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Newbie case mod questions

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mallik

New Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Location
Toronto, Ont.
Hello all,
This is my first post, so please bear with me.
After seeing all the amazing case mods you people have done, I have decided to dive into the world of case modding.
I have a test case that I'm gonna try stuff on before I do it for real.

My first question, and this is probably a really stupid question, how do you take apart the case? There's these things that look like screws, but aren't exactly screws, that seem to be holding everything together. How do I take them out?

I also want to clean up the inside of my case and make it look nice, but I need some ideas on what to do. The cables are all SCSI, except for the floppy cable. There's a 3 device 68-pin cable that REALLY leaves a lot to be desired, a 50-pin cable, and the floppy cable. Now I was going to round them, but apparently, it is not good to round SCSI cable because of the high data transfer speeds or something like that. Any ideas on this? And if it is OK to round them, how should I go about doing this? I looked at some how-to guides, but they all say to cut the cable and then wrap electrical tape around it. That's all well and good, but I wanted to make it look really professional, like maybe with cable sleeving or that glowing stuff or something like that. Any ideas and/or guides on this? If it's not good to round SCSI cables, then what could I do with the cables to make them look nice. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Sorry for the long post.
 
Welcome To the forums!

Those "things" that are like screws but not, are probably rivits. You can drill them out, but you will have to replace them with more rivits, or screws.

I would suggest buying round SCSI cables, instead of doing it yourself. www.svcompucycle.com seems to be the cheapest. I woudln't use electrecal tape on any wires. Instead I would suggest going to a car parts store and getting some wire tubing. (can't remember the exact name of it). It's like a flexible plasic tube with a slit in the back. I did this in my case and now you can't see any wires and it looks very neat :D .
 
thanks funkdamonkman,
So these rivits, you just drill from the inside and pop them out? It seems kinda hard to get in the case with a drill like that, but I guess I'll have to try it.
About the SCSI cables, you used this wire tubing on it? Do you have any pics? Is it working OK, cuz I read somewhere that it's not good to round SCSI cables. I was hoping that someone could confirm or deny this
 
to take out the rivets, simply take your drill and find a drill bit that will fit nicely into the hole of the rivet, then just drill straight through that hole, which will make the head easy to pull off. then either rivet yoru case back together when you're done or replace them with nuts and bolts.
 
Thanks Penguin and hydrata, I understand now.
Thanks for the link funkdamonkman. Those are nice lookin' cables. Is there any way I could make my cables to look like that? I figure it might be fun to give it a try :)
 
eh... you could try. You just slit the wires into groups of 5 or so, and wrap them up in something.

Personally I would just buy the cables, because if you mess up your current cables, you will have to buy more, and you won't have any backups... but then again GO FOR IT!
 
hehe after I read about how to round cables, I tried it on an 80 wire and a 40 wire IDE cable. I screwed up the 80 wire one because after I cut them all, I stacked them up and taped them like that, now it doesn't really bend easily hehe. I suppose I could untape it, but I'm lazy. When I did the 40 wire one, I twisted it up lightly, and taped it like that, alot more movement.

I used blue electrical tape on them and they don't look half as good as the bought ones. I am going to buy some from NCIX. Only $10Canadian each (at least for IDE thats what they are).
 
I rounded my 50pin cables and it turned out pretty well. Its not the best looking thing but since they are black they dont stand out much in my case. Wasnt very hard to do eather and it was free which is always good. They where my backup cables so I wasnt to afraid of messing them up.
 
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