Re: XCVG's Bartop Candy Cab
From my understanding, the monitor mount is half built. I can't be sure, though, because I only sort of get how it works. The bezel I don't get at all, but the two are related somehow.
I don't have any pictures, but I might get some soon. The monitor is a nice size for this cab. There is like an inch on the top between the edge of the viewable area and the top of the cab, a significant portion more on the bottom because of the (now removed) control panel on the bezel, and a few inches on each side. It's big, in a good way (if you look at an actual candy, most of them have disproportionately sized monitors).
I also ripped apart the PC. The motherboard, videocard, hard drive, power supply and some cables went in a box- these will go in the cab. The rest goes in the box with all the other computer parts. The motherboard tray will be hacked out of the case and inserted in the back of the cab, behind the CP. This will also be modified to mount drives as well. The power supply will go underneath. I wish I had a better one, though. This one is garbage and the next upgrade will require a better one. The thing is, the PSU has to be modded- power is tapped from the PSU's switch and mains input to power everything else.
UPDATE (started post, did work, finished post):
Ripped apart the case, turns out that the mobo tray is useless. The motherboard faces the back or the side, so it's near impossible to plug stuff in. If it faces the back, the mobo is in the middle and there is nowhere to put the HDD. So we built a hardboard motherboard tray. I learned that my dad's idea of precise is even worse than mine. Screwing the motherboard in was incredibly sketchy. We hooked it all up and it still works, thankfully. I removed the bracket from the videocard, and it is now very low profile. The hard drive got moved to the monitor mount, and now there's plenty of room to plug things in.
We also had to rethink our power distribution scheme. The box we bought was the wrong kind, or something, and wouldn't work for some reason. We had a cube tap, and both adaptors and the screen can plug in to it. Unfortunately, we wouldn't have any room to grow. So I had a brainstorm and grabbed a 3-way 2 prong extension cord (the cheap white kind). Now we have an extra outlet (two actually, but one is nearly useless) and it saves some space in the bottom. The power bricks go on the opposite side of the monitor mount from the hard drive.
The paint job on the CP is done, at least the white part is. It's not that great, but oh well. A week of use will probably trash the paint anyway. The plan is to have a blue stripe going across and up, with a piece below the monitor painted blue and the blue stripe down the side. Or something like that. It would be nice to have CANDYTOP in white inside the CP stripe, but there's no way I could mask it that good. My dad mentioned tranfer lettering, I should look into that. Maybe even a sticker would work? It's too small for the vinyl sign cutter at school to do reliably, and I'd have to wait until September anyway.
I thought about putting an s-video jack on the back, but why bother? It's not like we're going to hook it to a TV. An input would be a lot more useful IMO. The case had a neat unit with USB and audio connections. I think I'll hack it a bit if necessary, and put it under one of the side pods. The headphone jack will go to the speaker headphone output. Maybe a sticker on the side would be in order? A network jack will be on the back for sure (wireless is nice but we don't have a wireless network adaptor), and maybe a single USB port as well (I have one extension left). Power and the main power switch will be there too, of course. The monitor control board, power switch, and volume control will go under the CP box. I'm not sure where to put the reset switch and power/reset LEDs or even if I want them.
On a semi-related note, I found a 12ft s-video cable. Not the component one I wanted, but now I know that 12 feet is long enough.
Testing using the semi-broken 17" CRT. It's a big piece of flax but the viewable area of the LCD is bigger, I think. The keyboard is an Aopen Spill Resistant Keyboard (just a cheapy) and the mouse is a horrible Zoltrix (WTF?) piece of garbage that amazingly still works. It has a ball, that's how old it is. We do have a mini-keyboard, which is horrible to use but fits nicely inside, and a small but very much usable little mouse.
For some reason I really like shots of open computers like this. You can see the motherboard on the tray, videocard with slot bracket removed, and the switch assembly from the case. The hard drive is hidden behind the cable- it's just sitting there on the monitor mount. The power supply will go where it sits, obviously not at an angle and loose! I should probably find a way to support the monitor cable- it's heavy and the videocard is only held in by the AGP slot.
Monitor mount, which I still don't really understand. It should work. Still need to get some bolts for the VESA mounting holes. The monitor will stay in its (modified) case, but no stand. Neither the monitor nor the videocard support DVI, so it's VGA all the way. Generally it works fine with lower resolution signals, but I'd still feel better with a pure digital signal.
