I have been thinking about my next case mod and decided I wanted a Rat Computer.
What is a Rat Computer I hear you ask? Well it's along the lines of my Rat Bikes.
See this thread for some pics of my bikes, or:
That will give you a pretty good idea about the Rat Bike scene. I know it's not to everyones taste, but I like it!
So I want a computer along similar lines. It will look rough on the ouside, but be good equipment on the inside.
Here is the case I will be starting with:
It's an old Gateway that Dad was going to throw out. There really wasn't anything worth salvaging from it, but I grabbed it and brought it home.
It weighs a ton! It's made from a lot thicker steel than other cases I have or have had.
My plan is to not have a tower, but have it lying on it's side:
I have started the mods by drilling out a whole lot of pop rivets to change what I need. I also stripped another case for some goodies I need.
At the back I drilled out the rivets holding the slot panel in place.
On the right you can see the original back, which I knew I would need to cut to get my new backing plate to fit in, until I looked at how it was attached and looked at my other parts case and decided to drill it out too and fit it to the Ratputer case.
I need to do some minor trimming to get it to fit properly, but it's a bit late here to make too much noise.
I also stripped out the drive bays from the donor case to mount in the Ratputer:
Because the case will be lying on it's side, I need the 5.25" bays orientation to be turned by 90 degrees. I'll be able to fit 3 slots in the case on it's side, so I'll need to trim off the 4th bay on the donor cage.
To fill in the space left at the front, I'll fill in with some perspex, then cut the drive slots I need.
Something like this (excuse my crappy MS Paint work):
The over all paint scheme will be flat black and rust.
Stay tuned for updates on this one!