First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
This idea just popped into my head about 3 minutes ago, so bear with me.
I have many many old cards that came from scrap lots over the past 7-8 years and were sadly already stripped of their back plates. A relative of mine recently got a resin 3D printer of some kind and it dawned on me that it would probably be the ideal device for making blank back plates since it could probably make a whole "sheet" of them relatively quickly and they'd be far flatter than one made with a normal 3D printer. The main reason for doing this rather than just use blank metal slot covers is the simplicity and ease of cutting and drilling all the proper holes\cutouts. I am not a metal worker and I have very little experience (or tools) for doing this with steel. Plus I have a bad habit of lacerating myself any time I try to work with metal.
The measuring and laying out of the cutouts is also a bit challenging since everything has to be pretty accurate and straight for it to not look weird. If one cutout is in the wrong place then the card may not even slot in all the way.
Anyway... I got to thinking... Is there any combination of currently available websites, software or "AI" services that could be used to generate replacement back plates for old cards based on photos? Like, if it starts with a basic model like this and then I give it a picture of the back of a card to make holes. If the software was customized it could even let you manually add labels on the ports if your printer is good enough and the font isn't too small. The fact that nearly all single-slot PC cards would use an identical base model for the plate is what makes this seem feasible. It would give the program something to start with that doesn't change.
Thinking on it now, it seems ridiculous to expect a piece of software to not only understand what I want, but to also make accurate measurements... and yet, there is a lot of crazy stuff happening in this field these days. If it isn't possible now, maybe it will be soon?
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.