Building of a Punk
-or-
Modding the Dell GXa
Drexel's campus is littered with a wide variety of computers. Some are nice Pentium 4's with XP. There is even a Linux box in the Honors Lounge, though it sits largely unused. {ed: The Honors Lounge has since been upgraded, and the Linux system is no more.} We also have a parallel processing supercomputer, the IBM RS/6000 S-80, with 12 processors running at 450MHz. (It should be noted our 'supercomputer' was purchased in 2001, the same year IBM discontinued that model.) The most ancient still in frequent use, the Dell OptiPlex GXa, can be found in the odd corner running Windows 2000.
The GXa is a curious computer. It was built during the in-between time when computers sported both ISA and PCI slots. It also has a Klamuth PII, one of the first slot-mounted processors. Also features onboard sound, USB, ethernet, one parallel and two serial ports. Just enough to be useful but the 266MHz Pentium II isn't quite up to the challenge of Windows 2000, though the meager 64MB of RAM probably hurts performance more so.
One of my roommates dragged a dead GXa desktop out of the garbage of the Main Building complex. A note was taped to the front. "Please take needs work." We took this as a challenge.
On booting, the computer reached POST and stopped. Hard drive error of sorts. We cracked the case open to check the cables. One nice detail about the GXa: the construction. Two thumb tabs to remove the top, a hinge out power supply, and drive rails almost make the antiquated hardware seem classy. Reseated all the cables and still no boot. Entered all the correct cylinder/track/sector/head numbers into the BIOS without success. Eventually we gave up on the hard drive. It was completely shot. After all the trials and failed attempts, the name 'Punk' seemed more than appropriate. A sticker declaring so was affixed to the case. We tried a few Linux live-CDs and settled on Puppy Linux, a tight little 60MB distro that runs completely in a RAM-disk. Blazingly fast.
My roommate originally wanted to use the computer as a DDR emulator. This quickly fell apart, not only because Punk needed a new hard drive but also a PCI video card with S-video, which is something of a rarity. Punk was passed on to me.
For a while nothing happened to Punk. It was always running, ready to be used as an emergency word processor. It also allowed me to start experimenting with Linux. At some point a new hard drive was installed, and the memory was increased from 64MB to 128MB. I gave it a few partitions; one for Vector Linux, one for Puppy Linux, and a swap.
Somewhere along the line, Punk began to annoy me. Not because it was old (I like old computers) and slow (though faster than 85% of the computers I have), but because it was so big. The PII desktop was larger than my P4 tower! By now I knew the case inside and out, and I knew it was mainly air. It could be rebuilt in half the volume.
That summer I finally had the time to begin work. All hardware was safely removed. Most of the rivets were drilled out. The diagram at right shows the bare frame, with the formerly occupied areas labeled.
The first cut was the most difficult. I went through about 20 Dremel cutting disks. It didn't take too long before I started doing the cutting outdoors. Neither silicon carbide nor steel dust are fun.
The second and third cuts went much faster. These pieces were then riveted onto the motherboard tray.
Here all the mounting points are labeled. The power supply was held on by a variety of things (more below). The hard drive has three screws through the front. The CD-ROM used three screws through the side as well as resting on a small bracket near what was once the power switch. The top cover of the case was literally cobbled onto the existing structure. Marked in black, it was held on with a hard drive screw in the front, a CD-ROM screw on the right, and a pair of sheet metal screws top and left. The section marked "patched" was patched at some point. No pictures of it.
Here you can see the three mount points for the power supply. There is one screw marked with black. The bulk of the weight is supported by a small bracket marked with white and a wire clip in the background. The clip is more clearly visible in the above picture.
This is a view of the underside of the cover. Making the cover was fairly simple. The center support rail was removed (drilled out the rivets). Using tin snips, the metal was cut into pattern shown in black. Mounting holes are also marked in black.
The metal work completed, painting began. No pictures for this part because it's fairly dull. (If you really miss the pictures, just visualize what's in the parentheses.) First the case was cleaned and sanded. (It looked shiny.) Then primer was applied. (The case looked gray.) A few layers of blue were sprayed on. (Still the same case, but now it was blue.) Made a 'punk' stencil and painted that in red. (Oooh! The case says 'punk'!) Finally, I liberally applied several layers of high-gloss clear coat. (It looked shiny. Again.)
There was still cosmetic work to do after painting. I attached a nice looking and old (at least 20 years) power switch. More importantly, the metal frame had dozens of holes in it, and something could fall into the case and hit the motherboard. The case used to have a beige plastic shell to prevent this, but I opted for patching the holes from the inside with translucent white plastic. From milk jugs. Also visible is the one spot where I didn't quite cut the plastic right. It was a few millimeters too tall, and the CD drive bows the plastic inward. The rest looks quite alright.
Two hardware upgrades. The old CD-ROM drive was 'upgraded' to an equally old 2x2x6 CD burner. One of the case fans was flipped around to blow fresh air onto the CPU, if you count that as an upgrade.
Was my very first case mod a success? Technically, no. Originally I wanted it to be a stealth mod. Same beige plastic shell and all, just smaller. Like a fourth form factor that was never produced. (Tower, desktop, and mini-desktop were produced, though Dell's mini has little resemblance to my mini-desktop. I've also never seen a mini GXa on campus.) Practically, the mod was a success because the computer could still boot up. And the new paint job looks alright. My original goal of 'half the size' was also met. Punk formerly occupied 1683 cubic inches, now down to 756 cubic inches - a reduction of 55%. To the right you can see all the junk I had left over after the mod, as well as a "before" and after shot.
Linkback: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~kmk592/hardware/punk/ Printer friendly links: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=puppy History: 2005/12/31 uploaded