A minor setback

Well, I encountered a minor setback last week... Fired up the motherboard, and it would not post at all... So I submitted an RMA for it, and it was approved ridiculously, the next day after I submitted it. Guess I should get on sending it in.

Wootloops

My 4gigs of G.Skill Ram came in today. Thank you NCIX.

Will be appropriating a dvd rom from somewhere and installing a custom windows7 on the box within the next couple days. RT7 Lite makes this possible. Thank you internet.

I like to DIY

As the title suggests, if I can make it myself, I DIY it. So thats what I did when I wanted a wired remote for my DSLR camera, a Pentax K110D. This remote, incidentally, will work with most camera's that take a 2.5mm mini jack for the trigger. It was not that hard at all to fab up, considering I had a nice little case I could put it in. Namely, an old remote control car one that I had laying around. More on that in a bit.

First off, here's the basic wiring schematic of whats going on. The basic principle behind how this works is that you have to complete the circuit from ground to one of the stereo poles, for it to either perform a half click, or full click. The tip of the plug will be your shutter, the ring will be your half press, and the sleeve will be your common ground. I used 2 momentary switches that I bought at The Source / Radioshack, and a toggle switch as well for continuous shooting, like when you go and do star trails.

For my wire, i just used some junk cat5 cable that I had, and it seems to do the trick just nicely. For tools, all I needed was my soldering iron, some solder, my drill and some drill bits to make the correct sized hold in the casing.

This is the final product. Red takes a picture, black focus', and the the toggle in the center is constant shooting.

And so it begins...

The almighty original Microsoft Xbox. The original media box for your tv, if you were fortunate enough to have one. I, unfortunatly, was not one of those people who was lucky enough to have one at that time. Nor am I lucky enough to own a 360 at the moment. Oh well, I have more fun playing with my Wii (rofl) and my PC.

This is the shell that I purchased last summer for like $10, when I originally wanted to start this project. I had a mini ATX board that I was gonna use, until I measured it out, and found that it was too big... Oh well, project shelved until I could find something that would fit properly. That is until I found the board that you can see lurking on the right hand side. A Zotac IONITX-A. It fits perfectly... But more on that later.

First order of business was to figure out where the board was gonna sit. Whats that Jim-Bob?? Back right corner, you say?? Git-r-done! So I set about lining it up where it should go, and getting rid all the stuff that was in the way. Like the little stand off that is visible on the right. Took all of those out, and I had a fairly good spot for planning.


The next step was to find a bunch of brass stand offs that the board would be secured to. Good thing I am a geek, and keep all kinds of non-sense computer hardware around the house. Actually found all the screws and stand offs that I currently needed in my current computer cases extra supply box(rocking an Antec P180, such a nice case, but heavy >.<). Anyways, put those on the Zotac, then proceeded to mark out where the back plate was going to be. Next up, sharp tools /evil.

This is the results of me playing with power tools, and about a 1/2 hour or so of using a hand saw, I have the resulting hole:

Thats the exact size of the back plate, and the perfect height for the standoffs. Go me.

After that, it was a matter of putting the back plate in, and do a test fit of the board without the EM shield in. Looks good so far. I am pleased. Almost sacrificing a virgin pleased... Wait, what am I saying!?!? A sacrificed virgin is a wasted virgin. Yea, thats better. I don't know what I was thinking there for a second. I should punish myself for that blasphemous thought with a beer when I get home from work tonight.

Anyways, onto doing the same thing to the EM shield that was originally in the XBox case. The basic Idea behind doing this was to throw it back in the box, then trace the hole, and cut it out with a pair of something that will cut metal. Sidecutters, I CHOOSE YOU!! /throws pokeball.

Also in this picture, you can see the tool I used to cut the hole in the case with. And my portable work table. Love that thing... going to serve me well in the future, methinks.

And here is the board, in the box with the EM Shield, and secured at this point, I think... Did I mention its been about a month since I took these pictures? Anyways, all I did to actually secure it was to take some 2 part epoxy, mix it together, then proceed to goober it all over the stand offs while the board was in place. Then I waited till it was mostly drive, 5 or so minutes later, then took the board off, and goobered some more on there for good measure.

Along the right hand side, you see that empty space? That is where I am going to put the 2.5" solid state drive I am eventually going to purchase. Along with a DVD / Blu-ray drive. An old Floppy / 5.25 drive cage in some configuration will work well there.

And thats all for now. Maybe I will work on it some more this weekend. Wait, I need some supplies for that... like an old PC case that I can butcher. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those lying around anymore, as the last one I had went into the garbage when I switched apartments last year. I am sure someone has one that they want to get rid of. Time to mooch one if possible.
I am also missing some RAM for this project. DDR2. About 4 gigs of it. Preferably in G.Skill flavour. F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ.