HAL 9000

Ok, I've been mucking about this forum and decided I need to consolidate my information and questions,
My vision is to recreate HAL 9000 as my living room media center PC.
The HAL9000 plate will be a flap and cover the CD drive at the top.
The red light/eye will not be a steady light but will become brighter when the computer is in use.
The grill at the bottom will be an air intake.
There will be no visible buttons on the front of the computer case, I want it to look like HAL.
The windows boot screen will be modded to look like HAL, and the Bios if i can figure out how.

Internals
ASUS A8V-E SE
Athlon 4200+
2 Gig generic RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600
350 Gig HDD
500 Gig WD MyBook
Hauppage WinTV Tuner

ViaAqua 2300
Swiftech Apogee CPU and GRaphis BLock
A 2 120mm Radiator
A single 120mm Radiator

Still need:
Mini Res
piping
HALification

My case currently (radiators in picture too)



Case is
16" tall
16.5" long
7.75" wide

I'm going to dremel the bottom of the case and put the radiator there.
the back of the case with the outdated com ports will be removed for the smaller radiator, the "bubble" for hal will be where the fan intake on the front of the case is. The grill will be added at the bottom and the case will be raised several inches.

From other threads I have determined that the red light will be attached to the CPU fan control; I should be able to enable an automatic fan controller which will raise and lower the voltage, thus making the bulb waver.
I haven't settled on a bulb because I need one with a low voltage but that will be sufficiently bright and is incandescent, I haven't found a LED that can dim. The plastic bubble will be either acrylic or lexan.
I found what I want at http://www.cleardomes.com/smalldomes.htm
but i really don't want to drop 30$ on the dome.(the 6" diameter)
I also need some chrome moulding like this
http://www.xoxide.com/chromemolding.html
but I am having trouble finding it.
I don't know what I'm going to do for the back of HAL's "eye" but i'm thinking of just cutting it ouf of a block of wood and painting it.

I'm also having problems with the case front.
I don't know what I should make it out of, I could easily cut some wood to fit but that would be annoying, however the most adaptable.
Sheet metal is workable but I would have to really know where I was going first.
The front will probably be a vinyl and window tint mix, making it dark but allowing IR light to shine through and a 5.35 bay LCD if I get one.
this was a thread here
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=528275
The side panels and top will be painted a matte finish in a color similar to the front.

1. does anyone have a good way to use this

as a power switch or reset switch?
2. I need a flat switch like that for my AC water pump (ViaAqua 2300), does anyone know where one is?
3. What material should I make the case front from, or is there one available that is easily modded?
4. Where I could find a low voltage incandecent bulb that can be powered from a fan connection?

Also help on properly displaying images would be appreciated, I don't know what I did wrong.

to show a image on the forums add tags (url)(/url) around the url of the image but replace the () with []

actually freaker they should be img tags not url tags, i know what ya meant though

I had that, but then i realized that there were some numbers after the link *.jpg?=564533
I cut those and viola.
Now, any advice on my mod?

instead of going so complex w/ the "eye" use you HD activity light that'll give random activity

oh, no.
I really want the light to follow processing power, not HD activity. Either I'm going to try and hack some PSU wires or I'll connect to the CPU fan connectors, which should vary the voltage (and brightness) with change in usage.
I bought a 2 line LCD off e-bay, and hope to see it in soon; i'm going to mod it to fit the parrallel port, put in fron of the 2nd 5.25 bay.

thinkgeek.com used to have HAL thumb drives. that'd be a nice little addition. they don't seem to have them anymore though.

Yay, got my lcd in, but I need to mod a printer cable to use on it.

24 Characters x 2 lines.
5x8 dots with Cursor.
Built-in HD44780 or equivalent Contrller.
16-Pin Signals.
Built-in Backlight.
+5v operating Power .
Compatible with 16x2 LCD display Module.
Dimension: 120mm x 36mm x 13mm