Betamax!

I was swept up in the euphoria when my friend bought an NES PC, and decided to make one of my own in the case of an old Betamax VCR.

This is the cleaned out box, pretty much everything's been removed from the inside of it.

So, I have the embarrassingly nooby questions to ask you guys. I was going to sand off all the weird outcrops of plastic so there was as much space as possible inside, and then buy a smaller tower, fit it inside, cut a hole in the back for the motherboard, etc. That's not a question, I know.

Right. Do I need to fit a smaller tower inside the box? Can I just put a bit of wood in there and mount everything on that? My amateur PC builder friend said that it'd be easy...my concern was something vague about everything being earthed, but I haven't got a clue, really.

So, provided I pop a few fans in there and get lots of nice energy-light pieces of kit, should I have too many problems? I was going to do lots of fancy bits - like having a blu-ray drive which emerges from the slot where the old betamax would have gone in (I saved that whole mechanism, in case it came in handy) and maybe a little LCD screen to fit where the old display would have been, but that's for a little further down the line.

Is that a metal case under all the plastic?

You could possibly do what I did with my technics amp stealth htpc. That is drill and tap holes in the base of the case and put in the motherboard standoffs. Will need to try and cut away as much of that plastic as is still structurally possible.

With the dvd drive just use a standard drive but remove the face off the betamax CD drive and glue it to the new open drive.

Yes it is - I guess I could strip some of it out, but there's other pieces which seem to be holding the case together. But, I feel more confident about continuing now.

I'll post more if I make any progress - I have all sorts of ideas for fancy bells and whistles for the box, but I guess the important thing is to make sure the PC parts all work and can fit.

As far as parts go I suggest getting one of the Silverstone itx PSUs. Tiny form big power and low noise.

If you wanted to, you could get a tap-and-die set, and get some standoffs, and mount the motherboard directly to the case. You don't need a box-in-box, per se, but if done incorrectly, it could block ventilation.

There should be some paper printouts for cutting and tapping the holes online for ITX; if not, it shouldn't be too hard to do.

Might I suggest a "stealth" DVD drive, using the hole of the cassette as the door?

AmEv, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I also have a question about pico PSU power supplies. I've gone for this processor - AMD A-Series A8 3870K Black Edition Quad-Core Processor (3.00 GHz, 4MB Cache, Socket FM1, 100W, Radeon HD6550D, 3 Year Warranty, Retail Boxed) - because it looked cheap, but I now wonder, if I get a pico PSU to minimise the heat inside the box, if it'll be enough to power that and everything else.

So, someone please metaphorically hold my hand. It's going slowly because I'm too broke to buy parts, but it is going.

when you say pico psu, i'm assuming you're talking about one of the tiny ones that plug directly into the power connector on the mobo? like this....

http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC

if so, they would not be enough to power your computer.

The 160w continuous / 200 peak one should do as long as he goes with an SSD and no optical drive. If an optical drive is essential, stick with a laptop style drive or an external with its own ac adapter.

Looks like a pico-PSU might be out for the time being, then. Never mind, it turns out I'm too skint to buy anything more for the forseeable future anyway.