My first DIY and homebrew computer case

  • Thread starter Thread starter Isaac Kuo
  • Start date Start date
I

Isaac Kuo

This is my first DIY system, as well as my first homebrew
computer case. The result is a stylish HTPC which looks
like a block of marble.

http://www.geocities.com/mechdan/marble.html

Making the case and connecting up all the hardware took
maybe 4 hours total. Getting the software to work took
easily twice that much, and involved a lot of really
hair-pulling frustration. I started off with a lot of
fun trying to deal with the Win98 NDIS.VXD bug on
processors faster than 2.2Ghz. Then I had fun fun fun
dealing with Elitegroup's driver CD which seemed to
have every driver in the world EXCEPT for the ones
for the motherboard it came with. In perfect newbie
fashion, it took me several hours to eventually give
up on getting the onboard ethernet to work before
realizing--knock-myself-on-the-head--I could just install
another ethernet card I had lying around (and which I
knew how to get to work).

After all that fun just getting Win98 patched and
drivers installed, I still had to get all my HTPC
software working. Installing Catalyst and my new
Radeon 7000 was easy--getting Powerstrip to output
1080i scan rates was NOT. I thought it would be
a breeze because I'd previously configured Powerstrip
successfully on a Radeon 7200 and an Ati Rage64.
It turns out there were plenty of obscure "difficulties"
I was simply lucky enough not to encounter before.
Thank goodness for the Internet and kind helpful
people on web forums!

After this learning experience, though, I'm definitely
going with home-building from now on!

Isaac Kuo
 
Isaac Kuo said:
This is my first DIY system, as well as my first homebrew
computer case. The result is a stylish HTPC
Click to expand...

If you do say so yourself! But OK, it is pretty cool. I think if someone
wanted to spend a few dollars more, they could use real bath tile instead of
the vinyl to make it look even more klassy.
 
This is my first DIY system, as well as my first homebrew
computer case. The result is a stylish HTPC which looks
like a block of marble.

http://www.geocities.com/mechdan/marble.html

Making the case and connecting up all the hardware took
maybe 4 hours total. Getting the software to work took
easily twice that much, and involved a lot of really
hair-pulling frustration. I started off with a lot of
fun trying to deal with the Win98 NDIS.VXD bug on
processors faster than 2.2Ghz. Then I had fun fun fun
dealing with Elitegroup's driver CD which seemed to
have every driver in the world EXCEPT for the ones
for the motherboard it came with. In perfect newbie
fashion, it took me several hours to eventually give
up on getting the onboard ethernet to work before
realizing--knock-myself-on-the-head--I could just install
another ethernet card I had lying around (and which I
knew how to get to work).

After all that fun just getting Win98 patched and
drivers installed, I still had to get all my HTPC
software working. Installing Catalyst and my new
Radeon 7000 was easy--getting Powerstrip to output
1080i scan rates was NOT. I thought it would be
a breeze because I'd previously configured Powerstrip
successfully on a Radeon 7200 and an Ati Rage64.
It turns out there were plenty of obscure "difficulties"
I was simply lucky enough not to encounter before.
Thank goodness for the Internet and kind helpful
people on web forums!

After this learning experience, though, I'm definitely
going with home-building from now on!

Isaac Kuo
Click to expand...

IK:

Yeah yeah it looks pretty good ... but NEXT time ya gotta
build it inside an old Coca_cola dispenser ! Costs a quarter
each time ya wanna BOOT - and a couple weeks to work out the "state
machine" - but the AMD chip won't overheat, and you DO get the cola.
 
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