getting a large multifunction printer and needing space to work. Since I have PC skills from two previous jobs that required me to configure and build PC's and networks, I often get to work on everyone else's computers! I currently work as a courier for an aircraft engine company, but that never stops me from continuing my obsession with all things mechanical or electronic. I still do side work and I plan to begin working as a contractor building this sort of madness for clients within 2004. Wish me luck!
By the time I moved my PC from the bedroom to the entryway of the house,the kids started using the computer more and action figures became miniature mascots for the user. Sometimes there would be an occasional reboot whenever the kids were using it. Might have been those curious fingers...
Soon my tower was covered in junk and it was obvious that the machine needed to be moved off the desk. But with so little space to work with, where was I to put it? I thought about my first wall computer, an ugly and quick attempt to solve the problem of space limitations. That machine was nothing more than an opened case screwed to a piece of plywood! I needed to pull out the drawing board once again!
What I wanted to keep in that original design was visibility of the internal workings, so I began designing a new enclosure to mount to the wall and show off EVERYTHING within. The way I had intended it to be was two machines in the same case, but I found after a few calculations it would cover the entire wall!! I reduced the design, over several versions, and came to the prototype you can see here.
The machine needed to be functional, but at the same time appeal to the wife. So I needed to use something nice for the main housing. Plexiglas was in order, but instead of making a window in some other material, I decided a freestanding panel painted from inside would look much smoother and more refined. I was going to enclose the sides at one time, but after realizing I would need many fans to keep it cool I decided against it. The fans would make too much noise. A side benefit to the open sides is the glow from the CC lights all the way around the machine, they will light up the wall and the inside of the case!
One of the original design ideas I had turned out to be more elusive then I anticipated. I wanted to have water tubes between the drives and motherboard, next to the CC lights. The materials I used for the test did not work out. These prototype water tubes were made from nylon tubing with nipples on each end plus a threaded cap. Leaks began after taking the prototypes out to make nice brackets. I reinstalled them and water was leaking into the monitor! Since then I shelved them until a better closed-bottom tube could be aquired. It's too bad because they were the focal point for the machine prior to the installation of the front Plexiglas panel. I had no tubes inside the machine for around two weeks, and I missed them too much, so they have been replaced by the glass Tower Vases I found on EBay. They are perfect for this application! Pictures could never do them justice, since they reflect light onto the wall and the bubbles take on their own life as they ascend the tubes. I think they turned out rather elegant, and they are much thinner than the original tubes were, giving more viewing space to the components under the glass. These tubes also took very little time to install compared to the other tubes. I used some more 3/4" plywood as bases for the tower vases to sit on. My aluminum standoffs for the front glass serve double duty now- they also support the outer edges of the vase stands.
Here is a schematic for the tubes. Thanks to nitro_dawg for asking about it!
The optical drives have been cut open to view the workings of both CD-RW and DVD. It's strange to see the transport mechanism pick up the disc, spin it, and the head and data cable moving around to find tracks in the disc! Sometimes the laser on the DVD drive peeks out occasionally! Watch your eyes, pal. You just need to know when not to look. You have been warned!
I covered all the drives up with some more plexiglas painted from the inside to provide six windows showing JUST the drives, not the ugly brackets and such. The panels come off with brass hex nuts (four each side) similar to the main glass. Studs are screwed into the mounting board and the panels come off in under one minute. The drives look much nicer now than before! Bubbles from the glass tubes reflect off the plexiglas and add much to the overall appearance of the machine.
After modding the optical drives, I decided to remove the power supply cover to see if it looked cool inside. Turned out the thing has two aluminum extruded heatsinks... I needed to make a window. I used nice switches and LED's in the window and made my own harness for the wires to go to the motherboard. The guys down at Radio Shack hooked me up with alot of the odds and ends I needed to complete the machine, thanks guys....
I had a 4.3 GB IBM hard drive kicking around so I decided to sacrifice it to the cause! If you know anything about hard drives, they can and will fail with just one speck of dust. I saw some people on the 'Net taking the cover off their hard drives and THEN covering the opening with plexiglas, taking extreme care to keep it uncontaminated. I just had to see it run open, even if it did croak right away. Curiousity got the best of me here... Turns out the thing still worked after a week's time- simply amazing! And damn loud, too! Two weeks more and it still worked... until I purposely grabbed the armature and pushed it into the platter! I had enough of that annoying whine, so I took it offline by force. The removable drive casing still serves as a swap drive frame, plus the old exposed drive looks great in the case, even if it doesn't serve a function anymore. In that above link you can also see the card cooling fan assembly with its polystyrene cover. That unit set me back about 7 hours total, for the wiring of the LED's plus fabbing the brackets, making a new connecting cable for the mobo, and of course cutting and painting the cover.
You need a temperature monitor when you overclock. I really haven't been into the OC thing lately, but the new heatsink I just picked up is begging me to try my hand at it again. I installed the display before the heatsink, so I could keep an eye on the OEM Intel unit. Now it's gonna get a bit more use! I'll be seeing how high this processor can clock soon enough.
The dual temperature display from Radio Shack is nice enough, but I painted it and created a new external thermoprobe connector and a new probe harness to help blend it into the styling of this project. The cold cathode tubes don't light it up, so I made a streetlamp style LED aimed at the monitor. I used the tip of an auto cell phone charger for the hood, plus a few other odds and ends. It's perfect! LOL...
After many revisions and trials of the heart, my longest time-to-complete project took its toll on me through all 100 hours, even though this machine came together with fair ease. The hardest part was the Plexiglas cover. It took around 15 hours to complete; between masking the border colors, drilling the holes EXACTLY where they needed to be, and of course hand-painting the center symbol one stroke at a time! Then there is the 10 LED's wired into the card cooling fan and power supply. Did I mention the 24 "L" brackets hand drilled and bent? Oh then the wasted 10 hours on the original water tubes... Basically everything in the machine went under the knife in some way. It's kinda strange to see the machine now because it looks exactly as I dreamed of it about 4 months before beginning its construction! Talk about deja-vu!
The power supply took nearly as long as the Plexiglas cover. I cut the window, made another Plexiglas panel to fit it, drilled for the switches and LED's, plus mounted the internal bright LED's to showcase the column-like heatsinks inside. Then it was obvious that the motherboard just wasn't lit up enough. So then the card cooling fan came out. I mounted the same LED's as the power supply to the fan and cut another cover panel from polystyrene shaped round to help the fan to look its best and cover the LED's when you look straight at the machine from my room. Most of the power wiring needed to be soldered and heatshrunk (?) and the power for the air compressor is soldered to the 120 VAC internal power supply connector. The equalizer at the top actually sucks at quality music reproduction, instead I use it for headphones. The NewQ 7-band help me tune the headphones to hear what I want in Quake III and also thru the line in for external music input. The housing needed to be turned inside out and was reinstalled 90 degrees bent so that the front panel would face forward instead of down. If I was using a normal case, I would need SEVEN 5 1/4" bays for the NewQ, 4 removable hard drive frames, plus the two opticals. Now it seems like a bonus to mount the machine on the wall, since I can use the full potentail of the motherboard, a Soyo Dragon Ultra, without some gigantic case sitting around for the kids to play with and jump on. Granted, I only run a 1.7 P4 with 512MB DDR and a 60 GB RAID 1 with a 32MB GeForce 2. But until Doom 3 and Half Life 2 come out, I already get more than 90 FPS all the time on my current games, which is more than enough for me! An ATI 9600 All-in-Wonder (Just installed it) plus 2.8 GHZ and another 512 MB will suffice when the time comes.
I did not want to overdo the lighting aspect, which is why you don't see lighted cables and multiple colors. I kept it simple with the same two light colors and went easy on the brightness levels to give it subtle details that just ask to be examined. This mysterious factor goes a long way... My 5-year old son's friend did not believe it was a real running computer until I ejected both optical disks. Later on, he tells my son about "mad skills" and what it means. He used me as an example!!!! It made me feel good but remember, this is a young kid we are talking about here! He was easily influenced. Most people just think I'm a freak. But from 4wd trail trucks to computers, ancient history and religions, high-performance automotive technology, plastic model car building, drawing, physical and hypothetical sciences and Nanotechnology- you might think I bite off a little more than I can chew. I just love knowlege and creativity and I hope the next project is even more satisfying than this one was!
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