Allright! My first worklog thread... it won't be the last.

This is what I call a "24-hour" mod. I did everything you see here in a day, simply because it'll get shoved in my entertainment center and nobody will ever see the inside of it but me!

Victim started life in the mid-90's as a Dell Optiplex workstation in a school or hospital somewhere. It's stylin with the Pentium 166 (that's Megahertz, NOT Gigahertz). I figured I needed an HTPC case, and I'm too cheap to buy one, and too lazy to build one from scratch. This looked like a good candidate.

First shot is the original computer with the proprietary motherboard in it. Quick-release ISA riser card! Superfly. Passive cooling. Semi-toolless case. This thing was ahead of it's time.

Second pic is the case gutted, and most plastic pieces removed. Now we can see Dell's evil scheme. At least the motherboard "tray" was riveted in place, a little lovin' with a drill and it's gone. I scrounged through my screws box, and found 6 mobo standoffs to use. There's a hole where one is supposed to go, so there's only 5 being used...

Third pic is a computer I got from my aunt, whose house was underwater for a couple of weeks. The computer then sat in my backyard for 6 months. I ripped it open and tried to scavange the motherboard tray, but alas, Dell strikes again... no such luck. Back to the trash pile. (Side note: I pulled a shiny 3.0 Ghz P4 out of it just now, looks like there's no corrosion, I'll slap it in a board and test it later!)

Fourth pic is test-fitting the MATX board in the case. This PC was my only Windows computer, I used it for playing PumpItUp and Neo-Geo emulators... that's about it. Cheap PC-Chips board, if it gets trashed, no big loss.

Fifth is a rear shot of me test fitting. You can see some nibbler work will be needed. I'm going to remove as little of the metal as possible, in chances that I can still use the back plastic piece and PSU latch. Looks okay so far. You can kinda see the original case front in this shot. Off to the "Mod Shop!"

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Continuing with the sickness:

1. Here we are with the motherboard mounted, rear has been nibbled to accomodate, and I managed to save most of the metal.

2. Here's a shot of the "Big 120" and removable HD cage I added from another tower case. Thumb screws were a must to get the cage in and out easily. *TOOL TIP* If you don't have exactly the right size drill bit to make fanscrew holes, use the next smallest one, and chuck up a rat-tail file in the drill. Buzz it in the hole until it's exactly the desired diameter.

3. Here's the swing-out PSU holder. The Dell unit "looks" like it's ATX compliant, but the 20-pin connector is wired differently, and the leads are too short. I hammered some of the tabs flat, and slapped in a regular ATX unit with long enough leads. Problem solved.

4. Here's the mostly-assembled computer. Everything looks pretty good so far. Beaker sez: "Mee mee MEE meemee!"

5. Closeup of the nibbled rear panel. I won't need the DB15 connector on the video card, nor the joystick port, so they're partially covered to conserve plastic. Had to drill a 3/4" hole for the PSU's on/off switch. All it needs to be usable now is a simple crossbar to screw the cards onto.

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Okay, I'm taking a short break. Next on the list is slicing up the front panel leads (LED's and switches) and fabbing a crossbar to screw the cards onto. Last step will be painting it black. Computer's up and running!

Finished making/splicing the front panel connector. The computer is 100% functional, just need to put a PCI card brace in still and hit it with some flat black Krylon. I'm taking suggestions as to where to go from here... there's plenty of front panel space to mod!

1. Here's the spaghetti mess that is my soldering job. It works, what can I say?

2. Here's the computer in action. It's now running a P4 1.7Ghz with a 20G hard drive and a TV capture card. Quite a far cry from the original guts. Still has room for 2 more hard drives and another CD-ROM.

I'm seriously considering getting a Thermaltake MediaLab to complete this thing... Does anybody have anything (or can recommend something) better than the MediaLab? The painting will take the longest to get around to, so I'll post that when it's done. Everything else was done pretty much in a day. Can somebody get an award for speed modding?

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Lookin a little Ghetto but its definately got some ingenuity there.

Sadly, you're 100% correct. Up until now, 90% of my mods were functional, and I'd throw on some paint and a window to make it look decent. I'd like to start going further with my mods, beginning with this case, since it'll be seen and used almost every day in my living room. It would be nice to give it a flashy paint job, or put some cool backlit design on the front... but the insides are pretty much done, as far as I'm concerned, except for quieting it.

I'll gladly take advice on this one! I'm thinking some kind of mini-window design with frosted acrylic in the front, backlit with some kind of light. Maybe a music theme, or just a cool logo. I'll toss around some ideas and post them here in a day or two. The front is screaming for a mod!

Sometimes ghetto-fabulous serves a purpose.

It's working for you right?

BTW, Beaker is "t3h m4n!"

Thanks Godfoot, it does indeed work, though it's not exactly what I would call "pimp." BTW, I'm a huge Floyd fan. My dad has all of their albums up to and including The Wall on vinyl... I grew up listening to Echos, DSOTM, and so on. I showed my dad the "Wall" case that Mnpctech_guy did, and he about wet himself. He's down with the pimp-tastic PCApex.

Beaker is the shiznit. I couldn't do anything here at Muppet Labs without him. He tends to get electrocuted, fried, slapped, and generally abused, but he keeps coming back for more.

Be sure to check out the free "Media Portal" software, FunkyStickman! It's right here;
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Developed by the folks behind Myth TV (Linux).... been using it for a few weeks now and it
still amazes me!!! Many Kudos to those 'peeps....

Don't know what kind of TV/PVR card you have but besides using the supplied remote you
could also look into wireless (preferrably RF with a range of over 2 metres) Desktop sets...
You can buy those with integrated trackballs/touchpads or with a seperate mouse....

Makes life a LOT easier!

TDR

I'm down with that! I've actually set up a few Myth-boxen, and I will make sure to give this a thorough run-down. I'm still thinking about how to pimp it... massive thanks for the link. I don't know how this slipped past my software radar... maybe because I don't usually run Windows?