SSTV2 wrote:Working on an old computer restoration at school? I wonder what sort of study program allows you to have so much fun at the place of educational institution.
Personally, I'd just patch a missing piece on the front bezel or, at least, would try to find a similar IBM case for the transfer, if finding front bezel would prove too difficult. I understand that this project was meant to practice a certain skill, but I usually tend to avoid hard mods on old hardware at all costs. Looking forward to see how the project turned out.
It's just an IT program, basically it allows you to get all the certifications you need (like CompTIA, A+, Greenlee, etc.) to be certified to work in cabling, networking, and computer repair. In this case, I've seen some fairly crazy things done, but I think this takes the cake if you'll pardon my lack of humility. Seeing the modifications now, they all look so simple, but at the time it was hard. I'd say it was one of the most difficult things I've done, and I even had my instructor helping me quite a bit.
As for your comment on modifying the hardware as much as I did, I generally try to avoid it too, though I decided to take a risk here and see what happened- something I likely won't do again unless I have to do so in order to get something to work properly. You can already see a few hints to denote what I've done here, but I took a few close-ups of each mod I ended up doing.
Warlord wrote:thats a bummer. yeah same id probably remove that front facia put it on a table and try to mold bondo in around the broken spot, try to sand it down to match and paint it. not much else u can do. if u had the original plastic that broke off you could use some acetone to glue it back together.
That's what I had originally planned to do, but the modifications I made make it impossible to get it back into its old case. I'll demonstrate what I've done now that I got a set of screwdrivers today.
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Here's the inside of it. The cable management looks messy, but I've designed it so that all of the wires are either above or pushed away from the PSU's air intake, to provide ample airflow to it.
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The first, and frankly, the most idiotic, disturbing, and potentially dangerous mod I did was to figure out a way to get the riser card to fit in the shorter case. The riser originally had 5 ISA slots, I think, but it was too tall for the case. I tried the riser that came with the other motherboard, but it didn't work-
So I had my instructor slice off an entire chunk of the top of it with a diamond-tipped tile cutter/grinder.
I did this first to make sure it still worked after that much trauma- and, indeed, it worked! Both the SCSI card and sound card work just fine, which I thought would happen because the riser itself appeared to be electrically dumb, and luckily, it seems I was right. The only reason why I did this is that if it killed the riser card, I could just buy another one (maybe) and forget about continuing the modding process. I sanded it down to make sure the traces were contained in the PCB, and lined the top with three layers of electrical tape to ensure it wouldn't ever short against anything, specifically the steel arm that holds it in place. I had to bend the steel arm a fair bit to get it to grip onto the "new," riser card properly, but it is now solid and you can't wiggle the riser card at all.
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The next problem was that the original 3.5" bay for the HDD was sideways, and mounted to the side of the 5.25" bays- even with the bracket itself unscrewed and removed, there was still a little metal tab that happened to be right over the heatsink on the 486- so with the CPU in the motherboard, it couldn't fit. To fix this, I simply grabbed a pair of plyers, and ripped the heatsink off of the CPU, destroying the ceramic and shattering the die of the CPU, which I subsequently snorted.
Okay, maybe I didn't go that far. Instead, I had my instructor, again, take his grinder to that little metal tab, and it sliced right off. The motherboard now fits in the case with the CPU mounted, but I realized too late that you can't actually remove the CPU while it's in the case- the locking arm is tucked under the 5.25" bays just enough to prevent it from being moved very far. Oh, well, I don't plan on upgrading the CPU anytime soon or removing it for any reason, barring any unforeseen consequences- I mean, unforeseen events.
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Two things here- the first is the power button, which looks a bit mangled. This power button was the original that came out of the IBM- the original original power button was just a plastic rod that connected straight into the old power supply, so my instructor drilled the original hole bigger, and drilled two smaller holes to allow the power button to screw into the case. After that, I realized that in order to use the bottom 5.25" bay, I had to knock out the panel that the top screw was screwed into, leaving only the bottom screw. I bent the piece of metal that had been attached to the top of the power button backwards, so it wouldn't get in the way of any installation of drives. I had to snip the original power button to probably 1/8th or maybe even more of its original length before the power button on the case could interact with it properly.
The horrible bent mess that is that 3D printed 5.25" to 3.5" adapter became a necessity once the other 3.5" HDD bay had been removed to allow for the heatsink to fit. The way this 5.25" bay works is unfavorable to say the least, and uses a complex mounting system that was designed by a god-awful human being that had some sort of sick agenda in mind whilst designing it, which is why that bay looks so bent. The connection is very sturdy, however, and neither the HDD nor the 3D printed parts can be moved, even with me tugging on it with a bit of force.
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This ugly-as-sin mess was caused by the realization that the PB used a small board that screwed into the case where the LED light indicators and TURBO and RESET buttons are, and that the entire assembly was completely incompatible with the IBM without having issues. During this time, I:
Directly hooked up the LEDs to the IBM motherboard. They were very dim, and every time the HDD indicator would flash, so would the power indicator.
Tried removing those LEDs by ripping them off the circuit board and drilling holes where the leads were, and soldering on the original IBM LEDs to that little PCB to see if it worked. It didn't. It did the same exact thing as before- and I had also ruined the original LEDs in the process. Luckily, the school has tons of the little things, and I soon found a brand-new green LED and a brand new orange LED. I soldered them to the original IBM connector, and I slid them into some heat-shrink tubes, pressed them up against the little lenses that transmit the LED light to the outside of the case, and super-glued it on. It isn't pretty on the inside, but that power indicator light is now a brilliant, bright green. Even in a room with studio lighting, you could probably see that the computer was on. The HDD indicator isn't nearly as bright, which slightly irks me, though it is more than bright enough to see. I'd say it ended up being the same brightness as the original HDD indicator LED was.
I believe that's what all I did to get this thing to do what I wanted to do. I still have a couple of things left, mainly getting a shindig I/O shield set up, and possibly retrobriting that front panel and re-paining the steel shell itself, though that may or may not ever happen, and if it does happen, it'll be a while into the future.