Project: Red Comet

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Originally Posted by OvRiDe

Very cool. When I saw grenade, it sounded like something you would throw at a fire, but after looking over it.. its like a precursor to modern fire sprinklers. Neato!

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yea they'd just hang them up, and the fire would melt a pin, then the spring would shoot something into the glass bulb to break it. for the time it was a very neat design :up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

You could consider mounting a laptop optical drive below the motherboard - you'd just need some slightly longer standoffs to raise the board up 2/3 of an inch. It might be tight but you should be able to get a power and data cable up past the edge of the board...

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Well the problem with that is that I've already got the rear i/o plate cutout and installed, so if I were to raise the mobo I'd have to make that cutout bigger, and there'd be a big ugly space there. good idea though. I may find a way to mount it next to the HDD and have some kind of hinge so it'll hinge out and clear the edge

alright I messed around in sketchup and came up with this idea:

I'm thinking of finding some old brass door hinges or something for the hinge part, and either find or make the scissor arms. this way the drive will push in to close it up, and to use it you only need to unlatch the case and flip open the top panel.

thoughts? :think:

ok so the idea with the dvd drive isn't going to work. the drive fits perfectly in the top panel cutout, so there is zero room for the cables and hinge. oh well. I don't sue the drive much anyways. and this computer will be mainly just for browsing and internet radio for my work area

I have a slim SATA DVD+/-RW drive that I could give you a good price on if you're interested. I'll even throw in the adapter cable and the mounts I made for it (if I can find them). I got it for mightyMite but ended up running out of space and eventually deciding that there was no reason to have an ODD permanently in any of my systems.

I'd jump on it but this board (Socket A, Athlon XP 2600+ Barton) doesn't have any SATA ports. thanks though :D I'll just leave it out. I don't use an ODD enough to have it permanently, especially in this rig. Hell in my main rig I bought a new one (to upgrade from an IDE ODD to a SATA ODD) and I think the only time I've used it was to install windows. I've got a 160GB drive that'll go into this unit, so I'll only need it to install XP, then after that it's not really needed.

So I transferred the fan cutouts to the outside of the case

And used the Dremel circle cutter (one of my FAVORITE Dremel attachments) and cut out the holes

120mm hole:

Here you can see just how thick this wood is

80mm hole:

I then sanded the edges of the holes to clean them up and smooth them out a tad. Here is the 120mm fan in it's resting position:

And with the grill in place:

I then placed the PSU board in it's final resting spot and marked the holes. I drilled the holes about 1/4" in rather than all the way through. Then I threaded in some short standoffs to mount the PSU to.

I then took care of connecting all the grounds on the board with some wire.

All that will be left will be to extend the ground wire to the power socket, but I'll do that once I finalize the mounting location for the socket. That's it for today!

I'm trying to scrounge up some dough to get some red cable sleeving and black connectors, so I can replace the UV green sleeving and UV green connectors that are currently on this PSU assembly. This way it'll look nice and tidy inside.

I'm sorting out the details on lighting as well. At this point I've settled on red LEDs. I'll wire them and group them to give some nice lighting effects to the interior. Plus I've got a bag of 100 5mm clear/red LEDs laying around I've been dying to use :D

Here's what's left to do:

• Cut hole for PSU power connector
• Mount PSU and related components to case
• Create some sort of cover for the PSU (for aesthetics mostly)
• Install Motherboard
• Cut out slot for VGA card connections
• Re-sleeve PSU wiring and replace connectors
• Mount 120mm fan and grill to case
• Mount hard drive
• Devise wiring loom for PWR/Reset buttons and PWR/HDD LEDs
• Make cutout(s) for front panel USB connector(s)
• Design and cut out opening for panel window
• Design and create wiring loom(s) for interior LED lighting
• Flip "Red Comet" badge 180º so it reads properly when the case is sitting

Might I suggest slightly undervolting the LEDs if you can - some Red LEDs have a habit of giving off a pinkish hue when run at full Voltage, a tiny drop, 1/2 a volt, can make a big difference. Course if you try the LEDs at full and they look good, feel free to ignore the hell outta me :p

yea these ones I've got are not pink at all at their rated voltage. they're bright as hell actually.

On another note, I've been brainstorming a badass idea for the PSU cover. Now to see if I can make it a reality :D

Alright so after messing with SketchUp for a bit, I've got the design for the PSU cover pretty much how I want it.

I've got some scrap carbon leftover, so I'll start by making a big "C" out of it. Then I'll cut out 2 pieces of clear polycarbonate in the flame shapes shown. One will be slightly taller, and I'll flip one 180º so they don't match up.

I'm going to put red LEDs under the first one, and amber ones under the back one. I'm going to frost the fronts and all edges with maybe 600 or 800 grit sandpaper. Then I'm going to figure out how to make the LED's blink randomly, so it'll look like fire :D

:EDIT: THIS is what I plan to use to generate the fire effect. One bank will be the red LEDs and the other the amber :D

Thoughts? Opinions? :think:

ok, THAT is sweet! gives me another fun idea for use later. Thanks!