Project Goliath - 70+ pounds of H2O goodness!

[RedPhoenix]

Question.

How did you fianlly go about making the shround.

I never thought of making it out of fiberglass.. good idea. I think... I got what you said. You took a cardboard box and put fiberglass over it? Anything else you did or can laborate on that.

[starbuck3733t]

@sysadmin: sometimes you get what you wish for

@redphoenix: shroud was constructed out of fiberglass layed over a wood form. Spiv (a friend in florida) did the paint and bondo work to get it perfect. He's awesome!

Upendaten.

Modification of HP 9200i SCSI CDRW (8x4x32, hey, it works fast enough for my taste, and its SCSI!) for external indicators and remote eject.

The victim.


Parts I had to remove for custom front panel to sit flush: volume control & headphone jack. Desoldering went rather easily, and they're both in my spare parts bin now


Wires leading to headers on the rear of the board tacked on. Stock LEDs removed. Interface to uC chassis control board for LEDs will by via optoisolator (easiest way ) and the remote eject triggered by a 4066 analog switch IC. Big ups to HP for labelling their PCB!


External interface. Ran out of room to loop the wires through! so I brought it up and around the edge of the board. The internal plastic was also modified to trim about a 1/4" out of the way for the wiring to clear the housing. No pic of that... Nobody would ever want a guide for this, who the hell still uses an 8x writer other than me!


The tray before I dyed it black (no after shots. its a black tray, big deal.)


Removed vertical mounting ears on tray prior to dying.


I expect my noritake VFD to get here on friday or so.

Today was my last day at my old workplace! i start my new job on monday. The family and I are going to an amusement park tommorow, but I've got friday dedicated to doing the same mod on my DVD-305S slot load SCSI DVD-ROM.

[RedPhoenix]

Good idea. Ill talk to Spiv. He lives a few hours away so if I need to ship anything it will be fine

[starbuck3733t]

Don't forget to pay the man. I think he's in the process of moving, and i know he can use some extra money. No doubt his paint jobs are some of the best I've seen in the modding community.

[ymboc]

sigh... must be nice to have that kind of money.... have you kept a total?

[starbuck3733t]

Not an exact total, but i estimate anywhere from 2000 to 2500, over 2 years. I was getting parts for this project long before I started a log for it.

[RedPhoenix]

Originally Posted by starbuck3733t

Don't forget to pay the man. I think he's in the process of moving, and i know he can use some extra money. No doubt his paint jobs are some of the best I've seen in the modding community.

No doubt. He has helped me before as well.

Once again. I like your case, and some ideas ( sorry to steal ) i will implement into my next mod.

[starbuck3733t]

Feel free to steal, but credit being given would be appreciated. Shoot me a mail and i'll add you to the links section of my site (currently in development)
--------------------
Got my VFD in on friday, and spent a bit of my day making the cable.

VFD. man,this thing is heavy (it should be as it has two large 3/8" thick pieces of glass sealing the screen)


I put some masking tape over the screen to protect it while i worked on the VFD.


First task at hand was to add a decoupling cap between the gnd and +5v lines on the display


1uF/50V.striped leg to ground, other to +5V.


I salvaged a 2x13 pin connector from an old 486 box's parallel port connecor (Before they put them all on the motherboard). Its keyed, so there is no way for me to mess up the connection and fry my precious vfd (hey, its $160 - better be careful.) Below is the 25pin D shell connecor for the parallel port (new, but it was in my bag-o-bits. they can be had at RadioShack/RS/maplin for very cheap)


Since pins 18-25 on the parallel port are all ground, connect them all together so one only has to run a single line over to the common ground pins (all the even numbered ones up to 24 on the VFD. Cut a length of wire (see the red mark) then strip all the insulation off...

and solder the bit on...


A few moments later, following the LCDStudio/LCDInfo/LiquidMP3] wiring (Ray you rock, but i've got the bar graph driver bug.. ) The beauty of having 5000 ft of extra cat3

(yes, I did connect the ground and trim the excess wires after this shot).
(No pics of the other end - oops!)

Nothing impressive, as im having driver bug issues with the display. The noritake blinkenlights player looks really cool. I'll have to shoot some video of that when i get home (at the GFs for the weekend at the moment)

[RedPhoenix]

I like it. Hows the case going?

[Sysadmin]

Yeah mate! That kicks ass!

I'd love to see that when the VFD's ready.

/me sways to and fro muttering: "Soon, really soon.... yes everythings ok when there is more... yes"

SYS

[starbuck3733t]

Things going very slowly on the project. Im getting married and buying a house - but I will not forget about this, its my big fun!

-- on a nother note --

Accidental Update:

Shut the fans down to blow the case out with some canned air for cleaning (I smoke too damn much, that's what... dust... ick.) I'll be glad when Im married and can't smoke in the house - machines will stay cleaner..

I cleaned it out, all was good. Decided to go take a shower before nip/tuck came on. Looked at houses. Looked for ministers for the wedding online...

All of a sudden the box starts making a hell of a lot of noise, the fans kick up to 100% (the bios QFAN warning trip on the CPU was set to 55*C). I look and realize what I had done. I had never turned speedfans automatic fan control back on after I had turned the fans down to 0% each.

Anyway The FANS WERE OFF FOR AN HOUR!!!

I immediatly check temps:
CPU: 55*C
Water: 37*C (HOLY SHIT!!)

Turned automatic control back on. temps slowly down. About 5 minutes later:
CPU: 46*C (this in reality means 34, damn IC7 is off by 12*C!!)
Water: 28*C
1 hour at passive and this system was solid, given, it was only web surfing, but still that's damn good. 28*C to 25*C is nominal water temp on this rig. Fans run at near silent until the water temp hits 30, then throttle up accordingly.

And now as I finish this, temps are back down to normal. 42, 27*C on CPU, water.

Nuts. Crazy. AWESOME!

[starbuck3733t]

Video Preview of the Chassis Control Board

Video Preview: 14MB, DIVX Video. ~5 minutes.
I narrate for about functions of the board and some other stuff. Check it out, its worth it.


The whole setup - messy, I know. Keep in mind this is ONLY a prototype setup; all of what you see and more will be combined onto one board.


the 16F872 powered brain, on prototype board from www.SparkFun.com


the input board prototype, as outlined here

[PaulDriver]

Amazing.

So, eh, where was this case sourced from anyway?

[starbuck3733t]

www.centrix-intl.com - server parts or something like - SC5000/hudson by intel.

[Evarus]

respect thats a amazing case! geez well done! *big thumbs up!*

[starbuck3733t]

Thanks a lot man!
---
Well, turkey day (at 1:50AM my time) update. I'll be hitting black friday like a mad man and goliath will get a few presents... a pair (or possibly 3) of 19" LCDs. Word.

So here's the update... I was at grandma's house earlier today and its been a long day that was full of food, and made me very tired. I drake lots of caffiene on the way home, leading to sleep deprived goofyness: my most creative mood! I capitalized on this by doing up the window design for goliath, something inspired by the Nip/Tuck Opening credits. More on the credits (and the entire sequence) available here.

Anyway, the simulation imho doesn't do justice on the future Carbon Blue Metallic paint job... I'm not sure how to model that in photoshop. Anyway, here's the concept:

[hitek420]

So... how is it coming along?

Did you end up getting those LCDs?

[starbuck3733t]

its going ok. I did get the LCDs, but I only got a single 19" and a single 15". I ended up guilt-tripping myself out of the $380 19" though, as I wasn't happy with its performance (25ms response) and it only had an analog input. So I sold it to my boss for more than it was worth!

The system hasn't changed much, other than me adding a gigabit fiber card to it which is run direct crossover to my media center. Moving those 4GB files is a breeze now!

[starbuck3733t]

oh, and here's the setup while I had it...


Now we're back to a 19" tube and that 15" LCD.

[hitek420]

Originally Posted by starbuck3733t

oh, and here's the setup while I had it...


Now we're back to a 19" tube and that 15" LCD.

mmmm gigabit filetransfers...

I'm thinking of getting a LCD sometime in the next few months.
It HAS to have DVI and good specs for gaming.

I also had a room like that, a nice big lcd/plasma display would be nice for that angled wall.

[starbuck3733t]

80% done on the front ports: 2 usb, 2 firewire (1 mini, 1 normal) and 2 headphone jacks (1 front port, 1 rear port) (not installed yet).

The process:
- take slot cover template that the ports came out of and mark their outlines on the bay cover (which screws in, sweet)
- mark holes for headphone jacks
- make sure everything is centered nicely
- cut with a dremel
- take existing ports
- cut in half
- solder in an additional 12" of wire
- seal up solder
- sleeve it.


Whats left:
- Have bracket powdercoated, will be done when i have enough stuff to be taken to Nittany Powdercoating. small run <> cost effective.
- buy headphone jacks
- install and wire up headphone jacks

Bracket with wires fed in the back. Will still need to be painted.


Wires coming out the back mobo side as I'm feeding them.


Plug them into my mobo (with fiber gigabit card beneath!)

.. and i'm not taking that card out to photograph the firewire connectors!


Installed and ready to rock. (works great, all solder joints solid and valid)

[Brians256]

Nice case. I just re-read the thread and enjoyed it all. Especially when you talk about about more than what went right; you talked about what went wrong. The best lesson is one that someone else paid for. Thanks for paying for it.

[starbuck3733t]

Thanks Brian. I'll have to keep in mind that some people do like reading and seeing my mistakes.

I'm sure there will be more.

What really scares me is that I'm coming up on probably the 2 year mark for this project. The project may be slated to get a new mobo and CPU and gfx card by the time its finished. I've been eyeing up A64-FX setups for a while, as well as an asus v9999 gamer edition. I think i'd rather spend that $1000 on finishing the case, the custom electronics, and the paint. Wise eh?

[starbuck3733t]

I couldn't find software to make my VFD Display do what I wanted it to do.... so I wrote my own in .NET utilizing inpout32.dll and noritake.c by Henry Skipari of LCDInfo fame. Henry's code was indespensible when coming up with a library (VFDFunctions.dll) to talk to the LCD. I haven't tried any of the fancy scrolling stuff yet (as I haven't had the time) but the set brightness functions work, as do the set column and set row commands. With those working, I wrote something to put a test bitmap on the screen in .NET as well (VFD FrontEnd Tester), and here is a shot of it at about 2am last night (I was up late, what fun this is!) of it displaying the test bitmap.



Woot! Now I can make it do all sorts of crazy crap. Whatever I WANT in fact. Plans are to at least do graphing (cpu, temps, net usage, fan speeds, clock speeds (<3 speedfan)) and monitoring everything speedfan gives me (I've got a .NET module that interops with speedfan too!)

[starbuck3733t]

For those interested, my home made waterblock. Click for linky.



Not bad for my first try at a block, and not bad considering it was done all with a slide vise and drill press.