This is a work log I forgot about until I needed to use it for test the mobo assembly for v2.0 version of DreamCatcher. While I realize this is not a case, but it is a mod!

Couple of years ago I got lucky over at vhforums and won myself a Tech Station from HighSpeedPC
Tech Station Computer Case Test Bench: HighSpeed PC - water cooling specialists. Wasn?t too enthused with the idea of the motherboard on the bottom so when I saw a how to change this at virtual-hideout, the mod was on!! Virtual-Hideout.Net | Guides | Modding The Large HSPC Tech Station

April, 2006

The parts out of the box.



It was at this time I realized that my mod would have to be different from the above one, as I had won the ?standard? model. The how to is for the ?large? and the ?free space? I had envisioned was not there. First off ordered extra items, the optional 10? leg kit and the mATX standoff kit (have several mATX mobos!).



One of the major considerations on doing this mod was to use it for running the ?innards? of Celtic Spirit until the ?engineering? of the case is finished and the box ready to go. That meant one or two optical drives and three HDD?s. The only way for the HDD?s to work on the station was to go vertical. The provided mounting system wouldn?t work, so over to performance-pcs for some AC Ryan goodies A.C. Ryan Constructx? BayColumn510 Clear ACR-CX31052 Products Model: ACR-CX31052 [ACR-CX31052] : Performance-PCs.com, ... sleeve it and they will come



After all the parts were in it was time to figure out what needed to be done. Referring to the stock instructions and the mod guide I kinda sorta knew what I wanted to do, maybe. Because of needing to mount the HDD side plates, I added one more item to the Lowes shopping list as mention in the vhforums article. Lowes #880729, Pan Head M3 x 16mm bolts.

First off was to make the top the bottom.



Then mounted the mobo standoffs on what is now top plate using the pre-drilled holes. At this time I added the ?optional? mATX standoffs. Caution, there is an error in the online instructions (it may have been corrected as I notified them) that states to use a 7/16? drill for the pilot holes USE A 7/64? DRILL! In the pic you?ll notice my ?? dept gage for the drill ? retro but it works (gotta love duct tape!!). And then all in place.



Next on the list is to shorten the acrylic drive plate/panels to match the 10? legs. So why not just use the legs as a guide!



Wasn?t sure how to cut so I decided on a coping saw as I wasn?t comfortable with the cutting disks I had for the dremel and I didn?t want to take the time to go to Lowes/Home Depot et al. In the vise to start, starting, and then turned over to finish the cut. The cuts weren?t the best but I sanded for ?flatness? and then said screw it as the cut wouldn?t be seen.



Using a couple of ?spare? half height HDD?s to hold the sides together, it was time to figure out where to put the HDD cage and allow space for a PSU.



Alrighty then, know where I want it - so time to locate the holes. Easy, just use the down loaded guide!



WRONG!! Don?t know what I did, but when I printed it out it wasn?t to scale!! Re-located two holes (glad these will be hidden!!) and mounted the unit.



When it came time to mount the optical drive I planned doing it the same way as in the how to article. Unfortunately for me at this time I decided to have several cranial infarctions! So there are no pictures that I am willing to release on that!! As a matter of fact, there is an issue that still needs to be resolved before I?m happy with my effort.

In my usual rush I didn?t take any pics as I shorten the two short legs for the pci-mounting bracket (covered in reference article). As of yet I haven?t decided the where and how of mounting the fan as there is very little room on top as an ATX board will fill top shelf . I may want to use the fan on the HDD?s anyway especially Celtic Spirit?s Raptor. So here is where it stands until that decision is made!

I call this the front, where HighSpeedPC calls it the rear



Where HighSpeedPC refers to this view as the front >> to me it is the rear!



Here is a straight on view of the rear



And I?ll finish it off with a view of both sides



Well it is now time to figure the how and where to mount the fan, may have more than one! Also have a wild hair about mounting two blue leds at the base of both acrylic side plates. Also will be cutting the supplied non-skid material for placing the PSU in the bottom shelf. May even look at the possibility of screw mounting the PSU to keep it from moving.

To get this far took me approximately 6 - 7 hours where as an organized person could have done it in 3 - 5 and been neater!

Right now I'm looking at "hard mounting" the power, reset, pwr on led, and hdd activity leds. Also contemplating a way to monitor some temps.

The only thing I might have done differently would have been to mount the side plates to also hold STD drives as there are standoffs available for the HDD?s. Speaking of which I need to find some #6-32 mounting screws that are a wee bit longer than regular because of the acrylic thickness!

Early May, 2006

Never leaving anything alone, I have already made changes! One was a necessity, had to add three more mobo pad/standoffs



Why? A ?third? size in mobo!! Look to the right and you?ll see that the edge of the mobo is too narrow to rest on the ?stock? size mobo pads.



The next revisions are based on the fact that I will be setting this station up as a temporary home for Celtic Spirit's hardware. The 3 HDD?s are taken care of but not the Digital Doc 5+, 52X CD-R, and CD-RW/DVD-RW. Want to be able to make sure every thing runs before boxing it up!

The original mounting rails for the optical drive weren?t going to work, so what to do? Ahhh yes, the tops of the A.C. Ryan side plates used for the HDD?s! Had to shorten them to allow room for the PSU that goes under. Found out that the reinforced cutting wheel on the dremel was not the way to go!

Here are a couple of pics showing first fitting >> ignore the Lite On 52X it is just for fitting purposes as I didn?t want to take the Plextor 716 out of the box!



Since I?m cramming a minivan?s worth of stuff in a sub-compact the fit is tight to say the least. HDD?s will have to be in-place first, the optical will have to have all the cabling done first before sliding all the way in.

While it is apart I think I try to figure how to mount the fan for the HDD area. The problem is if attach it to the bottom of the top it is too high, but if I mount it on the bottom shelf it?s too low! Then again the only real ?hot? HDD will be the Raptor, so if I mount it below the FDD (archaic aren?t I) I could go the high road. Or then again mount all of the HDD?s in the lower three spots and hope the SATA cables are long enough.

Go some other things coming that should finish it off, but still waiting on the parts.

Have to say though HighSpeed PC defiantly has a nice product here and look forward to seeing what their next version will be like!

Sometime Earlier in 2007

As usual started trying to pick up where I left off on several projects, but life got in the way again! Played around with the station a little last weekend ?designing on the fly? and got this far.

Kinda sorta ?solved? the location of the 3.5 drives cooling using the provided 120mm fan and two of the 1? standoffs that came with the station. For aesthetics, I lined up the outside edge of the fan with the outside edge of the station ?leg?. This also allowed space for any cables that may be in the area. Also to give it more of a finished look I painted the provided 1? angles black. As a matter of fact I also painted the two 1? brackets used to mount the PCI ?tie down bar?.






To provide extra cooling on the topside for the mobo components, I add two more 120mm fans. Originally more 1? brackets were acquired for this duty, however while laying out the how & where of mounting the 2 fans that idea was dropped. It seems because of designing ?on the fly? based on the mod done to the large tech station I keep forgetting I do not have the same amount of room!

To somewhat ?improve? the issue 2? brackets are used. First the ?leg? that is mounted to the fan was shortened and then these were also painted black. It was decided earlier to mount them on the top of the platform to give a little ?elevation? to the fans. Because these brackets come with two mounting holes per leg I consider them as being ?adjustable?!




The two fans shown are for mockup purposes only as they were scrounged from a misc. parts box. For S & Gs I?m thinking about using LED fans for ?bling?. The ?on the fly? caught up with me on the mounting the fans as I drilled the mounting holes using the 1? bracket. It just so happens the larger ones used are wider. Because of having located the brackets against a couple of the rubber mobo standoffs some binding and offset occurred.

March - April, 2007

This project took the back seat to BluHaz reDux & DreamCatcher. but I managed to piddle with it every now and then. Some of the ?fabrication? work went on during the other two builds, but a couple of ?ah s**ts? stopped everything ?till I could pay more attention.

While working with the optical drives in the 5.25 bay area it was apparent that my spacing had error in the minus direction. So I re-drilled the clearance holes and still had to ?wobble? the holes to make them slotted.



It seems I could mount a 5.25 item in the two lower areas without issue, but would have to loosen the cage mounting screws to get anything to fit in the top area. Also will have to order a ?newer? generation of CD/DVD-Rom as the one I was going to use is close to 8? deep. This puts the rear very close to the 3.25 drive cage. Here is one of my earlier mockup shots showing this:



In working with BluHaz reDux & DreamCatcher I?ve learned the newer ones are under 7? deep ? that will help the connector / cable space requirements.



Now what does a picture frame have to do with the build? Had another one of my ?wild hair? ?design on the fly? ideas. HighSpeedPC provides a ?kit? with speaker, power, reset, HDD led, and power LED they are individual units on 3? ? 4? leads. Having these mounted directly to the mobo just didn?t appeal. BluHaz reDux has a neat little PCB with all of stuff hard wired, and after a lengthy search I found one. Also I picked up a small dual lead LCD temp gage for the station (remember this thing started when all I was using was Skt. A). Now I searching for a cheap, quick, and ?dirty? way to mount these. Enters the frame. You know, one of those cheap ones where you slide the picture in. When I finally got around to doing the cutting and drilling found out it was not the best of choices. The plastic is fragile and you get all of the cracks, splits, and things. Was too far into doing this when this really showed itself, so finished it as is and maybe down the pike look for an alternative.



Borrowing one of the left over nylon spacers, several washers, and a screw made a ?swivel base? so as to be able to access the buttons and view the temp gage from several directions as needed.



Got my LED fans in and mounted, painted the fan grills ?anodized? blue, and started trying to figure how I wanted to mount stuff. Started with the 3.25 cage and supposedly it?s three ?fixed? items ? fan controller, FDD, and HDD. Until I really start ?hooking things up? a mobo the FDD and HDD are in flux. Trying to figure how I would route the communication cables and more than likely go ?retro? and use ribbon cables (optical drives, etc. too). Here you have ?Front?, ?Side?, & ?Rear? views as it now stands.



04/26 & 27/07

Adding to the Swiss cheese effect that is starting to be the trademark of build is this new design.



Besides the power control PCB I ditched the wee little provided speaker for one similar to BluHaz reDux?s, a nice healthy 2? in diameter. Had originally planned for it to be in the frame, but dropped the idea after concerns of more holes and a way to mount it. Not having that much room on the ?deck? it gets mounted under the mobo. One should still be able to hear it with the mobo on its standoffs.



Wanted to see what it would look like lit up so I tied into BH rDx?s PSU and this is what we have??.first shot is with the fans on ?low? (dims the leds also) and then on ?high?. Then I tossed in a look at the 3.25 cage to show the rear fan and a ?detail? of the fan controller. BTW added that because it was floating around and most likely will never really be required to run the fans full bore.

IMG]http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d140/jedihobbit/Tech%20Station%20Mod/LightsHiFanSpd2SM.jpg[/IMG]




Now I need to work on how I want to partition the HDD, and set up the OS where I can dual boot, one with nvidia drivers and ati drivers. Also may need to see how things would need to be done per different mobo also. Also looking into what I want to do for a ?fixed? PSU for the station.

02/23/08

Okay the PSU issue is resolved and I?m using an "old" Enermax EG475AX-VE SFMA 470W that was lying around. The Tech Station comes with a rubber mat that one supposed sit items on and let their hold them in place. This PSU will not let me do that ? time for a history lesson. This unit was the second one I had customized by performance-pcs for Celtic Spirit. Had the cables ?modularized? (this is before manufacturers started doing it) and sleeved. As this was going in a full server style box tight bend rads on the cables weren?t an issue. So to make the mobo related cable look different I had them done in the ?Reflex Stainless Steel? sleeving. Now that stuff is hard to bend so that alone determined how I have to mount the PSU.

For those of you who have the windshield mounted ?Fast Pass? ? ?Multi-Pass? ? ?EZ Pass? for toll roads will recognize these



The interlocking tabs a courser and stiffer than Velcro and lock together real well, and the mounting adhesive seems to be fairly strong also. As this particular unit is ?square? I used two (will add two more later) and located on the bottom of station. The reason for adding the second pair is so I can rotate the PSU 270 based on how much cable is needed to reach the mobo.

Currently I will be using this to test and OC DreamCatcher v2.0?s mobo assembly so wanted to show it ?in use?. One thing for sure cable management isn?t!



The power cable mentioned above can be seen in number 2 & 3. With this arrangement had a problem with the power led?? the harness on the Station is pin-pin-blank and the abit is pin-blank-pin. However with the 3 led fans and illuminated fan controller don?t think there will be a problem figuring out we have power!

Below are a couple of shots with the unit fired up the first time (had boot issues so it was back to the drawing board mobo wise). First thing was to turn down the fan speed as it sounded like a small tornado, other than that everything Station seemed to be working.



Well back to my software issue (partitioning, multi OS, yada-yada), for right now I'm going to ignore it! No really, decided to just set up a "new" HDD that will be used with the Abit / Brisbane combo I'll be currently testing.

Now on to loading the software and testing!

02/24/08

Nope, don?t need no fargging Power LED!!