Switchboard

[airman]

man...i haven't been keeping track of this thread but that thing sure is looking sharp. nice job so far

 

by the way, a lot of your previous pictures are broken.

[EM3Bilko]

man...i haven't been keeping track of this thread but that thing sure is looking sharp. nice job so far

 

by the way, a lot of your previous pictures are broken.

Thanks for your comment and the photos are broken because the site that was hosting them folded and I'm in the process of changing them over to another at this time. I have 5 sites that I have to change over. It's been a real bummer when I was informed about them taking a dive. I'll have them back as soon as I can. Thanks for telling me about it. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

I have a short update for you today. As you could see from the last update the area for the LCD character screen was being worked on. Today's update is to show you that the area is finished and the LCD screen fits quite nicely. So I have a couple of photos to show you how it looks from both the left and right side of Switchboard. I don't have the LCD screen in place in these photos but I do have my mock-up piece in place. So here are the couple of photos that I said I had.

Now with that done I stood back to take a objective look at the whole thing and I felt that it was missing something. I called the wife to take a look and she said the same thing. So we're not happy with the way it's looking. So I thought about it and I came up with an idea and decided on giving it a try. So I cut my material and mounted it and again called the wife to come look. She thought that my idea was what it needed. I even had my neighbor come over and look and they thought the same thing. So I took a photo of my idea while it was in place but it will come off and a new improved version will go on. All of my ideas will be behind the plexy panel that I have talked about in the past. So here is the last photo that I took with my idea in place.

So there you have it, all of the work that I have done this morning. All ideas and comments are welcomed and remember Happy Modding to ya.

[gotdamojo06]

wow, this is really coming together really good, cant wait to see it completed

[EM3Bilko]

wow, this is really coming together really good, cant wait to see it completed

Thanks gotdamojo06, glad that you are watching my project. I'll be glad to see it completed also. lol I've been working on this project now since Feb. 07 and at this time I can't put a time on when it will be finished. I'll be trying to get it finished as soon as I can. It's my main pc for everyday use. At the moment I'm using my gaming machine to fill in for Switchboard. Again thanks for your posting and Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

There won't be any work done on Switchboard today. I'm having a myleogram done today and I was told that I had to have a driver to get me home and once home I had to stay in bed for 24 hours. So any work on Switchboard is shot. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

Here is a update that I did last night and so it's just one photo of my Fill-port. I've been polishing and I still have more to go but just thought I would show you.

So this is it for today because it's time for me to go. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

Today's update is now taking place. I got a late start today because it all started yesterday after I had my Myleogram. I got home from the test at 3:30pm and my 24 hr bed rest started when I got into the house and my instruction was to stay quiet and still for 24 hrs and only get up for bathroom use only. Today I had another Dr's appointment at 2:30pm, so my 24hr thing got cut short by 2 hrs cause I had to leave at 1:30 to make it on time. I got home at 5:30 today and my daylight is getting shorter as each day goes by. Today's appointment was for a nerve conduction study and it involved pins and electrical shocks for an hour and a half. My 24hr of being quiet and still was over. Then I got to go home. I must say, today was a lot easier on me that yesterday was, yesterday I had to have help getting me into the van and my wife got me into the house and I was ready to go lay down, so I got into the lounger, laid it back and turned on the the TV. Had to keep my head higher than any other part of my body. The die that they used in my spine, if it gets into the brain area it can cause severe headaches and if you get to much of the die into the brain area it can kill you. So you stoop instead of bending over if you have to pick up something that you dropped. So today I got to work on getting my Fill-port installed. The instructions says to drill and 1" hole for the Fill-port to drop into and screw the connector onto the fill-port. I had a 1/2"

on the fill-port and 1/2" of board for the fill-port to drop into. So I had to make a piece so the port could be attached to it. So I cut out a design that would look good with Switchboard out of a piece of metal that came from an old floppy disc drive housing. It was thin enough for the connection from the port to attach itself and strong enough to hold to the wooden top of Switchboard. I polished the metal and drilled the 1" hole into the center of the metal and two screw holes into the ends of the plate that I made. I wanted to keep the top of Switchboard looking as empty as possible and I didn't want everything crowded together, so I put the port into the center of the empty area I had. It required a 1 3/8" hole for the port to slip down into. Here are some photos of it installed.

That last photos shows how much room I have to attach the reservoir to the hose from the fill-port. I have to make a bracket to hold the reservoir in place and I don't have enough daylight to make the brackets today. So now what do I do with the remaining daylight that I have. Then it dawned on me while looking into the back of Switchboard. I know where the fuse panel is going to be finally. The cover that I made to go over the phone workings. It's the size of what I was wanting to use, not to big, not to small. I found that the space between the door and the cover for the phone works, was 7/8", so it was too small for my valve from the reservoir. So I measure the size of the fuses that I got from brightshinginglights and marked out the location for the holes for the fuses to go into. I now had the start of my fuse panel for Switchboard. Here are a few photos of the fuse panel area.

So the daylight ran out and so that is the end of today's update. Tomorrow is another day and I will start again on a update. So until then all ideas and comments are welcomed and Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

Here you are, another update. The first thing that I did yesterday was to build a reservoir bracket so that it wouldn't just hang from the Fill-port tubing. Once I got the bracket made I painted it and then when dried, I installed the bracket along with the reservoir. Here are a few photos of that.

Then as you know, I had to attach the Fill-port to the reservoir.

From the reservoir the tubing goes to the pump, now the pump is not installed, so that means that I had to install the pump. I folded a piece of foam rubber to make a soft bed for the pump to sit on and to help relieve some vibrations from the pump when it's in operation. Here is a photo of the pump installed.

Now the tubing is routed from the pump to the CPU water block but the block is not ready to be installed. It needs a good lap job done to it. When I purchased it I knew that it was a used block and have purchased parts for it so that it might fit on a socket 939 but at this time it will be on a socket A. It still needs the lap job and I will get to that part this week-end. Here is a photo to show you what I mean about it needing the job done.

Now that I can't go any farther with the water cooling setup, I'll show you what I have done for the fuse panel now. Most fuse panels have a cover panel over the front of the panel. How ever, to have a front panel over the fuse panel you need away to attach the cover, so I made one out of a old frame from a Commodore floppy disc drive. You will have to look hard to see the cover attachment but it's there.

So there you have it. I'll be working on the front panel for the fuse box today and other odds and ends. So until the next update all ideas and comments are welcomed. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

I have some good news and some bummer news. I'll start with the bummer news first. I lapped the water block for the cpu and got it where I could see myself in it and then took photos of it. Some how or another I lost those photos, so I can't show you how it looked. After I took the photos of the block I put on some Arctic Silver 5 and installed the cpu water block. Now the good news. After installing the water block I put in some distilled water and started it up. The system has been running water now for 24 hrs inside Switchboard. So after having the cooling system running without any leaks then I installed the rest of the equipment into SB, which are the HDD and the fan for cooling the HDD area, fan controller, DVD burner, LCD screen and the temp probe for the HDD area. With all that installed it's time for a boot up of the system but that will have to wait until I get a monitor in the garage which I will do after I finish this update. Here are some photos of the setup in SB.

That's all I have of photos at the moment but that doesn't mean that this is the end of it all. I still have the fuse panel to finish and to see if I can get some better wire management than what is there. The power strip has a extra long cord on it which needs to be shortened and I need to get the power cable for the power supply made up also because what I have at the moment is to long. So until next time remember that all ideas and comments are welcomed. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

Today the first thing that I worked on was the LCD screen. I found out that the double face tape that I was using didn't do the job that was needed and so I worked on mounting the screen to the driver-bay cover. When I installed the first LCD screen to Cash Box I found that the stand-offs held the screen exactly the way I was wanting it. So that was the first thing that I tried and it too will do what I'm wanting. The first thing was to tap the holes that are located at the corners of the pcb for the stand-offs. While I had the LCD without stand-offs mounted I marked the backside of the drive-bay cover for the holes that are located at each corner of the LCD. Once the holes are marked then it's time to drill the holes for the mounting screws. Once I had the holes drilled I then screwed the stand-offs to the pcb and then placed the LCD screen to the back of the drive-bay cover over the holes. Once I had all of the holes lined up, I could screw the mounting screws thru the holes into the stand-offs. Here are some photos of the LCD screen hook-up.

The next thing that needed work, was the 120mm AC fan at the top. The cable on that was to long and so I had to cut it quite a bit shorter than it was. I needed only a foot and half and I had 10' on the fan. So that also meant that I would need a plug for it and I had to go to the store to get a plug. I went yesterday and bought several things for todays work session. So I cut the wire to length and attached the plug. Here are a couple of photos for ya.

The next thing that I did was to dye the HDD area temperature screen and put it into the front top panel. Here are some photos of that.

So there you have it. I'm stopping for a while so that I can see the race. So until then, all ideas and comments are welcomed. Happy Modding to ya.

[EM3Bilko]

Today turned out to be a bummer of a day. I came down with a leak on my wc system. I contacted the pump company and found out where to get the barb setup which will take care of my leak, hopefully anyways. I made the purchase but haven't been able to test it out due to what I did when I found out about my leak. During the course of putting my system together, that I had been posting on the past couple of days, I did things that if I had the chance to do over again I would do something else instead. So when I found I had a leak and I found out that I needed to pull everything so that I could dry things out properly. So that meant that those things that I wanted to change was now in the "to do list". So the first set of photos is going to show you my number one thing to do.

So there you have it. I painted the interior white. I made a cover for the fuse panel and it too was painted white. Here it is.

Also while I was at it, I removed everything from the motherboard tray and painted it white. Here it is.

So after giving the paint time to dry, it was then time to reinstall everything and some extras this time around. I had planned on using the onboard sound but after I had installed the water cooling setup I thought about putting the sound card in the next time I had the system out for what ever reason. So when the setup sprung the leak was when I decided to put the SoundBlaster Live card. So here are the last two shots with everything in it that I wanted, this time. So here are the photos.

So there you have it all now. So it was a bummer in away but it did turn out for the better in the long run. There are some pieces that are still drying and most likely they will be dry for tomorrow. The pieces that are drying are the trim pieces and the hold down pieces. They are painted for trim work and they are painted Candy Apple Red and tomorrow we'll see how they look with the Candy Apple or maybe the GM's Metallic Red. I'll post the Candied and then I'll wait long enough to get some posting on peoples opinion. Then if I get enough don't paint posting I won't paint but if I think that the Metallic Red is going to win out then I'll paint the GM Metallic Red. So remember all ideas and comments are welcomed. Happy Modding to ya.