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Project:
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Jollyeskimo's Project 850itx Part 2 |
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Guest Author:
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Jollyeskimo
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Date:
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October 26th, 2005
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Of course, it wouldn’t be complete if all this hardware had no case to keep them from flying everywhere.
The original idea I had was to fit the board and everything else into the heatsink/shell of an old car
audio amplifier. But try as I might, I just couldn’t find myself one that had the right dimensions for
the petite 17cm x 17cm motherboard. The closest match was an old Orion amp heatsink (the board was long
dead, of course), but even after acquiring it I found the interior dimensions too narrow by about half
a centimeter for the motherboard to fit. I spent some time looking for alternatives, including gutting
a small briefcase that I had lying around, but nothing fit particularly well.
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Click image for larger view
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Click image for larger view
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The search ended interestingly enough at my local Wal-Mart, where I just happened to stumble by a small
metal safe box designed for holding cash with the exact dimensions that I wanted. The motherboard, the
power supply, and the hard drive couldn’t have fitted better if I had built a case from scratch, and at
a cost of only around fifteen dollars Canadian, it was a bona fide steal.
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Click image for larger view
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With the perfect case found, I quickly went to work with my Dremel hacking pieces off of it for mounting
the entire system inside. The handle on the top was quickly removed, the proper motherboard mounting
holes were drilled, and a large section was taken off the side to accommodate the I/O shield for the
motherboard.
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