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A Wooden 486
The madness overtook me and I built another retro computer. The last computer I'm really nostalgic for is my family's first computer, a 486 DX2 with a "screaming fast" VLB VGA card. My dad was really proud of that specific fact. I notice a guy on ebay selling NOS 486 boards for a while, so I after lowballing several, I eventually got lucky and won a bid. Turns out it was a rebranded and oft maligned PC Chips board, but it works for me. For now. Even has real cache chips. Because PC Chips got into a habit of using fakes.
Getting it to post for the first time was exciting. Vesa Localbus cards almost give modern graphics cards a run for their money in length. I didn't even have to change any jumpers, it was default set up for a DX or DX2 with a 33 Mhz FSB. So it picked up the AMD DX2 I put in right away. I did have to clip off the crappy battery and replace it with some AA's. Putting aside the risk of leakage, the old battery also seemed to be thoroughly dead. I actually found conflicting information about the voltage I should use for a battery replacement, as documentation about this specific motherboard was sparse and contradictory. One guide said 6V, another 3.6V. I ended up replacing those AAA's with a coin cell battery at a lower voltage and it works fine. When the VLB multi io card finally showed up, I went with a compact flash adapter and a Gotek floppy emulator. And then for the soundcard I just used a humble ESS Audiodrive card, model ES 1868. Which actually had an extra IDE connector on it, which I used for the CD-ROM. This was very fortunate for reasons that come later.
Now, what really makes this build special, is the case I had in mind for it. I don't have any AT style cases. And cramming the last AT style motherboard I got into an ATX case was a royal pain in my ass. But I've had it stuck in my brain for going on 2 years now to make a retro PC case in the style of an old TV. Stuff like this, or this, or this. I think I mostly cribbed design elements from the second example. I sketched out my plans, and checked what lumber I had available, and got to work.
Well, the first thing I did was dremel out a drive cage from a sacrificial cheapo case. Then I made the bezel for the LCD monitor I was going to embed in it. After that came some experimentation. I had wanted to fashion a metal faceplate out of the side of the sacrificial case. But I am not a metal worker, and it turned out like shit IMHO. My next plan was to take a piece of walnut I had lying around, very carefully route out some speaker grills, and then I attempted to use my oscillating multitool to plunge cut the drive bays out. That didn't work. So instead I got my jigsaw out to remove the bulk, and attempting to chisel it neat. It went ok I guess. Better than the metal.
I splurged on a drill press to make the front panel. Only two buttons, power and turbo, and three LEDs for power, turbo and HDD activity. I actually used some old forstner bits my FIL gave me to take out 1/4" from the back, and then a bit that cut a 1" wide plug through the rest of the wood. This left me with buttons I could use that kept a continuous grain pattern. After that I milled the boards for the sides, top and bottom. Skip ahead a good deal, after cutting, profiling, sanding, staining, shellac and wax, I went with pocket screws to get it all together. No back yet though. Another new thing I did was use some EZ Lock threaded inserts. Those are what the bolts thread into which hold the monitor in place. I'll be using them again later for the motherboard standoffs.
The back was a panel I glued up, then cross cut into two parts. I routed out a box for the PSU to fit into, and then tried to jigsaw and chisel out the opening for it. It went worse than the drive bays, but at least it's the back of the case. The notch is for cables to pass through, and that went much smoother with the drill press and forstner bit, plus the jigsaw to clean it up. Sand, stain, blah blah blah, and the first part of the back is pocket screwed in. It's a tight fit. I could have removed the monitor to fit the drive bay and PSU back in, but I just barely had clearance otherwise. The last part hinges out, and has more threaded inserts for the motherboard. I also dremeled out the expansion card slots from the sacrificial case and screwed it to the plank. As you can see, it's a tight fit, and many of the cables only barely reach. I had to make patch cables for the front IO, or my own cables from scratch. I still need to make a cable with an LED for the HDD light. This is also where having two IDE ports came in handy, as there was no way to stretch one cable from the drive bays back to where the compact flash is mounted.
And the final product! I installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 as was custom at the time. Super proud of how this one turned out. I just have no fucking clue what to do with it.
Hindsight is 20/20 and "easier said than done" notwithstanding... At the risk of being a back seat woodworker I'd redo the front panel and make it cleaner and simpler by replacing it with a cover flap, maybe with just the volume knob exposed. Faster and more practical would be to make a new flap on top of the existing control panel and avoid having to alter too much of the finished work. Just seems a shame after making such a good job of the power/turbo buttons.
You know, my original design had a flap. But the more I thought about it, the more I just didn't like it.
I had also considered attempting to redo the front panel without the minor flaws, but the first one was incredibly time consuming, and frankly it's not like my skills have magically gotten better. It'd likely turn out the same or worse. I don't have a solid understanding of what choices I could have made different. I think it's just going to take practice with the jigsaw, and also learning how to keep my chisels sharper. Possibly after my skills have grown (or I cave and get a CNC machine) I'll give remaking that panel another go.
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