The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

IIRC the 8" floppies used a 50-pin card edge connector, but still is "standard" and could be adapted to the typical 34-pin. The DB37 attests to that, not all 50 pins are used.

I also will have to disagree, I thought the 3½" floppies were more reliable than 5¼" probably due to enclosed cartridge that were difficult to fold. I'd imagine all floppy drives used a sliding head system, though 3½" drives tend to invariably use a leadscrew type much like compact disk. 5¼" drives however are a mixture from leadscrew to rack and pinion type head movement. 8" drives tend to always be rack and pinion type.

Similarly 3½" drives used direct drive motors, and 5¼" drives were a mixture of direct and belt driven. 8" drives seem invariably belt driven.

The 8" floppies I was terrified to use as these were really unreliable IMHO, they got dirty easily and scraped up the media like mad. The motors are really torquey and strip through anything.

[stj]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

actually most 8" and a lot of early 5.25" drives used a belt to position the slider.

i imagine with the 50pin connector half the pins where ground - to stop crosstalk on long cables.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Yes they were rack and pinions with steel belts on them since carbon fiber wasn't available. But they still were rack and pinion IMHO...

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

now you need an 8" floppy drive!
(and build an interface)

Lol.
I actually wouldn't mind... but my storage space is already packed packed.
Though as one of my friends once told me, "nah, you're not going to settle until you bring a main-frame PC to your house"... and he's probably right too.

Hmm..weird, floppies magnetic media shouldn't degrade over time, though the lubrication may be lost. Look very closely at the media to see if there are any scratches...?

Yeah, you may be onto something.
From the four 5.25" floppies I have, two of them sounded like they were running a lot "rougher" in the drive. Same was the case with some of the 3.5" floppies I have. Unsurprisingly, one of the scratchiest-sound 3.5" floppies that I tried to use while moving some drivers ended up fully corrupt and unreadable afterwards.

So it could be that the combination of dust, old lubrication, and lack of proper storage did degrade my 5.25" floppies. IDK, though.

When you cleaned the floppy did you also clean the read head with IPA?
If not then do, and also grease the bearings.

Hmmm.. I don't think I recall cleaning the heads with IPA. However, I did grease/oil moving parts and made sure they operate smoothly. In the case when the drive wasn't reading the 5.25" floppies, the headstack assembly didn't even move or try going anywhere. So it almost looks like the floppy controller was telling it to not try to read anything.

But I'll try cleaning it the next time I have it out and probably also test on a different PC. The cheapo no-name socket 462 motherboard I was using for testing the 5.25" drive was a bit finicky in certain ways, to say the least.

As I understand it 5.25" floppies are supposed to be quite reliable.

I suppose it depends who you ask.
I've heard a few older computer guys say to never trust floppies of any kind, because of how easily they loose/corrupt data.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25'' floppy drive tests

kept throwing errors that it’s not ready or cannot read from source of disk

Those are the usual Windows errors that I see on later 3.5-inch floppy disks. (IIRC) (or of course, the error message that it can't access a cluster)

I suspect a lot of late-1990s and early-2000s 3.5-inch floppy disks are defective, possibly the same with the 3.5-inch floppy disk drives from the same periods!

Once, I remembered copying a file to a floppy disk from an early-2000s PC connected to the internet then when I tried to get the file on my non-internet-connected PC, a disk error!

[televizora]

Re: TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25'' floppy drive tests

It was, of course, too large to fit on a floppy (several MB worth of data, because… BMP format ) So as a test, I used WinRAR to compress the file, which came down to 59 KBs of data. After this, I wrote it onto the 5.25” floppy, then copied it back from the floppy onto the HDD and decompressed to see if the file was still intact and readable… and miraculously, it was!

Install IrfanView. And by the way, this cheepy case doesn't deserve restoration.

[momaka]

PacMan ATX Computer Case with ASUS A8V-SE Deluxe v3 build

And by the way, this cheepy case doesn't deserve restoration.

Too late.
Actually, it's surprisingly sturdy. Better than most $20-40 modern-day cases.

I suppose I haven't updated what happened with the case ever since I restored it. So here is a picture of the build it holds:


It still has the same ASUS K8V-SE Delux socket 754 motherboard I put in it originally. Only thing I changed is the video card -> went with a PNY GeForce 7600 GS AGP. Runs Windows XP and games from that era decently well (Colin McRae Rally 04, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, CS 1.5 and Source, and a few more.)

As of a few weeks ago, though, I swapped the motherboard with a Biostar NF325-A7 and Athlon 64 (Kotlon 64? ) 3400+ for testing that motherboard and CPU (completed a recap on the mobo.)

Install IrfanView.

Yes. Or some of the other popular free image editors there.

Problem was this was a barebones Windows 98SE system I built as a test (hence why it had an old version of MS Paint that allowed saving in BMP only.) And being Windows 9x, using a USB stick was out of the question. So by the time it would have taken me to download IrfanView (or anything else), I figured I'd just compress and move to a floppy instead.

I also have an old version of Photoshop 7 on CD, which IIRC does work on Windows 9x. So whenever I really need an image editor that's a little more sophisticated than MS Paint, I just install that.

[televizora]

Re: PacMan ATX Computer Case with ASUS A8V-SE Deluxe v3 build

And being Windows 9x, using a USB stick was out of the question.

Windows98 has USB support. Windows has USB support from 95 SR2

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

yes but the issue is that win98 doesnt have generic usb storage drivers out of the box. win98 demands that u install the usb storage driver from the manufacturer of the usb storage device. but luckily someone came up with third party generic usb storage drivers which i attached to this post.

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

yes but the issue is that win98 doesnt have generic usb storage drivers out of the box. win98 demands that u install the usb storage driver from the manufacturer of the usb storage device.

Exactly. This is the problem I ran into.

I actually do have a few very old flash drives that came with CDs. Problem is, I've never had to use their driver CDs (thanks to built-in drivers in WinXP), so I couldn't remember exactly where I had them stored (I'm sure I still have them somewhere, though.)

Also, the reason behind compressing the BMP file and putting onto the 5.25" floppy, then reading it back and uncompressing was to see if any data corruption would occur.

but luckily someone came up with third party generic usb storage drivers which i attached to this post.

That is awesome, thank you!
Downloaded to my folder of Windows 98 -specific stuff now and will try it out the next time I fire up that system.

[Per Hansson]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

I actually do have a few very old flash drives that came with CDs. Problem is, I've never had to use their driver CDs (thanks to built-in drivers in WinXP), so I couldn't remember exactly where I had them stored (I'm sure I still have them somewhere, though.)

From henceforth you shall be called the official BCN master hoarder!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

yea he should edit his user title to that. or an admin like per hansson can do it for him. hahaha!

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

From henceforth you shall be called the official BCN master hoarder!

Hmm.. I dunno if I should be proud of that one or shamefully stare at the ground in front of me, lol.

Also, my collection is not as big as this one... YET:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73842

yea he should edit his user title to that. or an admin like per hansson can do it for him. hahaha!

I suppose that's what it will be now. Figured might as well do it myself before someone else does it for me

[Luuccc]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Damn, that's some really nice cleanup! I sadly never got into those 5.25" floppy drives, I missed out on the craze, saying that I should just go and buy a couple from a local reseller place, and have a play with them

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

^ Thanks!

Well, I never really got into 5.25" floppies either, but this one pretty much found its way to me when I picked it up with the case and rest of the stuff.

[Topcat]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Master Hoarder.... I'm LOL'ing!! FWIW, this posted from the Alienware case mod which I installed w10 on the recently arrived 480gb SSD....just to play a little Q3A on it.

[momaka]

“Pac-Man Computers” PC build

Seriously, where does time go? I can't believe it's been over 2 years since I last posted an update on this. I was pretty sure I did (maybe only in my head? )

Anyways, this build has not been forgotten. I've been doing very small additions/changes/mods to it the years. The end of 2022 was a wake-up call to remind me how far behind I've fallen back on some of these old projects. This one is still not finished as far as I'd like it to be… but it's getting there.

In particular, here's what kept spinning in the back of my mind every time I saw this case/build in my closet:

Now, we all know PacMan is yellow in color. So perhaps I should paint that PWR button yellow? Yes, it probably will look tacky (but understandable, given the case design, no?) And while at it, maybe also paint the Reset button blue?? That way, when the PC is on, there will be the Red and Green LEDs, along with the Blue reset button, for a complete RGB color space. And with the yellow PacMan, that's all the Windows colors too.

…so I said, No more! and finally took on this task.


Yes, those are the reset and power buttons painted in blue and yellow, respectively. Cheesy? Corny? Ricey? - Yeah, probably. But this dull black case really needed some color to feel more “lively”, IMO. In particular, it was hard to see what the Pac-Man –shaped power button was. Now, you just can't miss it!


Not sure if it's visible in the picture above or not… but this paintjob actually came out completely buggered. Basically, both the yellow and the blue spray paint cans I used didn't want to spray properly. The yellow can just shot out the paint in a stream rather than a spray, which is something I've never seen before. Very lame! And the blue spray didn't even want to put out anything at first. It was starting to dry inside its inner tube. After shaking it more, it shot out a small pile of very dried blue paint goo. Eventually, it started to spray semi-normally… well, better than the yellow paint anyways. So when I got a “good enough” (not really) spray job on the reset button, I set it aside and let it dry. I decided not to re-spray it, because I didn't trust the blue paint would work again. Meanwhile, returning back to the yellow paint (with its stolen nozzle from the blue paint returned), it just kept jet-streaming the paint and pooling over the power button. I said, whatever, f- it, took a cruddy napkin out of my pocket, dipped it in the pool of yellow paint that had sprayed out everywhere, and smudged it onto the power button. It took several tries to get it as bad as was shown above. But I couldn't do anything else at this point.

On a side note… perhaps both of these spray cans were just too old? I wouldn't be surprised if that was it. I picked up these from a box thrown out at the curb maybe back in 2014, if not earlier. Come to think of it, that was almost 10 years ago. And who knows how long (or where) it sat in storage before I got it.

The good news is that I also had some interior yellow (Behr “Empire Yellow”) latex paint (sample jar from HD for a project very long time ago.) After the buttons dried from the paint, I took the (now) yellow power button, and gave it a fresh coat with the yellow latex paint. Perhaps this was a good thing, because the yellow paint from the spray can was a little too “cold” (slightly green tint to it under certain light conditions.) Meanwhile, the yellow latex paint had a “warmer” tone and just looked better. I only wish it was gloss / satin enamel rather than flat. That said, the coat with the spray paint wasn't a waste of time either, because it is solvent-based, which reacts and absorbs well into plastics like ABS (which this case is made of.) So the yellow spray paint coat gave the power button a nice strong base, and the latex paint a more finished and natural color.

Next item… and this was a very fun one, IMO… plus something that's been on my mind for a long time as well: design a case logo. After all, that empty spot on the front of the case where a logo is supposed to be just looked too empty. Actually, what made me get back to work on this idea/project was the fact that I found a working color inkjet printer over Thanksgiving while visiting some friends. It was literally labeled “TRASH” with a permanent marker and left outside on the curb in front of the house next to theirs. And of course, master hoarder just couldn't resist and had to pick it up. I figured it'd be just for scrap, save for a working motor or two and some decent plastic screws. To my surprise, not only was it working, but it even still had ink left!

So with that in mind, I first measured the size of the spot on the case where the logo goes: 26 mm by 26 mm. Then, using good ol' Photoshop 7.0, I started developing some logos for the case. Some hours later, and here are the two main designs I came up with.




I pondered for a while on what I would like this PC to be called before I settled on “Pac-Man Computers”. Some names I came up with first were “Pac-Man's PC”, “Pac-Man's Computer”, and “Pac-Man Systems”… but I felt Pac-Man Computers sounded simpler and more to the point.

Note that I didn't make the Pac-Man art myself – the two pictures used in the logo came from the internet. I was mainly playing with the background colors, various fonts, and their location. At 26 x 26 mm, there just isn't a whole lot of “real estate” to play with… though that also depends on the DPI. In my case, I already RTFM-ed the manual for the printer above and remembered reading it could do over 300 DPI in high-quality mode. So setting a 26 x 26 mm workspace in Photoshop at 300 DPI gives adequate resolution to play with. I actually used 365 DPI (don't ask me why that exact number anymore.) Of course, the biggest concern is how the logo would actually look like once printed out. And this is one reason it took me so long to do the design (not to mention I had a little “mishap” with an add-on font that made my Photoshop crash, essentially loosing about 1 hour of work that I didn't save. ) With that said, here are all of the logo variations I came up with before choosing the above two:


And yes, believe it or not, there is a Pac-Man font available online (last two images, bottom-right.) In the end, though, the only reason I went with the first two designs is because they seemed to have text that would be easier to read on the actual logo size.

After some diddling with the printer (namely. Installing drivers and hooking it to a 24V source “manually” since it didn't come with an adapter), here's how the logos came out when printed:


Not bad, if I may say so myself – especially considering the fact I used a free “TRASH” printer!
Now, these probably would have looked a little better if printed on glossy or photo paper. Unfortunately, I didn't have any, so I just printed them on regular A4. Then, to make these into stickers, I reused an old return shipping label (which I have been saving/hoarding particularly for occasions like this. ) After that, all I had to do was cut the printed logos from the A4 paper and glue them onto the return shipping label paper. There! Just waiting for their back to be peeled and front stuck on any case now.

I had some dilemma in regards to which logo to use, but I finally decided on design #2.


Lastly, there was one more item on my mind - do something about the missing 5.25” bay cover above the optical drive. I looked through my junk boxes, but could not find one that would have the tabs fit. And even if I modified one to fit, I found none of them to match the black color of the case exactly. Filling the empty bay with another black optical drive was another idea. But aside from not having enough black 5.25” optical drives, they also had the same issue as the black covers I had – not exactly the same shade. Besides, I didn't really need another optical drive in the system.

Since I was in the mood of testing / trying more new ideas, an old one rang my mind here: make a homebrew solution.


Oh yeah, I just couldn't stop myself from whipping out the cardboard and hot glue gun even with this build. But hey, this won't be a proper PC build without some momaka “handiwork' / ghetto mods, right.

Once I got it finished and painted black, though… I honestly think it came out better than what I imagined it would. In fact, I'm quite satisfied with the results.



Now if anyone wonders why I put so much of a recess on this handmade “cover”: the idea here is that I can also use it as a handle to pickup and move the PC more easily. And it works quite well! -Two fingers there and two in the recess under the PSU area makes picking up the case and moving it around much easier. This bay cover also doubles as a vent, since the horizontal beams in it (balsa wood) are staggered ~6 mm apart. I've actually had this idea for a long time now, and this just happened to be the case where I finally decided to try it out. Also, the balsa wood I used for making the vents on the bay cover came from a piece that sat on my window sill for probably ~10 years. I can't even remember where I got it from. Quite possible it could be dating back to my high school days (engineering class.) So this bay “creation” also helped me declutter, if ever so slightly.

Oh, and by the way, here is one last picture showing how the case looks on the front side with the LEDs lit up:


Now, I must admit, I did “cheat” a little when I took the above picture. I had to wire the HDD LED to a 5/12V source (through a resistor) to get it to light. There is something wrong with the HDD front panel pinout on the K8V-SE Deluxe, making the HDD LED not light up at all. I suspect open resistor or transistor driver. PWR LED is fine, though. But that's OK, I have to pull out the motherboard to install the rear IO shield anyways. I never put it when I started the build and it's been like that since. “Improved cooling” was the idea at the time.

The other work I did on this build in the last few years (that I forgot to post about… though it wasn't really anything that much worth posting about by itself anyways) was swapping the GPU (again) and adding a new Northbridge heatsink with a fan.

The video card in the last iteration was a GeForce 7600 GS AGP. But I downgraded back to an XFX GeForce 6800 XT AGP.


Part of the reason why was to test my newly heatsink-modded and recapped (at the time in 2020) 2nd XFX GeForce 6800 XT AGP video card that I posted about in this thread:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=86858
^ Speaking of which, that's probably one of the few GPUs I finished modding and recapping to such extent. Only might try modding the BIOS someday to see if I can tweak the automatic fan speeds… but otherwise, that's one project I deem complete as far as I am concerned.

The other reason for the GPU swap was that I felt the above XFX 6800 XT card matched a little better in terms of PCB color to the ASUS motherboard (silly, I know. ) This case itself also was a good fit for this card, since it has the provisions for really good ventilation – namely, a 120 mm side and rear fans. Despite the extensive cooling mods, that 6800 XT still runs hot and produces a good deal of heat inside the case. If installed in a PC that has a case with suboptimal cooling, things really can get toasty inside. I just ran the PC again yesterday, and even with a cool 18°C (64°F) room temperature, I could feel warm air coming out of the case. No surprise, though - the whole setup idles at 100 Watts at the wall, and that's with a slightly under-volted CPU. At max CPU + GPU load, I get around 150-160 Watts power at the wall. A rear 120 mm fan is definitely a requirement for that kind of heat generation. And the side fan would be great for cooling the 6800 XT's VRMs, since they still run on the very warm side.

I haven't added the rear or side 120 mm fans yet, because I have something in mind for those… and also still deciding whether I would like to keep the 6800 XT in the long run or not, as it performs overall a lot worse than the GeForce 7600 GS that was in there (go figure!) But when I figure these out, I'll post more updates.

Next, I did a mod on the chipset heatsink of the ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe:



The aluminum heatsink seen above actually came without a fan or mounts. I bought it from NewEgg some years ago when using up a gift card. I think it was something like $2-3, if not less. It didn't have any mounting screw holes or mechanisms whatsoever. The little aluminum “ears” on the side I had to fabricate myself. The fan on it is a Sunon Maglev in 4010 size. It was obsolete overstock I picked up from the trash at my last job. When connected to run at 5-7V, the chipset heatsink no longer gets extremely hot like before with the stock heatsink. Hopefully this will give the NB longer life (if that even matters.)

And those are pretty much all of the mods I did so far. At this point, I guess it would be appropriate to post some of the system specs, as I don't think I'll be changing the motherboard or CPU in this build anymore. But I'll do that in the next / another post though, or I might trip the 15k char limit here.

[Topcat]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

I love it!!

Here's a couple gaudy ones I did during your hiatus!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...1&postcount=15

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...6&postcount=78
and
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...4&postcount=79

I knew there was a reason I was glad of your return....someone else to do silly builds!!

[Dan81]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

That sidepanel kinda looks like the latest retro PC I had bought a few days ago.

Specs are an Athlon 64 3000+, Winfast NF4UK8AA, 450W ANS PSU (originally had a Sun Pro probably - when I got it, there was a golden cased 420W Spire unit inside), 164GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA HDD (164GB... Hitachi?), a Pioneer DVDRW (that, despite being dusty, still reads discs lol), a HIS Radeon X300 256MB GPU (which got replaced by a Geforce 7300, as the X300 developed artefafts without me doing anything), 3GB worth of DDR400 and a lone disconnected floppy drive - not even the ribbon was there.

Fun fact: The two Spire units in one of the photos are exactly the same model - SP-ATX-420WTN. The differences? The one that came with the 939 machine is considerably built worse than the one I already had (which has issues with the main 24 pin plug and nothing else) - thinner heatsinks (they surprisingly have the same design though), crappier caps than what the other one originally had (this one came with BH caps, the one I already had used AsiaX) and no Y caps whatsoever. Both do sport real PFC coils tho. For the record - the one I already had (and which is recapped) has the sticker properly aligned. The worse one has it more off centered.

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

I knew there was a reason I was glad of your return....someone else to do silly builds!!

I'm sure there are more people that do them here... but just no one posts pictures of it/them. :\

Meanwhile, people on Vogons would have an ecstasy trip with your builds, at least from the few times I looked up info on old games there.

The other thing is, even while I was gone**, I was still doing the occasional electronics repair/project here and there and still taking pictures along the way, as if they would be for posting here. So it was just eating me up inside that I kept doing that but couldn't bring myself to write anything.


**I wasn't, my brain just couldn't write a damn sentence or bother to read anything properly from being pissed off with certain stuff at home.

That sidepanel kinda looks like the latest retro PC I had bought a few days ago.

It does indeed.

But the construction of the case inside looks different, so it many not be the same manufacturer... or just an older or newer model.

Mine here is definitely the same thing in the bones as TC's Apevia build. You can tell by all of the fan holes and construction of the case. Steel is a little on the thinner side, but not ultra-thin like the very cheap cases. I'd put it about the same as the more modern Dell and HP cases from ~2010.

164GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA HDD (164GB... Hitachi?)

Hey, if it works... then whatever.

which got replaced by a Geforce 7300, as the X300 developed artefafts without me doing anything

Passive or anemic heatsink? If so, I wouldn't be surprised. It's supposed to be a low-spec variation of the previous gen Radeon 9600/9550, but ATI done goofed up and actually made a worse-performing card that still eats about the same amount of power.

Interesting build, BTW.
WinFast is one motherboard brand I do not have (yet) around here.
It's socket 939, so you should see how far that 3000+ OC's. One of my 3200+ does 2.5 GHz on stock voltage and I can even under-volt it a little to 1.375V IIRC (though I don't bother to). A few of my other 3200+ won't do 2.5 GHz without a slight boost in the voltage, though. Still, 2.5 GHz is already faster than the 2.4 GHz of the 4000+, and that was a much more expensive CPU back then (the 4000+ does have 1 MB of L2, however.)