| the parts list | max power consumption |
| VIA EPIA M10000 (1 GHz C3 CPU - Nehemiah) 1DDR 1394 $158.00 | 24 Watts |
| 256 MB DDR 2100 Corsair $ 49.00 | 20 Watts |
| IBM/HITACHI 40 GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 $ 59.00 | 13 Watts |
| GENERIC DVD-ROM drive $ 45.00 | 20 Watts |
| EL-LIGHTED ROLLED IDE cable $ 15.00 | 2 Watts |
| FLOURESCENT ROLLED IDE cable $ 6.00 | 0 Watts |
| Pyramid thingie I already had $ 0.00 | 1 Watts |
| 150 Watt Micro-ATX Power supply I already had $ 0.00 | |
| Assorted wires, leds, and buttons I already had $ 0.00 | 1 Watts |
| Basketball display case $ 30.00 | 0 Watts |
| TOTAL DOLLARS: $362.00 | MAXIMUM TOTAL WATTS: 81 Watts |
|
 |
Some plans are good too, I suppose. I decided that I was aiming for something like a Known Space General Dynamics hull (Google for Larry Niven if that doesn't make any sense). Plexiglass looks so cool (little did I know what I was getting into). A search on Ebay for "plexiglass cube" turned up this beauty... Having TAP plastics do it or just buying a prebuilt metal case would have been easier by far, but this has been an okay project. |
| After some shipping time, it all arrived. First, I crammed everything into the box to see if it would fit as well as I'd imagined. It'll be a tight squeeze with that huge PSU... |
 |
 |
Raymond the cat of course had to be involved in the proceedings. Woven mats of his fur will provide the all important insulation that fans and heatsinks require. |
| All good projects involve breaking things that already work. Luckily this case included a much smaller PSU that I'll actually use. |
 |
 |
These are fancy rubber feet that are supposed to prevent the machine from transmitting its vibratory influence to other items in the area, such as desks. I can't say that they really work so well, but I have them and might as well reuse them. |
| I've also got this nifty little pyramid-shaped thermo-rheostat thingy which spins fans down and up depending on system temperature. First step is to open the PSU and route its fan power out of the box so that I can hook it to the pyramid. This voids the warranty of this cheeseball component worth less than a six-pack of beer, but my max power load is going to be half of what the PSU is rated for, so I don't care. I've also hooked the CPU fan to my pyramid. It is really quiet now and stable through intense loads like CD ripping. |
 |
 |
 |
This is where I discover how difficult plexiglass is to work with. After cutting this one hole for the power cord took me two hours and looked like hell, I realized that a Dremel was not a suitable tool for cutting irregular holes. Even at its slow speed it melts rather than cuts, and its cutting blade isn't deep enough to get through the plastic. |
| Drilling holes is easier, luckily. I next mounted the hard drive. It's in a quiet-drive box. It's still the noisiest component in the whole system, but it's quieter than it was before I put it in the box. |
 |
 |
Remember the value of breaking things that work in tangential pursuits of the project's final aims! I actually wanted that big disk to go in this server, which donated its 10G disk to the new desktop. Naturally I boffed LILO on the 40GB, so I went ahead and upgraded the server to Mandrake 9.2 as long as I was in there fixing the MBR. |
| Time to take a break and put everything back into mock-up mode. |
 |
 |
For some silly reason I thought that more practice might make the Dremel a better tool for cutting plexiglass... After this, I finally went to a friend's house and we used his jigsaw and drill to do the rest of the cuts required. This is the result. |
| The "finished" product. Unfortunately that damned EL light quit working within two days -- it sure looked cool while it was on though. |
 |
 |
Admit it -- you really like that power button, don't you? I got seriously tired of messing with this project at this point. |
| Mandrake 9.2 installed with zero trouble. However, it's using the VESA drivers for video and since they don't have XV, there's no movie watching or game playing on this baby. There are binary drivers for older versions of Mandrake and other OS's at VIA's site, but they don't work with 9.2 and are philosophically problematic for me. Luckily there is progress being made on reverse engineering this hardware, and by the time the next Mandrake release is out this motherboard should be able to reach its potential. |
 |
