First post, by iKarith
- Rank
- Newbie
For my budget SS7 box, I ended up using an AT/ATX hybrid motherboard because it's a lot cheaper than any SS7 ATX board I found. I decided to spend a little more than the price of a budget ATX case and buy an cheap AT case which I figured would be significantly better made than what passes for cheap ATX cases. THAT was a mistake. It's probably true about the case construction, but it's still a mistake.
The case has TWO screw holes within the geometry of the baby AT board and one of them doesn't line up. Which means the board wobbles. Which in turn means that if you're moving the machine around or fiddling around with the insides, there's a good chance you'll turn it on and hear beeeeeeeep, beep beep beep. Then you'll swear at it and reseat the video card for the 17,000th time.
And I've been doing a lot of that moving and fiddling with its innards because it turns out the Acorp 5ALI61's IDE is ... well, it doesn't like CF cards for some reason. Which means I've been hearing those beeps a lot.
Has anyone got annoyed enough with this kind of thing to find a good way to adapt a case to not use snap-in standoffs? I'm considering perhaps either nylon screw-in type with longer screw threads to accommodate a small fender washer over the keyhole and a nut. But I'm feeling like the keyhole might be too wide for that and give too much play even then. I could maybe bondo some standoffs in place right where the board needs them, but the case would never be useful with any other board if I did.
Or I could scrap the AT case (maybe keeping its turbo switch and drop $40 on a cheap ATX case like a Thermaltake Versa or something. I'm about $80 into this AT case with a couple of mods to use the power and turbo on a hybrid board, so I'd rather that not be a waste.
Anyone have thoughts on this stuff?