Ratputer: The Anti-Bling.

I have been thinking about my next case mod and decided I wanted a Rat Computer.

What is a Rat Computer I hear you ask? Well it's along the lines of my Rat Bikes.
See this thread for some pics of my bikes, or:

That will give you a pretty good idea about the Rat Bike scene. I know it's not to everyones taste, but I like it!

So I want a computer along similar lines. It will look rough on the ouside, but be good equipment on the inside.

Here is the case I will be starting with:

It's an old Gateway that Dad was going to throw out. There really wasn't anything worth salvaging from it, but I grabbed it and brought it home.
It weighs a ton! It's made from a lot thicker steel than other cases I have or have had.

My plan is to not have a tower, but have it lying on it's side:

I have started the mods by drilling out a whole lot of pop rivets to change what I need. I also stripped another case for some goodies I need.

At the back I drilled out the rivets holding the slot panel in place.
On the right you can see the original back, which I knew I would need to cut to get my new backing plate to fit in, until I looked at how it was attached and looked at my other parts case and decided to drill it out too and fit it to the Ratputer case.

I need to do some minor trimming to get it to fit properly, but it's a bit late here to make too much noise.

I also stripped out the drive bays from the donor case to mount in the Ratputer:

Because the case will be lying on it's side, I need the 5.25" bays orientation to be turned by 90 degrees. I'll be able to fit 3 slots in the case on it's side, so I'll need to trim off the 4th bay on the donor cage.

To fill in the space left at the front, I'll fill in with some perspex, then cut the drive slots I need.
Something like this (excuse my crappy MS Paint work):

The over all paint scheme will be flat black and rust.

Stay tuned for updates on this one!

One of the things that tends to have a good showing on Rat Bikes is a skull of some description, so I want to integrate one into my case, but I wasn't sure where or how.

I was looking at the bits I had lying around and I was studying the front of an old case:

That's when it hit me! Those buttons are perfect for a set of evil eyes on a skull! Push the eyes to either reset or power up.

So here's a quick Paint pic of what I am thinking:

I'll cut the buttons out and keep enough surround so I have the power and reset symbols, cut, glue and bondo the whole lot into the front of the case.
With a little bondo I could even get the skull to be 3D like it's coming out of the case.

Those bikes look cool Bucko, and I like the skull idea even more. Good luck with the build.

Finally, someting Heavy Metal. lol, very cool.

im partial to your hayden bike. but i can also see the apocalypse now! feel to the one with the gas mask on it. New theme or are you going with a cumulation of al your bikes into this one?

Today's progress:

First off, I screwed the old motherboard to my computer desk shelf:

Then I did some cutting and trimming and riveted in the drive bays:

I went to K-Mart as I remember seeing some cheap plastic skulls there, so I grabbed one and trimmed it done some. Here you can see the skull, the hole in the side of the case to access the drive bay screws, and the power and reset buttons cut out and trimmed down:

I cut some more of the skull out and glued in the buttons and glued it to the case front:

And here is the first lot of filler on and trimmed with a knife before it cured fully:

When it cures properly I'll start the next lot of filler.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maz

New theme or are you going with a cumulation of al your bikes into this one?

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It's basically a Rat theme. I'm not really copying any one bike, but letting it grow and evolve like my bikes have.

Thats whats cool about that style. You look at something and think "Hey thatd be cool" and you just do it.

Second lot of bondo is done now:

I super-glued some pieces of filler plastic below the eyes, then once in place epoxied them in properly, then trimmed it back properly with the sanding drum on the dremel.
Next I glued some cardboard in below the eyes to get a nice curve for the bondo to go up against.
Once it was applied I again got the knife out and trimmed it all down before it cured properly, and that is the result you see above. Tomorrow I'll sand it down with 40 grit and buy some spot putty for the smaller holes that still need filling in.

One of the things I had forgotten about was front USB ports for the Ratputer.

I was going to just fill in the gap under the skull, but thought it would be the perfect place to put a couple of ports.

So another job for to do at a reasonable hour (2.30am isn't a good time to use power tools, and I'm too lazy to use a saw).

I'm trying to think of what else should be mounted on the front. It will be a little too plain with just the skull. Something has to go to the left of it.

The right hand (drive) side will have my DVD burner and a CD Burner drive in it, and I'll be mounting my Thermaltake cupholder/cigarette lighter combo in this computer and I also have the perfect lighter for this computer!

I haven't done too much on this over the past couple of days, but so far this morning I have filled in the bottom of the skull, ready for putting in the USB ports:

I cut a new face plate out of 4.5mm perspex and then glued it to the front of the case:

It still needs a little filing to perfect it though.

I also built up the forehead of the skull with another layer of bondo, as it was looking a little flat.

With any luck I'll have the skull and case front sanded and undercoated today.

I was sitting here looking at the pics I just posted, and looking at the front and it just didn't look right. Still too much like a tower tipped on it's side with the drives sitting offset like that.
Then I looked at the old fascia which I cut the buttons out of (in the second post).

So I asked the ultimate question to myself...


Will it blend? :D

The answer was a definite maybe, so I trimmed a section out of it to make it 3 bays high and then glued it to the front of the case:

It needed something to help it blend still, and what better than Bondo! :banana:

It will need another layer or two, but I think now, yes, it will blend...

It's starting to look pretty good now!

It flows a lot better now and looks more like it's meant to be. It stills needs some minor touch up work with some spot putty and a little more sanding, but you get the idea.

Not much of an update, but I undercoated the whole thing, then started the spot putty work to fill in some minor imperfections.

I have since wet sanded it once, got it fairly smooth, undercoated again, this time with white, and applied the second lot of spot putty.

By using the two different colour undercoats, it's easier to see how far back you have sanded. This afternoon I'll sand it back, get it smooth and then apply some more undercoat, ready for the colour.

Very cool build. Can't wait to see the finished product.

And on another note in regards to your 'crappy mspaint skills' (as I believe you put it)--the way you have those optical drives positioned makes it look like you're also taking on a 'Beetlejuice' influence!

A small update.
The first lot of colour is on. It needs a few coats, then once the black dries, I'll mask it off and touch up the skull with flat white.

damn this is looking very nice
great work Bucko

+rep

Thanks GT40!
I'll be doing some more paint after work tomorrow. I then have more to do on the case, like trimming the top down so it can have hinges installed to open it, instead of sliding and coming off.

Wasn't sure what to expect in the beginning, but this is turning out great!

Killer Bondo work, +rep

And I'm not just sayin it because it's another mod with a skull on the case :P

nice bondo work! +rep
the skull is cool too

Today I finished painting the white on the skull.
I'm at work at the moment, so pics will be a few hours until I get home.

I masked up the case so only the skull was showing, then ran an exacto knife around to get the masking tape nicely trimmed.
Next was a little trick to get the skull looking better. I wanted a few cracks in it, so a quick coat of black was applied.
Before the black had fully dried (I left it about 15 minutes), I applied a heavy coat of the flat white, then left it for the magic to happen. Those who try and rush paint will know the cracking affect I am talking about when the paints react. It can spoil a lot of work, but in my case it made my work easier!
From there I added a few more coats of the flat white, then once dired properly I removed the tape.

Next step is some more black, applied with a brush inside the nose area.

So, pics later tonight and tomorrow more work begins on the rest of the case.

Pics as promised!

Masked up and first of the white on:

And a couple of shots after painting with the power and reset "eyes" back in.

Tomorrow I'll go and buy a paint brush and paint inside the nasal cavity black.

While I was out buying a few things for various projects, I bought this at the Hardware Shop:

It's paint that will rust! :up:
You apply the Iron Paint, then the rust activator and it should end up with a nice effect. It means I can have rust on the Ratputer, even on the plastic! :D
I'll try it out in a couple of days and see how it goes.
I'll be busy riding for the next couple of days with a mate riding down from Queensland (over 1000km) to stay with me.

ooo thats really cool. Where did you find that?

It was ay my local Bunnings. A really big Hardware Chain store that has pretty much everything. It was in the isle with effects paints, like suede paint and the like.

Very creepy, but cool at the same time. Looks good so far :)

Looking good +rep

I should get back into it and do some more, but I haven't had as much time lately due to some issues on another forum I used to be the Administrator on.
I told them to take a flying leap last week and I'm now starting as the Admin of a smaller bike site and helping them grow.

Aweseme project. Can't wait to see the next update!

I hope this turns out. cool little mod. Will be interesting to see the cracking you were talking about.

Update on the Ratputer.
I've decided to can the Gateway case and use the Dell Poweredge Server case I bought. It will be the new Ratputer, but will still use the Gateway front panel with the skull.
I'm going to turn the case sideways and make the side the new "front". The extra width of the sever case will make that easy to do.

I'm at work at the moment, so I'll take a few pics of the bare chassis when I get home and do some dodgy, I mean high quality, MS Paint work to show my idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FPMachine

Will be interesting to see the cracking you were talking about.

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My camera doesn't have a macro mode, so it's hard to get a good picture of it. It's easy to see in the flesh though.

As promised, a few pics.

First a couple of views of the naked case:

Next a view from the side that will become the front.
First naked:

Then with the cover on and the Ratputer face place sitting on it to give you a rough idea of where the drive placement is going to be:

The current face plate will be trimmed and reshaped a bit, before being fixed in place and more bondo applied.

I'll cut a window in the side too, and seeing as the motherboard can't screw straight in, it is going to be mounted so the I/O panel and the PCI slots are actually inside the case. I haven't decided whether they will go upwards and I remove the top for access, or if the will go forwards to the panel on the right.

The current front and rear will get new covers made and I'll have some 120mm fans mounted at each end to get a good cross flow ventilation happening.

I'm really liking how much spacew I'll have to play with. It's making some decisions harder just because I have so much choice on how and where to mount everything.

Strange concept, be interesting to see how this comes out.

Might be the start of a new trend.

The window I would make so it looked like it had just rusted out.

So also as promised, some MS paint work to show my idea.

Proper anti-bling, like it dude.

I went and bought another iCute case the same as the on in my No Idea except without the window in the side, but is does have the bloody big fan still.

The girl at the PC shop just shook her head when I said I was going to cut up the case and again didn't believe I could take it home on the bike.

Here it is strapped to the bike along with a shelving unit I bought and a bag full of bits from the Hardware store:

And here is the case before being attacked with a drill:

I'm using it for the MoBo tray and the full height drive bays. Should be perfect for what I want with a little modding.

After attacking the case with a drill and removing a lot of rivets, I was left with the back panel and MoBo tray as one part and the drive bays, top and bottom as another part.

Here's the back panel and MoBo tray mocked up in the Dell case. You'll notice I removed some more bits from the inside of the Dell by drilling out rivets.

Here's the remains of the drive bays and top and bottom on their own:

I will mount it on the end of the server case as it is the EXACT height I need.
I took a couple of mock up pics by turning the case on it's side so I could sit the drive bays in place.

Now I have it mocked up and a better idea of how I want to do it, I'll attack with the angle grinder, jigsaw and Dremel over the next few days. It's no longer gonna be quite like my MS Paint work I did before.

Lol you sure you got enough space there?

Why? You think I need more? :p