Benford Does Stuff

Good news everyone! I finally had the chance to get some more work done on everyone’s (my) favorite iShell. As per usual, there’s some good news and bad news.

Bad News

The LCD only accepts VGA input. The video card only has DVI output. There is not enough space within the iShell to fit a regular DVI to vga converter, so I got creative, with a DVI to VGA cable. Unfortunately there was not enough space between the bottom of the lcd and the top of the “floor” of the upper iShell half to fit the supersized VGA end. This leads us to…

Good News

my dad has a bench grinder. And it works really really quickly on injection molded plastic. This made the whole “not enough space” issue into quite the trivial mattter:

vgacord.minify()

Of course, this inherently leads to some more

Bad News

Once I got everything plugged in and fully attached, I put it to the acid test, and turned the computer on. One heart stopping moment later, I remembered to turn the power supply  on. After rectifying this, several more heart stopping moment later, the PC turned on and gave evidence of whirring, but nothing came to the screen. Fearing for the worst, I plugged the iShell into another monitor, and…

Good News

everything worked on another monitor. I knew at this point that my custom sized cable, being the most suspect component in the chain, was probably the culprit. Unfortunately this meant an order for more parts, as my shiney new cable was recently demoted to “cat toy”.

Flash forward two weeks later, and I use a standard vga cable and realize that a flexible dvi -> vga adaptor will do the job just as well. I’ll be acquiring one of them quite soon. Meanwhile, some pics of the iShell, with motherboard fully installed, and PSU held in place with a heavy ration of gravity:

An inside job

And that’s all for now. Tune in next time for Power Supply Stabilizing action. Unless I need to work on something else first.