Benford Does Stuff

No pictures today, but I have some progress to report on the iShell project. I needed to regrind the clamps that I made last time so that the monitor section of the case could fit cleanly into the rest of the unit. During initial fitting I found that the area near the LCD monitor mount screws was far too close to the edge of the case, or on the lower half, the clamps would run right into the speakers. I marked the excess metal with white out, as black sharpies would not show up so well. Then, one at a time, I took each clamp and ground out the white out marked sections. By removing them one at a time, then replacing them, I could guarantee that each clamp returns to its original spot, preventing further need for grinding.

After the second grinding was complete, I placed the monitor into the mostly assembled (sans grey transparaent back) iShell case. To my great joy, the system fit together, even with screws in place. Now the monitor truly fits into the rest of the system and I could start work on more interesting aspects of the project.

I remeasured the space that I  had available in the system, and realized that within the volume of the iShell, I still needed to fit the following:

1. Complete motherboard, including ram, CPU, and expansion cards (such as a graphics card)
   1. Note that the expansion cards needed a solid object to attach to, so that important things such as graphics cards would not fall out during transportation
2. Power Supply
   1. Since this was a full size ATX unit, it will be a  bit of a challenge to fit
   2. Additionally, it is critical to have the power supply remain internal for maximum portability. I want to be able to pull this up to a starbucks, add A/C, and bring out a wireless mouse and keyboard, and be ready to surf the tubes while drinking overpriced coffee
3. Optical and Magnetic drives
   1. This part was easier than most because I could repurpose the iMac’s original drive cage. It already had a slot loading DVD drive, which was acceptable.
   2. I replaced the 12 GB drive with a 1 TB drive, making for quite the upgrade

The drives could easily fit into the bottom half of the case, as they did before. Any extra space down there will likely be used to affix internal USB ports or some such novelty.

The interesting part will now be in the top half of the case, where I must be able to fit both the complete motheboard mounts, and the PSU. I figured out that I will need to change my design a bit here.  The PSU can remain near the back of the case, but on its side to minimize its footprint. The motherboard, instead of mounting flat on the metal floor of the top half of the case, will instead be mounted on the back of the LCD monitor. This will give it enough room to have critical expansion cards installed, such as a graphics card. I can make an additional mounting on the metal floor to allow graphics cards to stablize against.

Mounting the motherboard itself is a bit tricky, as it relize on having a number of very  precisely drilled holes. I cheated a bit here and cut out the motherboard mounting panel from the iShell guts’ original donor case. I’ll need to mount this resulting piece to a thicker piece of aluminum and mount that subsequent combination to the back of the LCD. At least it will be well grounded!

Well, that’s all for now. Until next time….