Project: Deja 2.0

[Mr.Red]

After watching Zap work on the first Redwood, I notice how much difference a good hardwood (keep the jokes to yourself please!) looked over your standard plywood. I have been wanting to rebuild Deja for a while now, but couldnt see ditching my first mod project. To that end, I will simply build a new project. Deja 2.0 will be slightly bigger to allow a full-sized power supply and video card along with a couple of other imporvents. Here is a render comparing a layout for a 15" and a 14" LCD.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v390/Mr_Red/deja2.jpg
Here is some of the hardware i will be using:

[Mr.Red]

First step was to bulild a new shell. I REALLY liked the redwood Zap was using, but decided not to use something so close. I chose, instead, to use mahogoany. I dont have a lot of good pics of the build becasue my camera was in the shop. Needless to say, there was alot of gorilla glue used!

[Mr.Red]

Next step was to lose the shell around the monitor.


Once i got into the monitor, I noticed a big problem. This design had three U shaped cathodes directly behind the screen. All monitors that I had taken apart beforehand had one or two cathodes mounted on the ends of the screen. I a little over one quarter of an inch over what i had designed for. To fix this problem, i cut a whole in my perfect lid and added some more wood to the back. I had to use a router to clear more of the inside out.

[Mr.Red]

Next i went to work on the keyboard. This time round, we etched the keys twice, making a deeper cut and they came out great! Using Zap's suggestion, I glued the keys directly to the KB instead of the plastic piece like i used on Deja 1.


BEAUTIFUL! The keys felt MUCH better and secure.

[Mr.Red]

Next came the electronics:




The last pic is why i will not be using Frozen CPU for a LED source ever again. I orderd green and recieved two different shades.

[Mr.Red]

Next on the slate was a 2 port KVM that supported USB and Audio. I found that when going to LANs, I was bringing a backup pc for either hosting games or just using it as a backup. Bringing in an extra monitor and keyboard was getting to be boring. This thing was a pain to get into. I shortend all the cables, internalized port 1 and made a bracket for port 2. I also built a small VGA cable to go from the monitor to the KVM and mounted all of it on the back of the monitor.

[MrArmyAnt]

You've done all that since QC?  Your a man who knows his woods.  (Again no jokes.)
_________________
"If it ain't modded, what's the point?"
~Copyright MrArmyAnt, 2002-2006, or end of time, which ever is later.

MacBook Pro Running Vista - Home of the gender confused laptop.

[MrArmyAnt]

Isn't the laser broked?
_________________
"If it ain't modded, what's the point?"
~Copyright MrArmyAnt, 2002-2006, or end of time, which ever is later.

MacBook Pro Running Vista - Home of the gender confused laptop.

[Mr.Red]

Having gotten some more plexi pieces cut, I started mounting them. Tring to paint some lettering on the front panel piece, I messed up the black paint. not really having time to properly redo it, I sanded all of the black off and used a sharpie to color it back in. Finding that the sharpie didnt cover it well enought, i used black electrical tape to finish the job.
Lastly i built the HD/CD-ROM tray and mounted the speaker grills.

[Mr.Red]

Next came the polyurethane, the clear satin.

NICE!

[Mr.Red]

Next item--system tray. This was to make it easier for me to get to the components as well as giving everything a common ground. I found out very quickly that i was not that great at working on metal. It took me a couple of hours to get it shaped and cut good enought to be usable.


Since i didnt have a header for the VGA this time, I had to come up with something a bit different.

Doing something like this to your new X850 will make you a bit queasy!

Here is me testing the 8x2 LCD for the left display panel.

[Lancer]

This system was at Quakecon, but we kept bugging him for a project log

[Mr.Red]

Installed latches (curtesy of Strait Music Co.) and handle and other final adjustments:


And...


Doh! It would not power up! But no time, as I had to head to QuakeCon 2005! Stupid me, I decied to bring it and fix it before the Mod contest started.

Spent the next 48 hours straight finding out that the AGP card was not staying seated (fixed with hotglue), CPU fan was not plugged in, and my keyboard had a blown fuse. Thats what i get for rushing things though. I did manage to finish in time for the competition though!

[Mr.Red]

[ZapWizard]