Well, I'm graduating from college in a week or so and it's about time to graduate on this site, do a little more of what the site is about. That's right, I'm finally going to go for a casemod. I've flirted with it before, usually resulting in terrible disaster, but I'm at the point where I solder things to fix them, I've made a real pretty art thesis and I built my first pair of DIY speakers

It's pretty simple: the old standard PUT A COMPUTER IN A CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHELL thing that's been done before, but this is for me, not for internet stardom. I've had a love affair with this little thing all year. I love the way it looks with those huge circularly AM/FM dials, but was bummed that the belt was ruined on the turntable. It probably would have sounded terrible anyhow. Finally it dawned on me that it would make a great case mod. Just about the right size, and I'm excited about the tall covering which will give it an "exposed brains" sorta factor. And of course, some fun to be had with the switches (which feel SO satisfying) and the circular dials. I haven't really looked around, but I'm thinking I'll find a hardware monitor with circular dials and search extra hard for some sort of lens to stretch the display to fit. Any further ideas on that would be appreciated

A few factors... I'm not sure where I'm going to stick the PSU and I'm probably going to have to drop down to one optical drive and I don't know where that's going to go since I don't want to break the plastic top. That top is also really kinda scuffed. I'm going to look around for other ones that might fit, but in the mean time does anybody know how I might be able to pretty it up a little? And the last concern... I'm going to have to gut those pretty insides. The tuner especially breaks my heart since it manually rotates the coils with a taut wire.

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Ah, these mods are great! Too bad about the turntable, but perhaps (if you are motivated) you can buy a usb turntable and fit it in. You may have to replace a lot of panels and dials, but if you can get then functional, you will have a real work of art that you will love.

I actually didn't really think about having a working turntable in there... but I think that would require me to think a little bit more about compact-sized parts etc. I'm trying to mostly use my current setup, though I might get some new gear as a graduation present...

edit: aw if there were only one dial something like this would be PERFECT
AeroCool CoolWatch Fan Controller / LCD Display / 20-in-1 Card Reader - Silver - FrozenCPU.com

edit again:
This might work just as well though
LC-Display 240x128 Pixel blau neg. schwarz
hide it behind those dials and then split the information through its software so that I have two sets of information, one for each big old bulb. Part of me says if I'm going to splurge $125 I should just get the real thing and find a small TFT, but maybe that's more than I need

I like your Idea.. it would def. be a cool mod... why do you want a display internal so bad? you could stealth the whole turntable and have it connect to your tv...couple that with your surround sound and you got yourself a sweet HTPC and if you could intergrat a turntable on top then you got yourself a really sweet HTPC. I dont know the demisions but this
might be pretty cool to mount..

Well it's in it's "beta" stage now. More specifically, I stuck it all in the case and it all works. Unfortunately my camera wasn't working along the way so I have a few cameraphone pics I can upload if you'd like, but nothing particularly interesting. Now's the hard part: now that it works it's a bunch of little things and I have to get myself off my ass and do them.

Project Panasonic - a set on Flickr

Current features: front LCD shows temps, proccessor usage, winamp visualization (though delayed....). Started by one of the front switches (short flick on and off to start, not "up is on, down is off".

coming up sometime: that headphone port may someday work. Front potentiometers might control fans (mayyyybe. I don't really see a time that I'll turn them down), volume, other switch might be a mute.... open to ideas for this stuff.
And that plexi on top will get a good polishing. It will never look new since it has some cracks, but I can do better than it is. To fix the LCD being too small I'm going to try to mount some mirrors in the extra space in there. And that hard drive won't always rest in that awkward little spot. A lot of securing to do. And the back is wiiiide open.

Come to think of it that's a lot of stuff. I bet this will never be completely finished.

Not sure how much I like that red glow on the fan. It was really a matter of just needing a fan to see how it cools and radio shack was around the corner sooooo

oh yeah and the stats:

Asus P5N-D motherboard with E7200 at stock.
4 gigs of mushkin value-line RAM.
2x 9600GTs
onboard sound
external optical drive... convenient because a) I don't know where I would have put it inside but b) this thing is pretty awkward on your desktop. It currently blocks the time on my screen despite my screen having decent clearance from desk. My plan is to put the PC on its own little coffee table or something and let the drive sit on the desk.

Nice speakers...How do t hey sound???? I love old audio stufe.... Love turntables...so this should fit the bill for what I need......

Quote: Originally Posted by HemiCuda1970 Nice speakers...How do t hey sound???? I love old audio stufe.... Love turntables...so this should fit the bill for what I need......

Those speakers are my babies, soldered the crossover and cut the wood myself according to Microbe. They don't pack much of a punch bass-wise and they're not terribly loud, but the bass sound is real nice. Basically, when I want to listen to something nice, those those guys deliver. When I want to kick out the jams I've got some old 3' tall cabinets commandeered from my parents' living room.

nice work buddy