Once the magic smoke comes out, things don't work any more.
John Kasunich
jmkasunich@fastmail.fm
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Fri, 14 Dec 2007
Almost a year ago, I mounted the motherboard and other components of the PC that I want to use for the conversion. This post shows what that looked like. At the time I was reasonably satisfied with it, but there are a couple issues. First, the power supply is still separate, and second, the base panel isn't wide enough to mount a standard ATX motherboard. The board I'm using is one inch narrower than normal, and if I ever had to replace it, I'd have a hard time finding a new one the same size.
On Sunday I was getting close to mounting the PC in the box, but I decided that I didn't want to use that arrangement. I had an old full-tower Gateway system sitting around, and I sacrificed it's case to make a new one for the Shoptask. The original tower was 19.5 x 17.5 x 8.5 inches, which is way too big. I attacked it viciously with bandsaw, jigsaw, drill press, and files. When I was done, it measured 14.0 x 11.0 x 8.5 inches. Below is the new case, rising out of the pile of scrap that is all that is left of the old one.
By the end of the day Sunday, I had the computer in the new case on my benchtop. The power supply and disk drive are mounted above the motherboard, instead of beside or in front of it. That greatly reduces the footprint of the system. It will accept any standard ATX motherboard. There is no optical drive - the only time I ever need one is when I'm installing Linux, everything else is done over the network. (After using Linux for several years, I can't imagine having a computer that isn't networked.)
It took me a couple more evenings to actually mount the new case in the electronics box and wire it up, but it is in there now. I also added a connector so that the 12V from the PC power supply runs the main electronics box cooling blower. (More about the blower here.) The picture below looks a little odd. Thats because I wasn't able to get a decent camera angle thanks to the shelves right behind the machine. GIMP was able to correct the perspective for vertical objects, but horizontal things like the top surface of the PC appear deeper than they really are.
And it actually works!
The next step is to wire the stepper motors and drives. I hope to do that this weekend. With a little luck, the machine will be moving soon.
(posted: 14 Dec 2007 23:27) (permalink)