I am Oldskool

Don't be afraid to call it gaudy. If you thought that I was aiming for class and style you were wrong. I want bright, tacky and gaudy. That is how it went, from beige to luminous orange and yellow. I am modding this now, as distastefully (yet clean and tidy) as possible. That is the whole point in an old skool build right?

Any way, today I painted the fan wires and cut a new centre piece for the intake, that's now as tidy as you like.

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I then fitted the floor with this stuff.

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Seriously, it should carry a health warning. Anything it touches it sticks to and you ain't getting it off.

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Try and ignore all of the light flooding in. It won't do that when everything is closed up I had the same issues with Dianoga.

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Nice and tidy.
 
Work continues. Firstly I braided the entire FP.

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Wow, now I know why my hands are covered in hard skin and cuts.

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Just in case you were wondering what had happened to the gills. I spent a couple of hours cleaning and then welding them up the other night. Then reassembled.

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Before.

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I actually thought that the black inside part was nickle coated, but nope.

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All copper ! Before.

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After.

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For the inside I used a Dremel wire brush and then compound on a polishing attachment. For the bottom I went P1200, P1500, P2000 and then P3000. Not a mirror but hey, it'll do :)
 
ANDARIAL said:
Looking good :)
I would be cutting out a hole to match the front fan though,better throughput of air with no restriction
Click to expand...

You can't. There are mount holes for the case itself. The airflow is actually very good. The 80mm cutouts are bumped outward so there is no turbulence. Already tested the intake fan at certain voltages, 12v is fine and it brings in loads of air :) I mounted it so that the centre of the fan is dead centre with the middle of the two 80mm holes. Meaning that it's only really the flat spot that is covered.
 
Making Orings 101. First you need a block and some nitrile rubber.

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Remove old Oring and fit new.

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Mark, cut (making sure the cuts are perfectly straight)

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And...

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OK so I admit it took me two attempts. Lessons learned from mistake... 1, you need a tiny amount of super glue. 2, you only get one shot. If you miss the glue dries and goes hard and then the Oring will not bond. So you can either shave it off and try again, or just start again like I did.

I also got out the heat gun and Isoprop and made the PSU a little more palatable.

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Images are blocked at work but I'm still captivated by the words! Makes me want to accelerate my plans and jump straight into my 3rd/4th planned project to refurbish an old socket 478 P4 system.

Will catch up on this when I get home!
 
liking this project, would like to know at the end the total cost just out of interest..

I dont know if ive missed anything but with the amount of work going into the insides, are you retrofitting a vision panel?
 
Kurgen said:
liking this project, would like to know at the end the total cost just out of interest..

I dont know if ive missed anything but with the amount of work going into the insides, are you retrofitting a vision panel?
Click to expand...

No. The outside of the case will remain 100% bone stock. Once you cut an Alienware you destroy it forever IMO. I already cut a panel on one before and it cost me £130 to replace. With the sides back on I want all of them to be bone stock.

I can pretty much tell you what it cost now tbh. Do bear in mind that 90% of this was for modding reasons only. The hardware itself cost peanuts. Also bear in mind that most of this was not needed, but I got it any way.

Block - free
Acrylic for block top - £4
Oring £1.19
Rad - £5 in postage (swapped with a mate for a 1156 back plate for a Corsair AIO as they were trying to charge him £18)
Res - £8.50
Fittings. 5 were left over from my last project and I bought 2 more. So add that as you feel valid. They were £2.99 each on OCUK clearance. They're Bitspower.
Boxed motherboard, Athlon 2400+ XP and 512mb DDR4 was £25.
PSU - free, needed a £1.30 fan to repair
HDD £3.99
DVDR £5
IDE cables 99p each
Acrylic £10.59
GPU - £15 (brand new)
Fans - had them in a box for over two years (all of the Cougars)
IDE - CF adapter £3.49 but got refund as I think it's faulty and £5 for a 4gb reasonably quick CF card.
Case £35
Coolant - left over
Tubing - again left over, but I have loads in this size any way as my last loop used all BP fittings in white again on sale for £2.99 ea.

TBH that is about it. I do not count things like glue, plastic weld and tools because every tool I buy gets constant use for everything, not just a PC. Same goes for masking tape, double sided tape and tape foam, I use them constantly so have to top them up at some point. Silver vinyl was leftover from my last project too, I decided to use red on that instead.

To any one out there thinking about starting up modding *this* is the way to go about it. It's seriously cheap hardware and if you **** up it's easy to replace for a reasonable price.
 
thats fair enough. looking forward to some more pics..

I have quite a bit of old hardware, but dont have the room to keep it setup, or the time to get it running properly

  • Compaq 386 with 5.25" and 3.5" drives plus HDD and a CRT all works
  • unbranded 486 with 5.25" and an iomega Zip drive
  • Acorn Electron (had this from new!)
  • BBC Micro Model B
 
You should be playing Stunt Island on that 486 ;) one of the best games ever. Ahhh, those were the days. I was reminiscing in bed last night about my early PC days. I started on a 286 SX25. I upgraded to a 486 DX266 and then a DX4100 before going Pentium. But yeah, some of my happiest days ever were just chilling on my 486 with Stunt Island, Papyrus Indy Car & NASCAR and a can of coke :) This rig is a '93-'99 rig. Those are the games I am gunning for, so mostly Sega PC stuff on DX3 lol.

Best update yet :D The block is now being machined. Here is the block being milled.

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And to size.

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I had a choice of chamfered or rounded edge. I chose rounded.

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And the edge finish from the mill.

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I will be polishing that out myself :)
 
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