The Quetzalcoatl CaseMod, Part 3

Part 3: Hinged side panels
For the Quetzalcoatl mod, I wanted sloped panels to create a pyramid shape under the head of the feathered serpent cap. To keep the weight down, I used sheets of PVC plastic for the extended side panels, but had to come up with a way to angle the sides uniformly, and to have enough strength to hold up to handling. If I made them stationary, it might make it difficult to access the inside for wiring, lighting, or other purposes. I came up with the idea to hinge the panels, using a strip of continuous piano hinge along the bottom.



A section of piano hinge is cut to the length of the panel, centering the holes as best possible. Angle brackets are riveted to the hinge first. This sets the spacing of the brackets along the panel. Next, mark the holes of where the brackets line up on the panel, and drill holes for rivets. Anchor to the bracket and hinge assembly to the panel with more rivets. (I used pop rivets, and then flattened them with a hammer and anvil to make them extra tight and a lower profile.)

With the hinges anchored to the sides and front, panels of PVC plastic were then riveted to the sections of piano hinge. The hinge creates an adjustable angle between the base and the sides of the case and allows a way to gain access into the cavity as needed. Two sheet metal screws anchor the top of the plastic sheet to the side panels of the case.



To allow air flow into the front and sides of the case, I used some pierced sheet metal and pop-riveted it to the brackets and any unused hinge holes along the bottom edges. The pierced sheet is attached in sections so either of the case side panels can be removed for interior access; only the front section is riveted to the case itself.



Where the angled PVC side panels are attached to the case's panels and can be removed, screws hold the PVC securely to the metal side panel. The front panel is also hinged, but is not removable. Two magnets are hot-glued to the inside of the PVC to keep this panel in place when closed.



The top of the case has a new radiator fan hole that will need to be able to exhaust the heat somehow. This means an open chamber must be made underneath the head of the feathered serpent. I used pop-rivets to anchor a thin PVC plastic sheet in a curved shell, leaving the back open to vent hot air from the top fan. Over this, I formed a piece of steel hardware cloth, folding the edges under.

Two pieces of adhesive-backed hook-and-loop Velcro hold the hardware cloth to the plastic shell. The self-stick Velcro can be held temporarily in place against the screen, but will pull off the first time the screen is removed. To secure the Velcro more permanently, I added a layer of hot glue right through the mesh onto to the sticky side of the tape.

Water cooling



With the basic foundation complete, all of the components are installed in the case, including the CPU and hard drive cooling blocks, and the two radiators and pump are attached to the case.



Hoses were cut to move water from the radiator to the CPU block, from the block to the pump, to the hard drive cooler, and then into the radiators again. While almost any order could have been used, this flow should move the cooled water from the radiator across the CPU first, before being pushed on to the hard drives and back into the radiators. A fill-port reservoir was attached outside on the rear of the case, and the hose connected with a "Y" splitter just before the pump's intake.

I connected a drain hose to the lower radiator hose using another "Y" adapter and an aquarium hose valve to easily drain the system if needed. After adding some water and coolant to the reservoir, I used an external power supply to run the pump to check for leaks and to remove as much air from the system as possible.

Next time: Packing foam

The Borg Cube Case Mod, Part 6

This is the continuing saga of Borg Assimilation. Our cube appears to be seeking out advanced technology feature and programming support. Unfortunately, we find that the newer hardware is not always supported by the operating system (and our core systems are not the most advanced, either!) Here are the log files showing the analysis of the assimilated system code.



BORG Assimilated technology (AKA system specs):

• ABIT AA8 DuraMAX system board (Intel 925 chipset, Socket 775, integrated Realtek sound and Ethernet)


• Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz HT CPU


• 1GB DDR2 dual-channel RAM


• NVIDIA 6200 PCI Express video


• One Parallel ATA (IDE) channel with Samsung CD-RW, DVD±RW


• Four SATA channels with 160GB and 120GB hard drives

Assimilate MS-DOS
This takes no effort since there is no special hardware support at all. DOS uses whatever hardware devices are provided by the system BIOS. With a generic CD-ROM driver, MSCDEX and the other "real mode" support, DOS sees the hard drives, provides generic VGA support and that's about it. This configuration has no clue what USB devices are and if you hunt hard enough, it might support networking and sound on some systems, but don't hold your breath...

Assimilation complete: limited access to BORG-assimilated technology.


Assimilate Windows 98SE
Windows 98 detects the IDE controller and provides access to optical drives for driver installation. Installation of the Intel INF drivers for the 925 chipset allow Windows 98 to detect USB devices, but does not appear to provide support for PCI Express (PCIe) slots, so it does not support NVIDIA display drivers; and there is no audio support. It does detect USB and the flash card reader once the Intel Chipset drivers have been installed.

Two devices are still displayed as "unknown" in device manager. (Similar problems were found with ME, but at least one work-around for video was discovered; see below.)

Assimilation complete: limited access to BORG-assimilated technology.

Assimilate Windows ME
Windows ME detects the IDE controller, but not the DVD and CD-ROM drives attached to it. ME does have basic support for USB and detects memory card reader fine. Use of a USB CD-ROM drive allows install of Chipset drivers. After Intel Chipset drivers installed, Windows ME displays both Optical Drives in My Computer.

Device Manager still shows two "unknown" devices: PCI Card and PCI Universal Serial Bus. The Realtek audio setup reports that there is no support for Win9x, and will not run. Installation of the NVIDIA video drivers for Windows 95/98/ME proceeds, but does not detect the video adapter when complete (apparently no PCIe support either.) The system board documentation only lists support for Windows XP and 2000.

By deleting the PCI VGA adapter and restarting, I forced Windows ME to use the NVIDIA 6200 driver for the video adapter. After restarting, the splash screen appeared with a weird mix of 16 colors for the shaded startup bar and normal shading for most of the rest of the screen. The Windows ME desktop was almost unreadable - like looking through muddy water. Switching from normal analog VGA to the DVI connector with an adapter, the display appears to work fine in true color and high-resolution modes.

Assimilation complete: limited access to BORG-assimilated technology.



Assimilate Windows 2000
Installation to a small partition would not proceed, so I pulled the primary SATA drive and left a second drive to install to. I had the setup create a small 20GB partition for the new OS. Once at the desktop, I checked device manager and found a number of unknown devices (this is normal until chipset and other drivers have been applied.) After installing the Intel chipset drivers, all but the Ethernet controller, a PCI Device, and the Video controller were detected.

Installation of the Realtek Network driver cleared that device from the list of unknowns. The sound driver would not install until I applied Service Pack 4. Service Pack 4 also added USB support, at which point Windows 2000 detected the Flash card reader at the next startup, although there is still an issue with the USB controller being flagged in the USB device list (but it works, so ignore it for now...)

Sound, video, networking, optical dives, and USB are all functioning, although the USB controller still shows the drivers are not loaded in device manager.

Assimilation complete: full access to BORG-assimilated technology established.

Assimilate Windows XP
This was the cleanest install so far. Install Windows XP normally; cancel any new hardware detection that asks for driver media. At the Windows desktop, install the Intel Chipset drivers first. Install Network, Audio and Video drivers. The final step was to run Windows updates and install any new driver versions detected by the update process. All devices were detected, no "unknown" or "other" devices showing in Device Manager.

Assimilation complete: full access to BORG-assimilated technology established.



Assimilate Linspire 4.5
Linspire 4.5 (also known as Lindows 4.5) installs without issue to the SATA drive after booting from the CD. Support for the detected hardware is very basic, but does include high resolution VESA video modes, DVD and CD operation; sound and network are not operational

Assimilation complete: limited access to BORG-assimilated technology.

Assimilate Linspire 5.0
The Linspire install CD starts fine, but has problems when trying to load the Linspire Live! (a demo that runs Linspire from CD), running the diagnostics, or starting the Install process. I have seen a similar situation when the default drive is in a "non-standard" configuration, such as with RAID striped drives. The problem usually comes down to not being able to install the OS until the hardware or chipset driver is installed and you can't install the driver until the OS is installed. The simple solution is to install the OS to a standard IDE drive, install the necessary drivers, and then use a program like Symantec Ghost to copy the image to the RAID media.

To test this theory, I replaced one of the optical drives with a standard IDE hard drive to do the install. The first time I tried this, I disconnected the CD-RW drive, while leaving the DVD drive attached as Master (and configuring the IDE hard drive as slave.) Linspire still locked up, but with different messages. I eventually got around to configuring a hard drive as master and connecting the CD-RW as slave, at which point the Linspire install performed flawlessly.

One thing I noted was that the Linspire setup takes only a fraction of the time to get to the desktop as any of the other OS installs. Linspire 5.0 supports high resolution VESA video modes, the onboard sound and network adapter, and can access the CD-RW and DVD+-RW drives and USB Flash card readers.

So far, all of my attempts to install or transfer a working system image to a SATA drive in this system failed to produce a bootable image. One very interesting feature I found while trying to get this working was the ability of Linux to mount and access CD-ROM .ISO file images as media and the ability to mount and access FAT drive partitions.

Assimilation complete: limited access to BORG-assimilated technology.

The Borg Cube Case Mod, Part 5

Finishing Touches and Special Effects
I discovered that the Thermaltake water-cooling kit for the CPU has a neat little installation trick. The pump and the small shampoo-bottle style reservoir already had flat steel brackets mounted to them. The water cooling kit includes a number of small, extremely strong magnets that are to be placed between the bracket and the case, holding the pump and reservoir to a steel case without mounting screws. (If you don't have a steel case, there are several thin steel plates and some mounting dots to hold them to aluminum or plastic.)

I liked the concept so much, I took the idea and applied it to holding other things in place. Do you have problems with the little foam mounting-tape pads failing and your lights falling off? Grind a shallow hole in the end block, and epoxy glue small magnets in place. Snap -- and the lights are in place; but they can still easily be removed or adjusted anytime you want.

For the plastic panels and assorted parts inside the case, I just hot glued a number of small magnetic "feet" to the back, and then dropped the whole thing into the chassis. I repeated the process with some plastic drive bay panels by grinding the tabs off and then using hot glue to attach magnets to the back. On the inside of the side panel, an ultraviolet LED was hot glued to a small magnet then positioned to shine on the water flow indicator.

Thermaltake includes some water additive to prevent mold and algae from growing in the tubing and pump; they also recommend adding regular automotive antifreeze 1:10 to the water. This gives it a nice fluorescent yellow-green glow under black light CCFT and UV LEDs.

[caption id="attachment_137" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The green glow of the pump and hoses is from antifreeze mixed to a 1:10 ratio with distilled water."][/caption]

I started with a Thermaltake Aquarius II water cooling kit and replaced the CPU block with a newer model that works with the Socket 775 processors and mounting holes. I added a flow indicator and the top-mounted drive bay reservoir — which required hose barb adapters to feed from the large reservoir hoses into the smaller tube size used in the kit.

[caption id="attachment_138" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The Borg logo cover conceals the floppy drive and card reader, top-to-bottom drive bays are behind the cover on the right."][/caption]

The front of the case is a hinged plastic cover, with a small door over the floppy bays, and a large door over the row of 5 1/4" bays. Using a spiral cutting bit in a Dremel tool, I cut the front louvers off of the large drive bay door and glued a rounded vent panel down into the opening. I glued some "chrome" pieces from a toy gun over the ends of a Spiral Liquid Cold Cathode Light and recessed the entire thing down one side of the large door.

For the floppy drive door, I created a Borg "logo" from 1/4" Plexiglas and mounted a piece of red electroluminescent film behind it. This is held to the panel with double-stick carpet tape, and the inverter mounted on the inside of the cover. Both the CCFT tube and the EL panel use 12volts with a common cable running inside to the power supply.

[caption id="attachment_139" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Front of case after painting - doors open."][/caption]

More panels cover the inside of the door to conceal the chewed-up plastic edges. Toy parts, some wire and an old Cyrix 686 CPU with the pins ground off and the core exposed add some interest to the fan side of the case front vents. I mounted a double-plug USB connector in the plastic block, with the cable threading back through the case front to the system board.

For the green cold cathode tube under the chassis (between the wheels), I attached the inverter to the rear of the case with Velcro, and ran the power plug to a Mutant Mods' 3 Port External LP4 Modding Backplate; the tube is held to the bottom with magnets.

CAUTION: don't use magnets to hold the inverters to the case. A strong magnetic field can interfere with the tiny transformer used in these, and could cause it to overheat or do strange things. (Take my word for it - I'm telling you that you will burn-out the CCFT inverter, and could risk a fire if it overheats in the process. Mine didn't burst into flame, but it did get very hot, and it did fail.)

All of the front drive bays are full: The two 3 1/2" bays hold a floppy drive and flash media card adapter. The 5 1/4" bays hold a DVD±RW drive, a CD-RW drive, two SATA hard drives (in mounting brackets), an Internal 5.25" Bay PC Stereo Speaker, and controllers for the fans and lights: Aerocool Gatewatch 4-fan controller and a SunbeamTech Lightbus controller.

Both controllers were already a silver finish, so - a little silver model paint, and so are the rest of the front panels including the speaker, optical drives and bay covers. Once all of the plastic parts have been attached, some flat black enamel paint helps to assimilate them into a uniform whole. Some gold and silver model paint on select panels and box covers completes the case mod appearance.

Next: The Borg Cube assimilates multiple OS versions

The Borg Cube Case Mod, Part 2

Abrasive Cut-off Wheels
Immediately after installing the system board and power supplies, I found that the main motherboard power cable would not reach the connector on the system board. One of the first modifications was to cut two holes, one through the motherboard tray and a second through the center partition in the case. This allows the power connection to loop directly from the power supply through the center partition and connect to the system board with lots of slack.

To cut the cable holes, a Dremel tool with 1" cut-off wheels made quick (but smelly) work of this. The sharp sheet metal edges were covered with some split-loom tubing, and the case vacuumed out to remove the abrasive grit and metal grindings.

[caption id="attachment_109" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Cut off wheels were used to cut a hole for power cables to the system board."][/caption]

Apparently, cut-off wheels are the tool of choice for many computer modifications. Somehow I cannot see using the tiny Dremel or flexible-shaft versions for cutting case windows, but the larger 4" power grinders would make for quick work and nice straight lines without too much effort or case damage.

The water cooling radiator is supposed to be positioned just behind the front cooling fans, so that the cool air entering the case is used to first reduce the water temperature before passing over the system board and other components. In a high-performance system, that would help with CPU cooling. Since it's not an issue here, I moved the radiator to the rear of the case to vent the warm air out the back rather than across the components. With the split case design, most of the air movement will be to the drive side and out the rear of the case anyway.

Aviation Sheet-Metal Snips
Hole drills are best for cutting precise fan holes in a case, but I didn't know that during my first mod. Instead, I used aviation-style sheet metal snips to enlarge the existing rear fan opening. These snips are available in right-hand (red), left-hand (green) and straight (yellow) versions.

[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignnone" width="285" caption="Snips for cutting left-hand curves, straight, and right-hand curves."][/caption]

 

The grill opening on the rear has mounting holes for either a 90mm fan (that would be inside the drive cage), or with the drive bays removed, a 120mm fan can be positioned at the rear. The radiator takes a single 80mm fan which I replaced with a black and chrome Centaurus fan. I used nippers to remove the double grill opening formed in the rear sheet metal of the case, but leaving the 120mm mounting holes. The sharp edges were covered with split tubing and the plastic rear cover had to be slightly modified to allow for the now-raised edge around the fan hole.

 

[caption id="attachment_111" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Aviation shears were used to open the rear fan hole. Split loom tubing covers the rough edges of the resulting hole."][/caption]

 

Changes to the radiator assembly include reversing the pipe feed orientation in the frame, adding the fancy 80mm fan, adding a flat plate to attach a 90-to-120mm fan adapter, and last, a 120mm green UV reactive fan that attaches directly to the case opening. I placed a piece of hardware cloth mesh over the fan to keep fingers and other things out, then mounted a circular 80mm ultraviolet tube to keep the mesh from shifting and make the fan and adapter glow.

Power cables and other wires were bundled inside lots of split-loom tubing, then run to the drives, panels and components.

Water tubing was cut to length, arranged and connected to the heat sink, radiator, flow indicator, primary and secondary reservoir, and then tested for leaks.

Glow in the dark floppy and optical drive cables were checked for reach and then installed, and electro-luminescent SATA drive cables attached.

Next: Pneumatic Shears vs. Nibblers

The Penguin Palace Mod, Part 2: How to Create a Waterfall Effect

[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Water flowing through the door panel looks milky from tiny air bubbles."][/caption]

The waterfall effect was created by building up layers of plastic on the side panel with openings to feed the water back and forth. One of my concerns was that the waterfall effect would generate turbulence which would cause additional air bubbles flowing through the system. Air is not as effective conductor of heat as water and is undesirable in cooling systems.

During leak testing, I found another problem. The water level in the reservoir would rise as to the highest point in the system, unless I could somehow restrict the water flow in order to prevent it from reaching that level. You can’t have much of a waterfall effect if the display area is filled with water up to a few inches from the top.

One possible solution would have been to use a valve system to limit the flow to the top; however the catch basin would still get backfill from the rest of the system. The solution I finally chose was to use two different pumps to separate the decorative waterfall system from the functional cooling system. This meant that the waterfall doesn't show the flow activity of the actual cooling system, but as a bonus, it could be turned off if it ever got too annoying.

[caption id="attachment_30" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The waterfall in the door has its own pump, independent of the CPU cooling system."][/caption]

 

I used ¼" plastic sheets to cut the various shapes and built them up in layers using "general purpose plastic glue", which is available in the plumbing section of Lowes. This glue has a slightly milky appearance and can contain tiny air bubbles. To avoid this, use spring clamps to compress and force out the air bubbles between layers.

[caption id="attachment_31" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Several layers are built up with a central opening for the lower chamber of the waterfall."][/caption]

 

For most of the pieces, I used a band saw to cut out rough shapes and then further shaped the edges using a flexible shaft with metal burrs. The icicles along the bottom edges and openings in the centers of the shapes were done with a Dremel tool with a high speed rotary cutter bit.

[caption id="attachment_32" align="alignnone" width="236" caption="A Danger Den fill-port reservoir is glued to a plastic panel before it is attached to the top of the case."][/caption]

 

Building up several layers of ¼" acrylic sheet with irregular scallops and gullies in the edges allowed me to create the icy looking surface that would catch and diffuse the different lighting in the case.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxoF5TdYnCc&version=3]

Introduction to The Penguin Palace Mod

[caption id="attachment_18" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Cool & Frosty: The completed Penguin Palace case mod"][/caption]

This case mod project started when I had the idea that it might be interesting to run coolant through the side of the case. It was a relatively quick case modification, meaning time spent on the project was less than fifty hours from the time I picked up the tools.

The custom build Plexiglas case used for the core structure was donated by a friend. He’d had it for several years and it was a bit different from the clear plastic cases available now. The entire front drive bay assembly has to be removed to install drives, and only part of the side panel swings open using clear plastic hinges.

[caption id="attachment_19" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The clear acrylic case has a hinged side door and the entire front pulls out to install drives."][/caption]

The rear lacked covers, so I made some clear ones attached to a couple of brushed aluminum slot covers. I left the I/O port cover off; while it might have fit, it couldn’t snap in, and left too much of a gap to attach cables.  There were also numerous fan openings on the front, top side and rear of the case which presented construction challenges.

[caption id="attachment_20" align="alignnone" width="224" caption="The case was missing rear slot covers and had multiple fan holes in the front, back, top and door."][/caption]



The combination of a clear acrylic case with blue or UV lighting creates a cold appearance, which gave me the inspiration for a snow or ice theme. In keeping with this theme, I selected blue, white and silver whenever possible during the mod and when choosing components.  The OS is Ubuntu Linux which suggested penguins as the finishing touch.

[caption id="attachment_22" align="alignnone" width="291" caption="Penguins in the dark"][/caption]

In the coming posts, I will describe how I created the waterfall effect, the panels and lighting, and provide a complete list of the components that were used in this construction.