I've had a little more progress on the build.
I finally picked up a system to use in this cab. I could have sworn I posted about it, but I don't see it on the thread, so maybe I didn't
Anyway, I went with an AMD dual core athlon x64 5050e with an asus motherboard with built in nvidia 8300 video. So far, it seems completely adequate for what I'll be doing. And it's small, which was a necessity.
First, I grabbed a PDF of an micro ATX mobo, printed it life size for a template and cut up some hardboard to use for the case.
A good bit of sawing/drilling/nailing/gluing later and I ended up with this bare box.
Even though the case will be hung underneath, there's no way I was gonna leave it looking like this. I still had some stained wood trim from the CP build and some taffeta/batting from the upholstery I've done, so out it came. Throw in a painted grill from one of the speakers I ripped apart, and some left over mother of pearl studs, brass balls, acorn nuts, and gold rope trim and I ended up with this.
It's not full on steampunk, but I think it works with the cab quit nicely.
so from the top it looks like this with everything mounted up.
I mentioned that I picked up a bunch of those LED flicker lamps, so a couple HAD to go in here. I played with placement and decided the best look was mounted over the fan so you get a weird flicker/strobe effect on the fan (plus the bulbs are angled such that they cast a cool orangy pattern on the floor in the dark.
and turned on with lights going (it's a rough pic because I had to leave the shutter open so long...
I mounted it up, powered up and discovered that, for all the silencing work I'd done, I hadn't paid attention to the harddrive. Let me tell you, a harddrive screwed to a metal bracket screwed to a wood case screwed to the bottom of a buffet sized sheet of 5/8 inch walnut gets amplified about 100 times. It sounded like a Rush concert going on during boot up.
Needless to say, I had to pull it down, and remount the hd.
I used some squishy silicone HD isolators that came with an Antec case I bought a while back. Excellent case, BTW.
With those in place, all is back and quiet.
Final note, I need a nice way to hang this box UNDERNEATH the buffet, yet still let me have fairly ready access to it, for maintence etc.
I didn't want it hinged, cause working on it from underneath would be a pain. and I couldn't find any good hooks/clasps/etc that would fit in the tight space I had.
So I settled on magnets! Yep that's right, this case is hanging from beneath the buffet by 8 rare earth magnets (rated at 8lbs each) plus a lagbolt mounted behind them to intensify and direct the magnetic field. You can see them in the pic of the case, the little silver discs. I drilled countersink holes in the buffet bottom, then JBWelded all the magnets in place.
It takes a pretty good yank to get it apart but it works fantastically.
One thing that I discovered when setting this up.
JB Weld is MAGNETIC. You glob that stuff onto a magnet and it literally gets pulled all the way +around+ the magnet like something out of an XMEN movie! Surprised the hell out of me when I went to mount the first magnet.
Next step, getting that screen mounted.