My mobo brought an IDE round cable, but I need one more for CDROMs, therefore, I made a small operation to an older IDE cable.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
MCP 2004
3 in the morning finishes the beta version of the case, the following day begins Minho Campus Party 2004 (the biggest lan party in Portugal) and I have to take my work with me, to show to my friends and to participate in the best case contest. The following picture was taken at the MCP site. The front part was made in a hurry, so it's not that great. The top door is clearly green, since it only took a coating of varnish. At this time, I put a net in the top of the case, closely it seems a rabbit's cage:) there is no bottom, in other words, any piece that falls inside, it is going right to the table, or even to the ground.
The HDD holders
The following pictures show how I held the drives to the case, there's a picture of a FDD, the system is the same for the HDD and optical drives. I applied some wood laths of about half centimeter, or little more, these laths will fit in the guides that I initially cut in the base structure, as in a closet drawer.
Some paint job
After concluding the holes and the support for the board, CDROMs and disks, painting begans. 1 hour to give a varnish coating on this with one of my fantastic and recently bought brushes.
While it dried, i began painting the drawings that I will put in the lateral of the box, also began. Those were made in a 4mm wood. To paint these drawings I used blue varnish, that only turns blue after 8 or more coatings. At the most you can apply 3 coatings per day, that gives approximately 3 days to get the color I want.
The lateral covers after gluing the properly painted drawings.
The case will have as front, two doors, one for access to CDROMs and diskettes, and the other to reach the HDDs. The following picture just shows the lower door, it has a round hole in the middle to install the power button.
Some more cuts
No acrylic available.. let's draw some things to put on both sides of the case so this doesn't look like a shoes box. Making these drawings are relatively simple, using a sharp knife.
Some holes
Structure mounted... time to do the necessary holes for PCIs/AGP, PSU, fans and other connections. My mom didn't like me to set up this on top of the rug (cow skin, that was transformed into steaks)
Building the basics
After cut the wood, let's build the basic structure of the case, 2 screws on each side, so a total of 4 screws on each junction point. There are not many types of wood that allow this. Of course I did not forget the wood glue, safety is better, so my fat cat can step on top of it and don't ruin this all.
Stating the project
Here is the hardware used to make these grooves in the wood, to hold the optic devices such as CDROMs and hard drives. This allows you to install and remove these drives easily. This configuration permits a total of 5 HDD and 5 CDROM/DVD drives.
My Plan!
Case prototype, made using Radiant (Quake and Medal of Honor map editor), I used the real wood textures after taking some pictures. You can see that initially my plan was to use acrylic on both sides of the case, but I realize that 50 euros per meter square was not such a good price for this material.
