VOGONS


First post, by xjas

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So you’ve put your classy old Baby-AT board in one of those new-fangled ATX cases and you don’t like the resulting giant hole in the back. Maybe you like to keep all your holes neat & tidy, or maybe you don’t want rats/mice/gerbils entering your back hole. Let’s not go there (TOO LATE, BEAVIS), but here’s what you can do.

YOU WILL NEED:
- A piece of card stock. Something stiff and firm, but not too thick. For your rear hole. The jokes just won’t stop writing themselves, so who am I to intervene?
- A roll of metal tape, the type that plumbers or ducting people use. If you live near a construction site you can probably pinch one while nobody’s looking.
- Scissors or a knife or some kind of cutting tool. No, not a meat cleaver. Put that away.
- A pencil, probably. Or your imagination, if it's really really good.

1. Take measurements of the area you have to work with. Note that you’ll want this slightly bigger than a clip-in I/O shield. My case conveniently has screw holes for a screw-in type shield, but it’s not a show stopper if yours doesn’t.

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2. This post is going to get too long if I explain Kintergarten-level cardboard crafting in detail. Measure, cut, and make this thing.

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3. Cover your cardboard piece with the aluminum tape. Try to keep it smooth or your finished product will look like butt. Fold the extra edges of the tape over the cardboard. This is actually a lot easier to do “cleanly” than it is with plastic tape.

Warning: this stuff sticks to itself AND OTHER METAL viciously. Be sure you have it positioned EXACTLY right before you stick it to anything metallic or you’re going to be in for some aggravation.

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4. You could measure where the screw holes go carefully with the ruler, or you could put self-tapping screws in from behind (JESUS CHRIST THE JOKES WON’T STOP) and press your new shield over to put dimples in the right place. Poke the new holes open from the front.

If you don’t have screw holes on your case, skip this step. Obviously.

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5. Attach it to the case and you're done! If you can't screw it in, use the metal tape to hold it down on all sides. I did so here on the left side & top, because otherwise it would have just been flapping around. If you do it right, using small pieces (like 5x10mm) you can't even see it.

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Last edited by xjas on 2018-12-23, 20:01. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 1 of 9, by xjas

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Couple more pics. It’s not as “perfect” as professional metal shield would be, but I think it looks pretty good. It covers up that gap and cost me $0.00, so can’t complain.

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twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 2 of 9, by Baoran

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I have not seen many of that kind of cases that have screw holes next to the shield.

Reply 4 of 9, by SW-SSG

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Not bad. With the space above the keyboard connector, a ~50mm fan mount or two seems doable.

Reply 5 of 9, by KCompRoom2000

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Baoran wrote:

I have not seen many of that kind of cases that have screw holes next to the shield.

I have two ATX cases (both of which are from the late-90s/early-2000s) with screw holes next to the I/O shield placement, but I ended up not using them because the I/O shields that I have don't use them.

Anyways, this is a good and creative guide. Sure to help people who are having trouble finding real AT I/O shields.

Reply 6 of 9, by xjas

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KCompRoom2000 wrote:
Baoran wrote:

I have not seen many of that kind of cases that have screw holes next to the shield.

I have two ATX cases (both of which are from the late-90s/early-2000s) with screw holes next to the I/O shield placement, but I ended up not using them because the I/O shields that I have don't use them.

Yeah, I've got a couple cases, and two or three boards with matching screw-in I/O shields. I didn't think they were that uncommon. Nothing from newer than ~2003 though. I never end up using those boards in the cases with the screw holes, so here we are.

In retrospect I could have made this out of some workable plastic (like say, the lid of a margarine tub) for a bit of extra strength and tear resistance, but the card stock turned out fine too. It wouldn't even be that hard to use a piece of metal but I was doing this at literally 4 AM and didn't want to use power tools.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 7 of 9, by Ozzuneoj

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Nice job! I did the same thing for the tiny 386SX board I threw into a newer ATX tower using a cereal box and aluminum foil tape. There was one screw hole not far away that I used to secure it, but honestly even if there are no screw holes you can get by with just sealing off the edges with foil tape. It's quite durable and unless you're constantly shoving things into the IO cover by accident it should be sufficient to hold it in place. If you really wanted to get crazy you could cut some extra holes in the cardboard to attach other "floating" ports that would normally screw onto an AT case, like parallel, serial, etc. In my case, the 386 has basically nothing onboard, so any ports are going to be on an expansion card anyway.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 8 of 9, by MrSmiley381

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xjas wrote:

So you’ve put your classy old Baby-AT board in one of those new-fangled ATX cases and you don’t like the resulting giant hole in the back. Maybe you like to keep all your holes neat & tidy, or maybe you don’t want rats/mice/gerbils entering your back hole. Let’s not go there (TOO LATE, BEAVIS), but here’s what you can do.

Heh heh. You said hole.

xjas wrote:

YOU WILL NEED:
- A piece of card stock. Something stiff and firm, but not too thick. For your rear hole. The jokes just won’t stop writing themselves, so who am I to intervene?

Ooh, Jesus Christ~

xjas wrote:

- A roll of metal tape, the type that plumbers or ducting people use. If you live near a construction site you can probably pinch one while nobody’s looking.

Took me a second to get the joke. More of a Holy Diver man, personally.

I nabbed a NOS AT case with a small rectangular back plate with only an AT mouse hole, but the plate has some extra space that happens to fit well with the AT motherboard that has a PS/2 mouse connector. I might steal your method and apply it for that little space, lest some bizarre creature tries to find its way inside my fancy Pentium MMX machine.

I spend my days fighting with clunky software so I can afford to spend my evenings fighting with clunky hardware.

Reply 9 of 9, by kaputnik

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Looks really good in all its simplicity. I like it!

Also, thanks for the laughs 😁