CES Report - Section 3:
12/16/2003 to 12/30/2003
12/30/2003 - Ever since I came up with the idea of putting flames on the sides of CES, I've wondered exactly how I was going to do this. My first thought was to buy a stencil, then use it to airbrush the flames on. But recently, I thought it might be a good idea to make my own stencil by findind a pixelated flame on the Internet, enlaging it in Paint Shop Pro, printing it out, cutting out the image's outline, and attaching it to the side panel. I'd then airbrush over the stencil to get my effect. It's 11:30 in the morning, and I just found the perfect image to use as my flame stencil. It's the big flame from the original Legend of Zelda. I plan to edit it in PSP so that it looks like one continuous fire, stretching all the way across the page. Since the gif is animated, I'll try to use all of the frames, and paste each one next to each other in order to reduce the monotony. Using the Contra III_Level 1 street fire as a guide, I will fill in the gaps at the bottom of the flames. Then I'll change the color of the flames from orange to green. Once my continuous fire image is complete, I'll print it out so the flames are 7" long and about 2 1/2" high. I will make three or four seperate stencils, one for each color. I haven't figured how I'm going to attatch the stencils to the panel, but I'll use one stencil at a time, airbrushing on a different shade of green for each one. I think this is going to be one of the funnest parts of the project. But of course I'll have to learn how to airbrush; I've never done it before.
> When at work at LFL yesterday, just before punching out, I asked the manager Sandy if she just happened to have a broken keyboard at home. To my surprise, she said she might just have one. So when I come back from work tonight, I may have the means to start making my front panel. But I've been disappointed before, so I'll try not to get my hopes up too high. Speaking of work, I was going to take back the Felt Gard Plus furniture pads back to Home Depot yesterday, but forgot. Today, I'm hoping my memory will be a little better.
> OK, it's 6AM and I just got back home from LFL after a record short hour and a half of work. Sandy didn't have a broken keyboard, but I did get a chance to return the furniture pads to the Home Depot. It's nice to get my $4.21 back, although I'm not sure if it will make that much of a difference in the end.
$677.98
total budget - $4.21 furniture pads returned = $673.77 total budget
> My parents went down to Aventura for their Florida vacation a few days ago, and I called them this afternoon to make sure they didn't bring both thier video camera and their Sony Cybershot with them. To my disappointment, they did, and so I'll have to use my piece of shit Veo for my photo log again.
> I finished drawing what is going to be me flame stencil. The LOZ flame has two frames of animation; the second frame is just a mirror image of the first. I saved a bmp copy of the gif, enlarged the 41 x 40 canvas to 120 x 40, changed the flame's color to green, and made four copies of the flame in a row, so that the four flames overlapped each other slightly. The second and fourth flames are reversed, so that the whole flame row looks reversed in the middle. Right now, I can think of two ways I can use this image to get the flames on my side panels. The first way is to print the image on paper so it's just the right size, and somehow use it as an airbrush stencil. The other way is to pencil in a grid that's slightly smaller than 120 x 40 directly on the panel, and then use colored permanent markers to fill in the squares, using the flame image as a guide.
> The skeleton is going to be covered with 1/16" thick aluminum panels on the sides (4" x 7"), back (4" x 12"), and bottom (12" x 7"). The top will have a hinged hatch consisting of two 6" x 7" aluminum panels with lexan windows. The front panel will be made of lexan, plastic, or some metal from the bottom plate of a discarded keyboard. Since it will be such a light weight piece, and I don't know what it's going to be made of yet, I will exclude the front panel from the chasis's overall weight until further notice. All this comes out 272 square inches of aluminum, assuming the top hatch is entirely aluminum without the lexan windows. Because these aluminum sheets weigh about 0.9173 lbs per square foot, CES's aluminum sheets will weigh around 1.743 lbs altogether.
> I've been calculating how much this project is going to cost today. I've already decided that I'd stick to an $800 budget, and not spend any more than that. Here is the initial list of items I planned to purchase before I took five inches off the depth of my chasis yesterday...
2-WIRE JUMPER CABLE 2 Pin Internal 24 inches from PCCables.com - $7.00
Felt Gard Plus furniture pads from the Home Depot - $4.21
Money spent so far - $11.21
Current shopping list...
1 VIA EPIA V8000 800Mhz Motherboard - $112.00
2 512MB PC133 SDRAM DIMMs - $176.00
1 Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive - $90.00
1 Sony CRX830E Slimline CDRW/DVD drive - $142.40
1 Slimline CD to Desktop IDE Adapter - $15.20
1 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive - $5.99
1 VIA 2 Slot PCI Riser Card - $28.00
1 HEISEI 4-Port USB2.0 Front Panel Hub - $16.00
2 Aspire 80mm UV Green Fans - $11.00
1 Replacement LED Power Light - $1.99
1 Replacement LED HDD Light - $1.99
1 ULTRA DMA/133 IDE HARD DISK CONTROLLER - $18.00
1 PW 70 external power supply - $49.95
CES's 12" x 12" x 4" aluminum chasis materials from OnlineMetals.com - $70.46
CES's Clear Lexan Sheet side panel window from Polymer Plastics - $30.91
Money left to spend - $769.89
Total cost of CES - $781.10
$70.46 for the old chasis - $49.16
for the new chasis = $21.30 less spent
$781.10 total budget - $21.30 less
spent = $759.80 total budget
> The smaller chasis means that the only space left to put a hard drive is under the floppy drive, a space that big enough for only one hard drive. This forces me to forget the possibility of putting more drives in the system, which means I no longer have a use for the IDE controller PCI card I was planning to get. Taking this card out of the budget saves me an additional $18.00
$759.80 total budget - $18.00 less
spent = $741.80 total budget
> I no longer plan to put a lexan window on CES’s side panel, and have instead decided to revert back to putting a pixelated green flame paint job on the side panels. Now, I plan on putting lexan windows on each of the top hatch doors, and letting the illuminated fans shine through the top of the computer. Speaking of lexan, I’ve just decided that paying a $25 handling charge for a sub $10 piece of plastic is way too steep for my tastes, so I’m going to forget about the lexan until I can get it cheaper somewhere else. So the $30.91 piece of lexan out of the budget.
$741.80 total budget - $30.91 less
spent = $710.89 total budget
> I don’t know how well the 4-port USB hub will fit into my chasis now that the front panel is practically kissing the motherboard, so I’ll wait until I buy the board and build the chasis’s skeleton before buying the hub. I plan to buy three fans for CES’s interior. One will be a 80mm x 80mm x 25mm fan that will go on the back panel behind the drives. The two fans will be a little smaller; one will be one for the CPU, and the other will be for the external PW 70 power supply. Since I can put a fan of any size on the back panel, but I’m not sure what fans fit on the PW 70 or the motherboard, I will cut back on one of the two $5.50 fans I plan on getting.
$710.89 total budget - $5.50 less
spent = $705.39 total budget
> I was just talking to JD on the phone, and I asked him if he has any spare floppy drives I can use for CES. He said he might, but he’ll have to look around first. I’ve got a feeling he does have a spare, but until I’m sure, I will not cut the floppy drive from the budget just yet.
> I was surfing the web today while trying to find out what socket the VIA EIPA V8000 uses. I couldn’t find that info, but I did find a mini-itx board that is superior to the V8000. It’s the VIA EIPA V10000A, and I found it at Directron.com. The V10K is pretty much the same board as the V8K, except is has a 1GHz processor instead of an 800MHz one. Ironically, Directron sells the V10K for only $109 which is three bucks less than the V8K I was going to get from mini-itx.com.
$112.00 for the old VIA EIPA V8000
- $109.00 for the new VIA EIPA V10000A = $3.00 less spent
$705.39 total budget - $3.00 less
spent = $702.39 total budget
> And the savings just keep on coming. It's just after 11:30PM, and I was just visiting Directron when I stumbled across a Sony CRX830E Slimline CDRW/DVD drive for only $115.99, but for an extra two bucks, I can get it with an audio cable, bringing the price to $117.99. This is the same exact drive the mini-itx.com offers for $142.40, which means I will now be saving a whopping $24.41.
$142.40 for the old Slimline
CDRW/DVD drive at mini-itx.com - $117.99 for the same drive at
Directron = $24.41 less spent
$702.39 total budget - $24.41 less
spent = $677.98 total budget
> After all of the changes in CES’s budget, here’s how my shopping list is looking now...
2-WIRE JUMPER CABLE 2 Pin Internal 24 inches from PCCables.com - $7.00
Felt Gard Plus furniture pads from the Home Depot - $4.21
Money spent so far - $11.21
Current shopping list...
1 VIA EPIA V10000A 1Ghz Motherboard - $109.00
2 512MB PC133 SDRAM DIMMs - $176.00
1 Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive - $90.00
1 Sony CRX830E Slimline CDRW/DVD drive - $117.99
1 Slimline CD to Desktop IDE Adapter - $15.20
1 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive - $5.99
1 VIA 2 Slot PCI Riser Card - $28.00
1 HEISEI 4-Port USB2.0 Front Panel Hub - $16.00
1 Aspire 80mm UV Green Fan - $5.50
1 Replacement LED Power Light - $1.99
1 Replacement LED HDD Light - $1.99
1 PW 70 external power supply - $49.95
CES's 12" x 7" x 4" aluminum chasis materials from OnlineMetals.com - $49.16
Money left to spend - $666.77
Total cost of CES - $677.98
> I just had a very pleasant surprise from my dad, something that can almost be considered an early Christmas present. He came to my bedroom, and handed me what looked to be a momentary contact switch, with two sturdy wires already in place. Now, finishing my reset button will only be a matter of stripping down the other half of my power switch cable, tieing its two wires to the two wires on the new switch, and testing the switch on Polyfragger. If the switch passes the test, I will seal the gap with electrical tape. It's only 3:20PM, so if I'm lucky, I might be able to finish both switches by Christmas.
> It's now 11:30PM, and earlier tonight, I worked on my reset button, which was made from the switch my dad gave me this afternoon. I used my green Swiss Army Knife to strip down the power switch cable, wrapped its exposed wires around the wires of the switch, and then tested the switch on Polyfragger, this time with my cousin Nick as my witness. The switch worked fine, so I made the connection more permanent by wrapping the exposed wires with electrical tape. Just for the hell of it, I tested the switch again, and again it was able to turn on the computer. A little later on in the night, I finished my power button by Krazy Gluing the top of the copper spring to the inside of the lipstick cap, and then using my Krazy Glue / Sculpey cocktail to glue the bottom of the spring to the base of the medicine bottle. Finally I tested the now truly completed power button on Polyfragger, and it was able to turn on the computer most of the time. This has been an extraordinary day for my project, and I just hope neither of my switches breaks itself any time soon.
> I took the medicine bottle to the garage and attempted to hacksaw it down to 30mm. But when I tried to clamp it with the vice, the bottle kept bending inward and falling out of the vice. In order to make the bottle more rigid, I put 14 quarters into it and closed the lid. I also marked where I wanted the cut with a pen. I then put the bottle back on the vice, and sawed into it just enough to avoid damaging my hard earned change. I took the quarters out, closed back the lid, and sawed the rest of the way through. When I took the sawed-down bottle back into the house, I realised that not only was the sawing terribly uneven, but it was 2mm too short as well. Fortunatey, this didn't appear to make too much of a difference in the switch's future performance.
> After a short break, I proceeded to make the holes for the screw contact points. I hammered a sharp-pointed nail into the medicine bottle 18mm from the bottom, in order to make it easier to drill a hole through that point. Dad lent me his power drill, but I couldn't figure out how to change the drill bits. After my dad showed me how to do this, I could then proceed. I used the tiniest drill bit in the box to make a hole where I hammered in the nail. Then, I used an increasingly larger bit, and tried to screw in one of my contact points after every drilling. When I was finally able to screw in the point snugly into the hole, I unscrewed it and made a second hole a quarter way counter-clockwise around the bottle, also 18mm from the bottom. I screwed a contact point into each of the holes, and this did something I hadn't foreseen. The red wire was wrapped around its contact point, and the point where the cable split was pressed firmly against the contact point. Also, the white wire was pressed tightly against the bottle, and its exposed wire was partially pulled from under the duct tape that was holding it onto its contact point. I'm not very good at explaining things, so here's a picture of the wires after I tightened the screws.
> At first, I was worried that pulling the wires tightly may have dislodged them from their contact points, but then I realised that this turn of events may actually be advantageous, since this would make the switch more compact and maybe less likely to break. Of course, the switch would have to still be able to turn on a computer for this accidental design to work. I took the partially completed switch upstairs and ran its second power test on Polyfragger. I hooked up the switch to the motherboard, and bridged the top of the two screws with a screwdriver. To my relief, the computer turned on, and bridging the screws again turned off the machine. I did this a few more times, and each time the switch worked. I then took the testing a step further by bridging the bottom of the screws by sticking my arcade token into the sawed-down medicine bottle. Again, the switch turned the computer on and off consistantly. Now that my power button has passed it's second power test, all I have to do now is make the switch's bridge by gluing a bored out arcade token to my lipstick cap. As long as my two contact points are positioned at exactly the same height on the bottle, and as long as my wires don't snap like they did on my reset button, I shouldn't have too much of a problem completing my power button.
> As far as the building of the power button goes, I will first find two tiny screws, preferably copper or brass. I will then temporarily attach my motherboard power cable to the screws, attatch the cable to Polyfragger, and see if bridging the two screws with the arcade token will turn the computer. If the switch passes this first test, I will saw the medicine bottle down to 30 millimeter high, detach the wires from the screws, screw them into the bottle at opposite ends, making sure not to get them too far in, since this could interfere with the movement of the cap. The two screws would also have to be mounted at exactly the same height in order for the token to touch them both at the same time. I'll then run a second test on Polyfragger to see if the switch can still turn on the computer. If the switch passes the second test, the next step will be to bore a hole in the arcade token, using the same method my dad did on the pennies. If I can make the hole just the right size, it should fit tightly around the lipstick cap. After this will be the all important final test to see if the switch still turns on my computer. If the switch passes this test, I will glue the copper spring permanently into place. It's only 9AM, so I think I'll be able to finish my power button by the end of the day.
> I was going to use tiny PC screws for my contact points, but I found that the power switch wires were easier to wrap around screws that were a bit longer. I used electrical tape to tightly hold the wires to the screws, and I don't plan to undo them unless it becomes absolutely necessary to do so. The power switch cable isn't stripped down far enough for me to connect the screws to opposite sides of the medicine bottle, so I decided to settle for putting the screws a quarter of the way around the bottle from each other. After two or three attempts, I managed to connect my contact points to the wires so that they consistantly turned on/off Polyfragger. By the way, while I was running the tests, I noticed that my power switch cable was a lot thinner than the motherboard cables already in the machine. Maybe if I'd gotten a thicker cable, it wouldn't keep falling apart every time I altered the cable.
> The next phase was to attach the power switch wires to the penny contact points. Using a soldering gun with a worn out tip, we managed to solder the wires to the pennies. My dad soldered while I held the clamp to keep the pennies still. Amazingly the solder held, and I was confident that my reset button was nearing completion. However, my dad had trouble Krazy Gluing the penny contact points to the soap pump; the pennies just wouldn't stick to the pump's plastic. Then it was my turn to give the gluing a try. With the Krazy Glue and a bit of Sculpey, I got the two pennies to stay in place. But before I could test my now completed reset button, the top wire snapped off. As I was showing my dad what happened, the other wire came off as well. In desperation, I decided to forget about the solder and just Krazy Glue the wires on, losing about an inch on one of my wires as I accidentily cut two short lengths off it trying to strip it down. When I hooked up my button to Polyfragger's motherboard and tried it out, the computer wouldn't turn on. However, I was able to turn the machine on by manually bridging the wires with some long and sharp metal object.
> Needless to say, today was a major setback, but I'm not about to give up on my custom reset button. There are a few more things I want to try before I'll consider quitting, including using the original steel washers, taping them into place instead of using solder. This day wasn't a total loss, though. As suddenly as my Veo digital camera apparantly broke itself, it magically came back to life when I plugged it back in and turned it on. As for everything that's gone wrong today, I have a feeling this won't be the only snag in my quest to create my own gaming rig. It's 11:30PM now, and I think I've earned my rest for tonight.
> After my dad and I left my job at LFL, we headed straight to the Home Depot so I could look for some copper or brass washers I was planning on using as the contact points for my power and reset buttons. We couldn't find any such washers, but that didn't stop me from browsing anyway. I found some angle irons, but decided not to buy them since I had found some much stronger aluminum angle irons on OnlineMetals.com. I was also drawn to some sliding keyboard drawer mounts. I plan to use four of these mounts to make it easy to push in and pull out my hard drive rack mount. The ones I need have to be three to four inches long, but the shortest I could find were twelve inches long. No good :(. However, I did see something I could use. I found a set of padded furniture legs for use for the bottom panel of my chasis. Right after I bought the set for $4.21, it dawned on me that I could have just found some at home and not have had to spend a penny. Oh well, that'll teach me not to be so damn impulsive.
$7.00 + $4.21 = $11.21 spent so far
> After I got back home from the Hope Depot at around 5:30PM, I was putting my change in my four plastic change tubes when something hit me from out of the blue. I realised that the pennies I was putting away were made of copper, and could make good contact points for my reset button if I drilled the right sized holes in them. In order for this to work, I'll have to drill the hole for the top penny PRECISELY the right size to fit the bottom tier of the soap pump. If the hole is even a millimeter off, the penny will drop to the bottom of the actuating part of the pump, and will be useless. JD has a drill that can drill through a penny, and if I ask him really nicely, maybe he'll let me use it this weekend.
