MythTV HTPC

[The_Crippler]

Short update: I picked up some bondo last night...I wanted "short hair," but all they had was long-hair. I figured, "What the heck? It should work as well."

It doesn't. It's a pain the keister to work with. Going to check some other stores this weekend. That's about it for now.

[The_Crippler]

Okay, here's the first of, what I hope, will be a few updates this weekend. As mentioned above, I have begun work on the Bondo portion of the project, which has me more excited than you might know.

First part I'm working on is the back panel. This is both because it is structural, and because it's been a while since I've done Bondo work.

The work I need to do is to fill in around the hole to bring everything up to the same external height to make it look cleaner, and to do something with that ridge at the left portion of the picture.

Well, as I said, all the store had was long-hair filler, which is not a joy to work with. Here the first level is glopped on:

Yes. I know what it looks like. Time to take some sandpaper to that and see what I can do with it.

Okay, so the first pass wasn't that bad. Needs a lot of fill in, but that was to be expected. It was just a simple matter of mixing another batch up and slapping it on.

Here's where things became clear that I didn't like this stuff. Yes, it is fantastic for building stuff up, but it doesn't like filling in pits and crevices, which was going was going to be a problem on this chunk. Please note the ledge I began building up on that ridge we spoke about.

After that, I sanded it down to this, and pretty much left it for a couple of days until I could get some standard filler at the store.

Thhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrreeeee we go. Good old-fashioned, red-neck-hot-rod, American, pinkish bondo. That's the freakin stuff.

A quick pass with some 40 grit and it's looking like something to write home about. Mix up some more and slap it down...

Gettin' there. I took a moment to check my progress. A straight edge along one of the structural pieces was a good gauge of how level I'm getting it. As you can see below, I still need to fill in a bit more.

Therefore, it was time for yet another application. Notice that I'm still building up that ridge line on one side of the case.

After sanding, we're down to:

Sweet. Almost totally there. You will that there are still a few craters near the camera, but that's about it. I had to leave it here, because I needed to cleaned up for dinner. I'll pick it up there tomorrow. Also,it was here that I realized, you can tell a lot about a modder by how much time he spends on the back panel...

[nevermind1534]

Looks good so far.

[DonT-FeaR]

rofl i nearly had to change my undies on the second pic lol scared me lol looks good now

[Zac]

Lookin' good. I wanna build a media server/HTPC... All I need now is a video card and hard drive. Then I'll build a case.

+rep

[nevermind1534]

rofl i nearly had to change my undies on the second pic lol scared me lol looks good now

Yeah, that looked pretty nasty.

[The_Crippler]

Lookin' good. I wanna build a media server/HTPC... All I need now is a video card and hard drive. Then I'll build a case.

+rep

When if comes to media servers and hard drives, obviously bigger is better. The OS for the backend this one is connected to is on a 40 gig drive, and all of the media is on mirrored 500 GB SATA drives. LOts of space, but I plan to bring it up to a full terabyte of redundant storage.

[The_Crippler]

Back again! I've gotten a lot more work done since last night. First off, here's the back of the case with the PSU installed:

I still need to give it a finishing sanding to get rid of scratches, but that is yet to come. Notice the counter-sunk holes for the mounting screws.

That being done, I decided that I wanted to do some work on the bezel.

Bondo glopped on to cover the front, and then...

...a piece glued in to plug the bottom hole. I will later install on in the other hole and bondo over them. In the mean-time, I didn't see anything wrong with sanding the other end to get that started.

Later, I bondoed over the lower parts, and would have sworn that I took a picture. I did not. But here's an exciting picture of the fill-in I did after sanding it down:

Sanding that down was close enough for government work, because the next step was to cut the fan holes. Therefore, I was going to be doing more filler work later anyway:

I lined the two fans up to get a guage where they were going to go so I knew where I was going to cut the holes:

These are both green LED fans that I will be putting the turbine nose-cones on later. I know that the standard mod is one standard fan coupled with a lit one, but there just isn't the internal space in this case for it. Oh well.

This is some more eye-balling. No, that circle does not represent where the hole is actually going to be. Once I figured out where the center-point of each fan was going to be, I grabbed the hole saw and went to town.

There we go! Holes cut and ready to go. The original plan was to have a single, oblong hole for the fans, but I've now re-thought that, and am going to do individual ducts. Time to place an order from MNPCTECH.

That's it for today. The plan for tomorrow is to cut a blow-hole in the top and do some more cosmetic work on the outside.

[DonT-FeaR]

looking really nice lots of work on the front bezel very well done

[The_Crippler]

The weekend of a thousand updates continues. Okay, well, like three, but still.

Today, the main focus was cutting the blowhole for the 80mm fan.

Here I marked out the location for the fan itself. The reason it is so far to the side is because that is where it would need to be to clear the memory sticks on the mobo. (That's what I get for making such a tight a case)

First bit was to mark out and drill the holes for the fan. The next step is to cut the hole itself. Now, the easiest way to find the center point is to connect the corner holes:

Despite what Indiana Jones might say, some times X does mark the spot. Now, here is the problem: My cheap-ass hole saws can't cut through metal. In fact, on anything more than plastic or soft wood, I call them "hole markers."

But, frankly, if you're half-way decent with a Dremel, you don't need them.

And here we go - hole cut in the outer case...

...and the inner one.

After a quick filing, here it is test fit with the fan and PSU:

Look out - it's start to look vaguely like a computer!

Notice the screw I'd put close to the front of top portion. Now that there will be screws through the case to the fan, I won't actually need that one any more. This unused hole will be filled in later..

Before I knocked off for the weekend, I took some time to reinforce the bottom of the bezel. As you can see here, it was completely open. I had left it this way so that I could access it during the build. Now that things are shaping up, it is time to close it in and make it more sturdy.

Since this was going to be a large chunk of filler, the standard stuff wasn't going to cut it. This looks like a job for our favorite, disgusting-looking stuff.

Letting it harden for a while, I took a sander to it. Obviously, it's going to need some filling in later, but that was it for today.

So, there we go - that was a weekend of a lot of work. Just as a recap, here's some shots of where we are now:

There probably won't be that much more work this week. I'm going to be waiting on some parts, as well as the fact that I don't get much time on weeknights to work...then, there's the matter of a holiday weekend and family stuff. You know how it goes.