11/27/2003 - I just came up with a change in design for my custom made power button. The lipstick cap will now be mounted within a tube that will be a lot shorter and slightly fatter than the cap. The washer on the cap will be mounted further back, behind the Pepsi bottle top, instead of within it. Instead of having two copper plates behind the front panel with the power wires welded to them, a second washer will be attached to the edge of the short tube. Instead of being soldered to two copper plates, the motherboard wires will now each be soldered to one of the washers. When the lipstick cap is pushed in, its washer will touch the one on the short tube, and the computer should turn on and off. There should be three advantages to this design change. First, the button is now more reliable, because instead of having two contact points being bridged by a third, two contact points will now touch each other directly. Second, it will now be easier to remove the front panel from the chassis. This is because in the old design, the copper plates were going to be soldered to the front panel, and removing the panel meant taking the motherboard wires with it. This can now be avoided, because the motherboard wires will now be soldered to the button. Third and finally, I can now finish and test the button without having to finish the front panel first. As for the short tube I plan to use, I have my eye on a cardboard spool of kite string that's exactly the right width for my button. If I get my mother's approval, I'll remove the string, cut down the length, and glue a plug to one end of it.

> A few days ago, I planned to use a soap pump as my reset button, but since I couldn't find a practical way to make it work, I decided to abandon the idea. However, this morning's redesign of my power button made me give the pump a second look. I took the pump out of the bottle, and removed the plastic tube, ball bearing, and top. My plan is to screw the top of the pump to a mount on the inside of the case. Like the power switch, the pump will have two washers mounted on it, each attached to a power wire. When the bottom of the pump is pushed inward, the two washers will touch, completing the circuit. (I originally planned to glue the top of the pump's bottle to the front panel, and then use pump's screw-top to screw it in place. But this would have forced the contact washers to be outside the chassis. I tried to fix the design by encasing the washers in a tube, but the design became too complex and impractical, so I abandoned the soap pump idea.) The bottom of the pump is not smooth, so it's uncomfortable to push down on. To fix this, I covered it with the cap of a mechanical pencil. The two washers I plan to use are exactly the same size. They fit perfectly into the moving part of the pump, but I'll have to bore the hole on one of them slightly wider in order to fit onto the stationary part. The only thing I really have to do once the washers are in place is to buy a power cable and solder its wires onto the washers. My brother Peter is visiting for Thanksgiving, and he offered a few alternate switch designs, including mounting the soap pump on its opposite end, an idea I had already considered and discarded. But I think my current designs are just fine, and that's what I plan to use. No offense, Peter.

> By the way, I got the OK from my mother to use the kite string spool for my power switch. I've already removed the string, but have yet to cut it down and add the plug. As for the plug, I'm planning to use a purple plastic toy screw I took from my nephew Austin's toy bag. I'll have to cut off a piece of it in order to mount the copper spring into the tube.

11/25/2003 - Early this morning, I was comparing a computer's reset button to a dead man's switch in my head. This made me realize that a reset button has a definite on and a definite off position, as opposed to a power button, which is a momentary contact switch. Knowing this, I thought I might be able to fit my computer's reset button with a wall switch, and use it as the computer's main power switch. However, a call to JD later that night convinced me it wouldn't be such a good idea.

11/24/2003 - Early this afternoon, I was rummaging through my parents' bedroom drawers, and a few things caught my eye as stuff I could use for my computer's front panel. I found the cap to a lost tube of lipstick, an empty medicine bottle, and a really beautiful button. I saw potential in the cap and the button, so I took those with me. When I went to the garage to return the wall switch, I found a mid-sized copper spring, which fit into the lipstick cap perfectly. After my parents got back from Costco, my mother let me take the cap, but not the button, which I think would have made a good looking reset button.

> I had a pretty good idea about how to make a power switch with the materials I had on hand, and decided to simulate making one. So I put together a model of my future power switch using cardboard to stand in for the front panel and electrical connections. From the experiment, I figured out how to make the final version of the switch. First, I'll fit the lipstick cap with a copper washer, gluing it on if necessary. I'll then hot glue a Pepsi bottle top to a hole in the front panel. (This is the same type of bottle top I'll use to mount the Pepsi cap on for the lampshade for my power LED.) There will be two tiny copper plates mounted to the back of the front panel, just over the power switch hole. These copper plates can also be paper clips. One motherboard power switch wire will be attached to each plate. The plates can't touch each other, since that would defeat the purpose of the switch. The next step will be to hot glue one end of the copper spring to the inside of the lipstick cap, in order to ensure it never comes out by accident. The other end of the spring will be fastened to a special fixture inside the case. Finally, I'll put the front panel into place, so that the Pepsi bottle top fits around the lipstick cap, and encases the washer. If everything has been done right, pushing in the cap will cause the copper washer to bridge the gap between the two copper plates, and turn the computer on and off.

> I called JD earlier tonight to ask him if stripping the two motherboard power switch wires, then connecting the exposed ends would cause the computer to turn on and off. To my great relief, his answer was yes. So I guess I can go ahead and work on the switch, knowing it can work, and that I'm not wasting my time.

11/23/2003 - I found two PS/2 extension cables in my sister's old bedroom. These cables will be used to connect the mouse and keyboard PS/2 ports at the back of my computer's chassis to the front panel. I feel that being able to plug interface devices into the front of the computer will give it more of a gaming console feel. I'll eventually have to find a way to solidly mount two PS/2 female connectors to the front of the computer. Online, I found USB2.0 extension cables on NewEgg.com for two bucks each. I was pleased to discover the Via EIPA 800 motherboard I'll be buying has four USB ports, so I'll be buying four cables. These USB cables will have their female ends mounted to the front of the computer, just like the PS/2 cables.

> Three days ago, when I was searching the garage for light bulbs, I came across a really neat looking red and cream wall switch that I figured could be used as a my computer's on/off switch. Again, I called JD for his advice, and he said that such a switch would not make an ideal power switch for a PC. He said that while a typical wall switch has a definite on and a definite off position, a PC uses something called a momentary contact switch, in which each completion of an electrical circuit turns the computer on or off. So I'll have to return the wall switch to the garage and find some other non-conventional means of turning on and turning off my computer. Maybe I can modify a soap pump, or just buy something online.

11/22/2003 - I was shopping online last night, and I found some motherboard LED lights for two bucks each. I plan to buy two of those as soon as I can, so I can test them on Polyfragger to see if they can shine through my Pepsi cap, and also a red Connect Four checker I plan to use as the shade for my drive light.

> Today, my dad was kind enough to help me create the mount for my Pepsi cap lampshade by cutting off the top of a 20oz Pepsi bottle with a hacksaw. Once I build my front panel, there will be a hole somewhere on its left side where I will hot glue the back of the Pepsi bottle top mount. I can then screw on the Pepsi cap to complete the lampshade.

11/21/2003 - I called up JD today, and to cut a long story short, he suggested that powering light bulbs off the motherboard was not as good as an idea as I first thought it was. One of the things he suggested I do was to buy an actual LED light for my power light, because apparently, LEDs are functionally different from light bulbs. So I'm going to go online and look for places where I can buy such lights.

11/20/2003 - It appears that I'm able to do further work on this project after all. Weeks before I began designing my chassis, I noticed a transparency in some Pepsi bottle caps. I knew that if I ever decided to build my own computer chassis someday, I'd definitely consider using one of those caps as a light cover. But before I could do that, I would have to remove the opaque rubber seal on the inside of the cap. Less than a week before I first started the project, I took one of the Pepsi caps, and removed its inner lining. This wasn't easy to do; I had to use an X-acto knife, my 2.5" Swiss Army Knife, and a pair of tweezers, and it took me about 20 minutes to get the job done.

> Today, I figured out how to put my modified Pepsi cap to use on my computer's front panel. I took a look at the inside of Polyfragger, and remembered something I learned in my A+ Certification class at FDU. There is one particular set of pins on the motherboard that distributes power to its components. These components include the LED lights, and the on-board speaker.   When I followed one of the cables from the set of pins, I noticed it lead directly to one of the LED's on the computer's front panel. I then figured that getting my Pepsi cap light to work would be a simple matter of taking a motherboard cable, stripping the sheath off of the light end,  soldering the exposed wires to a tiny light bulb socket, screwing a bulb to the socket, then turning on the PC. If the light works, I can then hot glue the top of a Pepsi bottle to the chassis' front panel, push the light bulb into the bottle top, then screw on the cap. Tomorrow, I'll ask my brother-in-law JD if he has any spare motherboard power cables, so I can test to see if a small bulb can actually be used as a motherboard LED light.

1/19/2003 - After I established the dimensions of my chassis, and that everything would fit into it, my next concern was to keep the weight of the computer under 10 pounds, chassis and all. After weighing my broken floppy drive, broken hard drive, and possibly broken CD drive (almost 3 pound total), I estimated that all the components, including an additional hard drive and a small power supply, would be 6 pounds tops. This left only 4 pounds for a 12" x 12" x 4" chassis. If I can replace the current internal power supply with an external PW-70 power supply, I can not only take 2 pounds out of the computer, but I can also give the finished product more of a gaming console feel to it.

> If I can pull it off, my chassis will have a titanium skeleton consisting of 16 L-shaped beams (ten 12" long beams and six 4" beams), which will be 144 square inches (12 square feet) in total length, and will weigh maybe 2 pounds. If I decide to go with a PW-70 as my power source (internal components now totaling 4 pounds), and add a 2 pound chassis skeleton, I will have 4 pounds left to distribute throughout the rest of my chassis. My 12" x 12" x 4" chassis will have a surface area of 480 square inches, and will consist of six panels; the bottom panel and top access hatch will be a square foot each (144 sq in), and the other panels will be 12" x 4" (48 sq in). This means the bottom panel and top access hatch can weigh up to 1.2 pounds each, and each side panel can weigh up to 0.4 pounds.

> I just realized that the top-middle beam may not be such a good idea for my chassis' skeleton. The chassis will open from the top, and the top-middle beam would get in the way should I decide to make any upgrades to my computer. Removing this beam will take a foot off the length of titanium I'll need to build the skeleton, so I'll end up only using 132 inches (11 feet) of titanium.

> Removing the foot-long top beam will take one sixth of a pound off the weight of the skeleton. I can also take an additional pound out of the inside of the computer by replacing the IDE CD drive with a laptop CD drive. This new CD drive, the floppy drive, and the two hard drives will weigh around 3 pounds altogether, while the chassis' skeleton will weigh around 1 5/6 pounds. However, just to play it safe, I'm still giving the skeleton a limit of 2 pounds. With 5 pounds left to build the frame, I can now make the bottom panel and top hatch 1.5 pounds each, while each side panel can weigh half a pound.

> So far, I've come up with a basic design for my chassis, made sure all its components will fit into it, and kept the total weight under my ten pound limit. I've also determined that the internal components might cost around $700. My next goal is to actually start buying the parts for my computer, most expensive first. I will then lay the parts out on a 12" x 12" template, in order to work out the details of the chassis' design. However, there are a few financial issues I'd like to work on before proceeding (paying back my parents for Glamdring, opening a new savings account, and buying a new hard drive for Candybox), and there's nothing more I can do on this project right now. So until I get these issues resolved, I'm adjourning this project. The only thing left to do now is clean up the mess I made in my room while getting the project to this point.

11/18/2003 - I've been spending the past few days searching the web for information that could help me on the details of building my custom chassis. I found a new motherboard form factor called mini-ITX, which is only 17 square centimeters, or 6.75 square inches. The motherboard is significantly smaller than the NLX I originally planned to use, which was 9" X 13". As you can imagine, this allowed me to make my chassis a lot smaller than I could before. After doing some measuring with Polyfragger (a currently unused computer I got from by A+ prep class at FDU), some obsolete components I took out of Candybox ages ago, and my trusty ruler, I decided to make the chassis 12" x 12" x 5".

> When I measured one of my soundcards, I found it to be over five inches in height, and this would have forced me to raise the height of my chassis. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a 2 PCI slot riser card on mini-itx.com. This not only allowed me to keep the chassis at its planned 5 inch height, but it would also provide me with an second PCI slot, since the motherboard only comes with one. I also realised that stacking two CD drives and a floppy drive would not allow the motherboard enough clearance to rest under the drives while mounted on the spacers. So I cut back on one of the CD drive bays, sacrificing expandability in order to avoid having to raise the chassis' height. As a stroke of luck, taking out the drive bay gave me so much extra room, that I could lower the height of my chassis to four inches. Then I realised that because the floppy drive bay was small enough to not have to pass over the motherboard, this would give my motherboard still more clearance, leaving no doubt that I had enough room to work with.

11/15/2003 - My computer chassis' original design...

- Desktop chassis: NLX form factor (9" x 13")
- 10 pounds or less
- Suitcase handle
- At least one cupholder (NOT a CD drive, dammit!)
- USB ports on the front of the case
- Will most likely be based on a console chassis
- Partially see-through chassis
- No serial ports
- PS/2 and USB ports in front. All other ports in the back.
- No tools required to open chassis
- Lightweight but sturdy materials (lexan, aluminum, etc.)
- Lots of fans, some with lights behind them.