08 Oct 2015, 21:39

AppleIIcKeyboard.jpg (502.38 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

NixieDetail.jpg (473.3 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

NixieClockSeconds.jpg (696.31 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

PhilcoMacPSU.jpg (783.76 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

PhilcoMacFanController.jpg (319.29 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

PhilcoBChassisTestFit.jpg (399.88 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

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PhilcoMacSingle140Grill.jpg (337.81 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

PhilcoMacDual120Grills.jpg (316.25 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

KerbalCMAllMeters.jpg (444.54 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

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KerbalGreenLEDx8.jpg (882.06 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

KerbalCMAbort.jpg (218.61 KiB) Viewed 6471 times

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No build log, but a bunch of in progress photos that don't have an actual page associated, sitting loose in a folder online.Some gems...This is an Apple //c keyboard from the rev 3 Extended memory model. This keyboard is significant, in that it uses Alps SKCM Amber (Taxi Yellow) tactile clicky switches. They feel SOOOOO GOOOOOD when they click! It will be made into a portable bluetooth keyboard... It'll use the push to lock switches on the top for power and to toggle the number row between functions and numbers. [Reset] will become [Esc], [` ~] will move where [Esc] is, and I'll steal some Mac modifiers to replace where the [` ~] key was at the bottom. Keeping the Apple keys though... They are classic!Here is the nixie tube clock in detail, and the brass mailbox doors I used. They do open up, so things like the computer's power and reset buttons are hidden away, along with buttons for setting the clock. The clock doesn't use a microcontroller. It's hardware counter, counting the cycles of the AC power from the wall. AC power frequency can fluctuate by minute amounts, but the power company adjusts it to keep it VERY accurate over time. Yet to be installed, is the dekatron "spinner" I mentioned before, which will show off hard drive activity as a spinning ring of neon dots (about 30 positions, with the glow jumping from position to position) in a glass tube.Here are some of the internals. The PSU vents downward, and pulls air from directly over the GPU/PCI area, blowing it out the bottom of the case. The 8 intake fans are on either side. The back wall of the "speaker grill" is actually set back, and two gaps on either side feed air into the side chambers. Filters sit in the slots between the side chambers and the pair of fan quads. Hard drives are up top, mounted to the side walls. There is room for eight 3.5" hard drives, with some SSDs intended to be mounted on the motherboard chassis. The motherboard chassis hinges open, like an oven door. The circuit board is my fan controller. It is a unity gain voltage follower that duplicated the voltage of the motherboard controlled fan headers, outputting the exact same voltage, but with more available current, so it can drive many more fans. It can read both the CPU and chassis fan speeds, convert PWM CPU fan to voltage controlled, and lets you select from either source for your fan speed control. Done only with operational amplifiers... Nothing digital. It even feeds back the tach signals so the motherboard doesn't panic, and branches them off for further speed monitoring. The chassis itself is a significantly modified stock tower case. I cut it down, bent the metal where it needed to be bent, and made it narrower. The front panel was flipped, making the intake over the hard drives now an exhaust for CPU heat, and the opening for an optical drive now allows the intake fan quad nearest to it to pump air directly over the GPU. There is a small "hump" in that area, where the wood shell extends out further. This is to accommodate 13 inch GPUs. The motherboard seen in ALL these shots is an old Pentium 4 mobo, that I use as a stand in, so I know I'm not drilling somewhere I shouldn't!You can see the two 10x10 inch pleated filters, the motherboard chassis in the center, in the closed position (the key locks it closed). The areas on the side are for exhaust fans. I'll probably eventually paint the steel black. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. That cutout near the top... I left an old label that says "Built to receive Television Sound: The Wireless Way". Back in 1939, TV was rare. It was common to have a radio that could tune the audio, and a television with no speaker that just tuned the image... And yes, TV really is that old! I love the old chrome wire fan grills I salvaged for this caseSome of the goodies I'm planning on using for the Kerbal Space program controller. I'm still in only the VERY early stages of learning C, so I have a long way to go. Fortunately, the driver and Arduino code to make this work is all more or less already written. You just tweak it to your setup. The only truly original code I need to do is for running the FDAI (the navball). I'm focusing on the hardware to drive it first, as software means nothing without the hardware for it to run... Oddball stuff. 115 VAC at 400 Hz is used for both power AND control signals, meaning I have to design high voltage drivers to make it work!This was my old configuration. Front is unchanged, but the mobo was mounted horizontally, and I had only a single blower and single filter back then. The chassis pulled out like a drawer, on slider rails. I didn't have room to fit the Noctua NH-D14 cooler (too tall), so I changed it to hinge open like an oven instead. The blower was rather loud at full RPM, though it was PWM controllable. It put out a LOT of air at full speed. The application is feeding oxygenated air to the burner of a commercial boiler system (for heating commercial buildings). As well as it worked, I wanted redundancy over immense power in a single package! That's why I went from one blower to over a dozen fans!The fan never needed to run at over 50% PWM... But I wanted to see full speed... hear full speed rather!Still, even at lower RPMs, it was noticeable, and again, the configuration just simply needed to change.