Kool PC and Hardware and Consoles Handheld mods, done by people you have seen ok.
I start of with this
Main Images:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3358804.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614990.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614993.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614996.jpg
Info:
USS Enterprise PC Mod
By Russ Caslis
I was walking around a toy store when I spotted a cool-looking toy: a model of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. I thought it might be big enough to hold a VIA mini-ITX motherboard. Since the toy cost only $19, I bought it.
At home I ripped open the box and confirmed that the toy at its widest measured a little over 17 centimeters. The mini-ITX would be a tight fit, but it'd fit.
I could see it all now (in my head) -- runway lights, planes on the deck, control switches on the command center. All that was left was the planning, cutting, building, painting, and tweaking. No problem.
In reality, the USS Enterprise PC mod took four months and was more difficult than it looks. On "The Screen Savers" I'll go over the individual pieces and show you what it took to create the mod.
Work on this mod proceeded in three stages. Each task has its own level of difficulty.
Plan the components with respect to location and function.
Perform all modifications to the case.
Assemble everything.
Hacking the hull
Did most of the work on the main hull and deck. Planning took a while. I knew which motherboard and power supply I'd use, but items such as the sound circuit, DVD-ROM drive, and memory card reader/writer were latecomers to the process.
One significant problem was that there were few flat areas on the hull for all the ports I needed.
You might not notice all the modifications I made to the toy. I removed a lot of plastic to make sure everything would fit. I was careful not to remove any critical structures. I had to remove at least one main mounting screw hole in the center or else the motherboard wouldn't fit. I made sure that losing that mount wouldn't affect the mod's structural integrity.
Cutting holes for the memory card reader/writer and the DVD-ROM was especially difficult. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but the hull curves slightly. Trying to cut precise holes for straight pieces in a curved structure isn't easy.
The deck of the aircraft carrier went through a lot. I did a lot of painting and added a few lights so the runway would light up. I individually sanded more than 22 LEDs and wired them into the runway.
The ship's command center went through serious modification. I painted it, added electronics for switches, and added detail with sheet plastic.
These modifications were the hardest part of the mod. Knowing that a single accidental cut with my Dremel could ruin weeks of work was stressful.
Original mouse design
View larger image
I bought a cheap ball mouse, thinking I'd paint it like a ship. I'd put a "missile bay" on the back with rows of red, white, and blue LEDs. I also masked off alternating sections of the white mouse cable and dyed the cable, leaving a warning tether.
Images of it:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615020.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615023.jpg
After doing all this, I decided the mouse didn't look like a ship, though I loved how the cable looked.
At the toy store I found a small police hydrofoil. I bought it, took it apart, bought another (optical) mouse, and transferred the guts into the new toy. The result is strange but cool (I think).
There were several challenges to the mouse mod. The guts of the optical mouse were way too long and wide. For the length, I cut off the sections for the buttons since I'd be using my own buttons. The problem with the width was more daunting. I used my Dremel to grind away the outer traces on the circuit board and used bits of wire to reconnect the traces.
Keyboard
The keyboard was the easiest piece. I bought a cheap keyboard and disassembled it so I could replace the LEDs for the caps lock (and other lights). I also dyed (using vinyl dye) the keyboard.
Image of it:
http://graphics.techtv.com/graphics/thescr...ers/3615078.jpg
I replaced the existing green LEDs with ultra-bright LEDs in a patriotic red, white, and blue pattern. The problem was that the keyboard used a clear piece of plastic in front of the LEDs. The red LED contaminated the white LED with some of its color. My solution was to cut the solid clear plastic piece and paint the edges black to prevent the color bleed. Then I glued the parts back together.
I painted the keyboard top gray to match the ship hull. I painted the bottom gray to simulate the water line. Last, I painted the gray multimedia keys white to remind people of missiles.
Planes
I wanted several planes on the deck of the aircraft carrier. The die-cast planes that came with the toy were junk, so I went to a hobby store to find some plastic-model kits. I had trouble finding appropriate types of planes and helicopters in the scale I needed. Eventually I found two F-14s and decided they'd have to be good enough.
I wanted to make at least one of the F-14s light up, so I put the hard-drive activity light in the engines and thingypit of one of the planes. If I used a couple of solid metal pieces as the power leads (like the pins from an LED), I could make the plane removable. What good is a toy with small planes if you can't remove the planes and play with them?
The kits for the planes were low-quality. The pieces didn't line up well. I ended up using modeling putty to fill the holes and sanding the pieces down. This is very difficult when the section you're trying to sand is only a few millimeters long. If you look closely, you can tell things don't line up well. But if no one told you, you probably wouldn't notice.
Adding the lights to one of the planes was difficult. Besides the small spaces I had to work with, the main section of the plane was best painted as one piece. I had to seal the electronics into the glued-together model but cover the LEDs with tape and leave enough space for the wires to stretch so the LEDs wouldn't interfere with the painting.
Image of it:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615081.jpg
Components and Other Details
The standard computer stuff.
VIA mini-ATX motherboard
1-GHZ CPU with MPEG acceleration
VGA and RCA video-out
Two USB connectors
Two FireWire connectors
100-megabit Ethernet
6-in-1 memory card reader/writer
DVD-ROM drive
4GB laptop hard drive with desktop hard drive adapter
Internal mods
Most of the connectors from the motherboard required extension cables.
I modded the power supply so that the power plug connector was separate from the supply itself. I also made the supply's wiring harness come out the top instead of the side.
I added a 20-second digital voice recorder/player circuit that plays the national anthem at the touch of a button.
To add the runway lights, I drilled holes down the sides of the runway and placed white LEDs inside the holes. The lights turn on and off via a switch on the control tower. The center stripe of the runway has amber LEDs. All the LEDs were sanded down for better light distribution.
I start of with this
Main Images:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3358804.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614990.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614993.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3614996.jpg
Info:
USS Enterprise PC Mod
By Russ Caslis
I was walking around a toy store when I spotted a cool-looking toy: a model of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. I thought it might be big enough to hold a VIA mini-ITX motherboard. Since the toy cost only $19, I bought it.
At home I ripped open the box and confirmed that the toy at its widest measured a little over 17 centimeters. The mini-ITX would be a tight fit, but it'd fit.
I could see it all now (in my head) -- runway lights, planes on the deck, control switches on the command center. All that was left was the planning, cutting, building, painting, and tweaking. No problem.
In reality, the USS Enterprise PC mod took four months and was more difficult than it looks. On "The Screen Savers" I'll go over the individual pieces and show you what it took to create the mod.
Work on this mod proceeded in three stages. Each task has its own level of difficulty.
Plan the components with respect to location and function.
Perform all modifications to the case.
Assemble everything.
Hacking the hull
Did most of the work on the main hull and deck. Planning took a while. I knew which motherboard and power supply I'd use, but items such as the sound circuit, DVD-ROM drive, and memory card reader/writer were latecomers to the process.
One significant problem was that there were few flat areas on the hull for all the ports I needed.
You might not notice all the modifications I made to the toy. I removed a lot of plastic to make sure everything would fit. I was careful not to remove any critical structures. I had to remove at least one main mounting screw hole in the center or else the motherboard wouldn't fit. I made sure that losing that mount wouldn't affect the mod's structural integrity.
Cutting holes for the memory card reader/writer and the DVD-ROM was especially difficult. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but the hull curves slightly. Trying to cut precise holes for straight pieces in a curved structure isn't easy.
The deck of the aircraft carrier went through a lot. I did a lot of painting and added a few lights so the runway would light up. I individually sanded more than 22 LEDs and wired them into the runway.
The ship's command center went through serious modification. I painted it, added electronics for switches, and added detail with sheet plastic.
These modifications were the hardest part of the mod. Knowing that a single accidental cut with my Dremel could ruin weeks of work was stressful.
Original mouse design
View larger image
I bought a cheap ball mouse, thinking I'd paint it like a ship. I'd put a "missile bay" on the back with rows of red, white, and blue LEDs. I also masked off alternating sections of the white mouse cable and dyed the cable, leaving a warning tether.
Images of it:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615020.jpg
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615023.jpg
After doing all this, I decided the mouse didn't look like a ship, though I loved how the cable looked.
At the toy store I found a small police hydrofoil. I bought it, took it apart, bought another (optical) mouse, and transferred the guts into the new toy. The result is strange but cool (I think).
There were several challenges to the mouse mod. The guts of the optical mouse were way too long and wide. For the length, I cut off the sections for the buttons since I'd be using my own buttons. The problem with the width was more daunting. I used my Dremel to grind away the outer traces on the circuit board and used bits of wire to reconnect the traces.
Keyboard
The keyboard was the easiest piece. I bought a cheap keyboard and disassembled it so I could replace the LEDs for the caps lock (and other lights). I also dyed (using vinyl dye) the keyboard.
Image of it:
http://graphics.techtv.com/graphics/thescr...ers/3615078.jpg
I replaced the existing green LEDs with ultra-bright LEDs in a patriotic red, white, and blue pattern. The problem was that the keyboard used a clear piece of plastic in front of the LEDs. The red LED contaminated the white LED with some of its color. My solution was to cut the solid clear plastic piece and paint the edges black to prevent the color bleed. Then I glued the parts back together.
I painted the keyboard top gray to match the ship hull. I painted the bottom gray to simulate the water line. Last, I painted the gray multimedia keys white to remind people of missiles.
Planes
I wanted several planes on the deck of the aircraft carrier. The die-cast planes that came with the toy were junk, so I went to a hobby store to find some plastic-model kits. I had trouble finding appropriate types of planes and helicopters in the scale I needed. Eventually I found two F-14s and decided they'd have to be good enough.
I wanted to make at least one of the F-14s light up, so I put the hard-drive activity light in the engines and thingypit of one of the planes. If I used a couple of solid metal pieces as the power leads (like the pins from an LED), I could make the plane removable. What good is a toy with small planes if you can't remove the planes and play with them?
The kits for the planes were low-quality. The pieces didn't line up well. I ended up using modeling putty to fill the holes and sanding the pieces down. This is very difficult when the section you're trying to sand is only a few millimeters long. If you look closely, you can tell things don't line up well. But if no one told you, you probably wouldn't notice.
Adding the lights to one of the planes was difficult. Besides the small spaces I had to work with, the main section of the plane was best painted as one piece. I had to seal the electronics into the glued-together model but cover the LEDs with tape and leave enough space for the wires to stretch so the LEDs wouldn't interfere with the painting.
Image of it:
http://www.techtv.com/graphics/thescreensavers/3615081.jpg
Components and Other Details
The standard computer stuff.
VIA mini-ATX motherboard
1-GHZ CPU with MPEG acceleration
VGA and RCA video-out
Two USB connectors
Two FireWire connectors
100-megabit Ethernet
6-in-1 memory card reader/writer
DVD-ROM drive
4GB laptop hard drive with desktop hard drive adapter
Internal mods
Most of the connectors from the motherboard required extension cables.
I modded the power supply so that the power plug connector was separate from the supply itself. I also made the supply's wiring harness come out the top instead of the side.
I added a 20-second digital voice recorder/player circuit that plays the national anthem at the touch of a button.
To add the runway lights, I drilled holes down the sides of the runway and placed white LEDs inside the holes. The lights turn on and off via a switch on the control tower. The center stripe of the runway has amber LEDs. All the LEDs were sanded down for better light distribution.