Project FlameCube

Oni said:

Do you have any pics of your progress so far? I would, as always, be very interested in seeing them

Click to expand...

I haven't received the Case, RAM, or motherboard yet so any pics will be forthcoming as soon as those arrive.

I've had some foibles in the past week.

1. I spent a good 2 days routing cables a dozen or so times and generally fiddling with any kind of configuration I could think of. Only to find out that I need to order another cable for the laptop hard drive in order for it to fit where it needs to.

2. I tried a seemingly more promising location for the hard drive, but after mountin it there and turning the machine on it's drive name showed up as gobble-dee-goop on boot. Appearantly the CPU fan leaks a weak magnetic field bubble in one direction. The drive however survived, but had to be completely reformatted and remounted in it's standard location.

3. Silent cooling won't cut it in spaces this cramped. But it's no big deal since I'll be using headphones now anyways. They'll save me alot of deskspace and allow me to listen to music or play games without disturbing anyone in the house.

4. On New Years Eve I lost a baggie of essential (and tiny) screws. So I got frustrated and took a break to clean up my room. That "break" ended up being 8 hours of tidying. Now my room is completely rearranged and I know where everything is. Including the greater portion of the floor which can actually be seen.

As is, everything else is wired up properly and I had to fix the front audio connections. My desk is re setup and my laptop is setup as an MP3/file server. Attached to my wireless headphones I can now listen to my mp3s anywhere in the house no matter what part of the project I'm working on.

Hopefully I have some more pics next week. I have plans laid out for the following additions to the case. All items are tenatively on my to-do list but won't be accomplished in any specific order or any specific date. So this Project Journal could last a month or two.
- Replace stock power LED with red
- Install EL cables and wire switches for them
- Case slide-lid with window (will need to be machined to replace stock lid)
- clear\aluminum keyboard to match desk
- LCD lid assembly
- New case faceplate with hologram insert

Thankfully classes don't start until the 12th so I have 10 more days to get some of these projects done. Any complicated fabrication will be done when I can travel down to have my friend help me machine them.

All of that aside I am VERY happy with my new pint-sized p4 hardware. In it's current configuration and using the onboard graphics, this motherboard can play Unreal Tournament in 1024 x 768 @ 40fps.

w00t! let's see picutres of the room-mod!
Hope to see what's coming up...should be good. Great ideas, and sorry about the magnetic bubble...that's unforunate.

Commell LV670LVDS 6.7" square Intel 845G motherboard and drives

Case in pieces

And new project. A keyless keyboard that will be less than a quarter of an inch tall and a key-travel of .02 inches.
More on that later

And the orderly mess

Dude, do you have a hammock bed? That would be freaking pimp... and that keyboard sounds neato too... Can't wait.

yup, its a hammock bed,

lol....I just made a keyboard like that. It only worked for a little while, because I screwed with the plugs, but it was awesome...and SILENT! =)

CrashOveride said:

Dude, do you have a hammock bed? That would be freaking pimp... and that keyboard sounds neato too... Can't wait.

Click to expand...

Yes, yes it is. I sleep in it every night. I used to sleep in a waterbed, but I couldn't have one of those in the third floor of my house. A large lockable tarp-hammock is the next best thing.

Mico said:

lol....I just made a keyboard like that. It only worked for a little while, because I screwed with the plugs, but it was awesome...and SILENT! =)

Click to expand...

I just love the near-zero key travel. I'll be making a vice tray to hold the circuitry and carbon contact sheets in place. The tray will probably be made out of polycarbonate then sprayed with clear neon blue. To re-label the keys I'll develop my own key design and then have it printed onto an 11x17 acetate transparency.

Should be pretty fun. I'd like to make t out of flourescent acrylic, but I just hate working with that material so much.

Monday seems to be my night for power tools so I managed to get some work done. The window is now smoothly cut and ready for mounting of the polycarbonate sheet.

And here's the keyboard I plan to use with this machine. A Fellowes Stowaway USB keyboard. It's pricy due to the independant scissor-arm suspension underneath each key and the emaculately made aluminum shell.

And my case even matches my mp3 player.


More to come soon.

Captain Slug

*Brining shoehorning to a whole new level!*


Great project!

I just made some calculations. you can fit 12 yes 12 of those boxes in my big ulgy case. And each one of those boxes can play UT better than my rig. sigh.

jokes aside, i didn't even know tiny boards like that existed.

emilio

looks great! I really hope I can someday be case gods and goddesses!

Man.. that is freaking awsome... are you still gonna do that custome keyboard too though?

I'll get to the keyboard eventually. Probably sometime before I make the LCD lid.

The 44-pin hard-drive cable came today. I can finally fit this case together for the last time. The cable managment proved to be "fun" and I decided to eliminate the I/O cover to allow the CPU fan to exhaust more easily. I may make a replacement out of aluminum grill mesh.

And I'm sufficiently far enough along on the project to clean up the remaining mess. Further developments can be done elsewhere. So now my desk is clean.

I'm up late again mounting the clear mylar dust-cover for the DVD-ROM window. There's only 1/32th of an inch of space so screw mounting and moulding are impractical. It will need to be mounted with aluminum tape.

Once the EL cable shows up I'll have some more fun pics.
If you look closely at the cramped pic up above you can notice the 60mm intake fan on the left side of the case. It blows air into the case and over the hard-drive cable which scoops the air toward the heatsink fan. It's very effective and nowhere near as annoying as the original 40mm intake. The heatsink is kept below body temperature at all times from what I can tell.

That case is gonna be t3h 0wnz0r.
I bet if some of us had the time and money, we'd be seeing a lot more captain slugs about.

Truly amazing work.

Perhaps to combat heat, you could try using a squirrel cage blower mounted on the rear? They make them as small as approx. 1-1/2" height and approx 3-4-1/2" wide, just right for a case that size.

Took my matted clockwork hologram apart to find that it actually a film decal. Instead of mounting it on the front of the case I trimmed the corners to match the round sides of the cutout, and adhered it to the mylar window.

Now I'm considering a blue/green color scheme. Especially since the EL cable I just got is not as bright as I though it would be. It doesn't even register on my camera.

As-is there's no more room for fans. I have just enough space to fit the PCI Geforce FX5200 that I'm interested in eventually buying.

Sweet.

how long have you been working on this?

ZGOZZ said:

how long have you been working on this?

Click to expand...

2 weeks


Well, I was annoyed with the dim light that the EL cable emits, but I decided that's still the colour I want. So instead I'll be using it to light up my keyless keyboard project. And my case will be lit with a very large number of RED leds. Thanks the Chiwing LED store on eBay I can order 50 or so ultrabright RED LEDs for $11 shipped.
They should be alot easier to fit in the case than a cold cathode.

The materials needed for the keyless keyboard are in the mail, I'll be ordering the LCD for the video lid soon, and at the moment I'm using my jigsaw to make a mesh I/O cover for the back of the machine.
More progress and pics soon.