This was one of the more difficult parts, though I
didn't really expect it to be. I had to figure out how to
lay out the components so that the LCD cables would reach
the motherboard, the CPU would not be located over the LCD
and the motherboard would site relatively flat. Each time I
found a combination like that, something would be sticking
off the edge, often the hard drive. After at least a half
hour of turning it this way and that, I finally decided on
this orientation. All of my requirements were met. The only
problem was that there was no obvious way to attach the
motherboard to the backboard without applying gobs of
epoxy. I wanted to be able to remove it if I ever really
needed to. The holes in the motherboard where it was
attached to the casing in its former life were too small to
do much with. I had hoped to glue some regular motherboard
standoffs upside down to the backboard with the threads
pointing up through the motherboard holes. I could have
then used more standoffs as nuts to hold the motherboard in
place but -- no dice with such tiny holes and I was not
comfortable drilling them out. You can see a PCMCIA
wireless network adapter in this picture. In the end I used
a wired NIC in the PCMCIA slot and installed a USB wifi
card. The primary reason: I had a spare USB card but that
PCMCIA card is from my wife's laptop.
I decided to recycle yet another part -- the plastic
standoffs from the case. I trimmed them to the right height
using sandpaper and used epoxy to glue them to the
backboard in just the right locations. I could only get two
from the case (the others were too short) so I used them
both at what would be the top of the motherboard. I also
glued nails, heads down, to the backboard using epoxy on
two other places and slipped the motherboard over them
using the aforementioned tiny holes. I superglued those
nails to the motherboard once they were sticking through
the holes. As you can see in the picture I snipped off the
tips of the nails so they wouldn't be very long. Those
joints can be broken if necessary but they're very strong
right now. Not as neat as the two points where I used the
standoffs and screws but it works.
Here's one point where I was able to use a screw to
hold the motherboard to the glued-on plastic standoff. I
like the way this worked out. It's just too bad I couldn't
do that on the other two points where I attached the board.
Can you tell that's bothering me?
The hard disk drive was a minor challenge. Oh, this
may be a good time to tell you that I had originally
planned to use a CompactFlash card to IDE converter in this
IDE slot and use a 2GB CF card as a hard disk. That would
minimize heat and noise and probably power consumption. I
would have then plugged in a cheap USB flash drive for
additional storage, if necessary. In the end, though, I
kept the hard drive. It's 20GB so I can use it for other
things if I want. It's totally quiet -- surprising for an
old Fujitsu. And it powers down after a few minutes so
there's no power, noise, or heat anyway. I'll use the CF
idea in my next project, I think. Okay, so I saved the thin
metal drive caddy tray thing and put rubber spacers under
it to raise it to the height of the motherboard. The
spacers were the rubber feet from the bottom of the laptop.
I put double-sided sticky foam craft tape stuff on the
bottom of the caddy to stick it to the backboard. The hard
drive just slides neatly into the motherboard's IDE slot,
guided into place by that caddy. I ended up putting a spot
of hot glue on each side of the hard drive to keep it from
vibrating but I didn't take a picture of that. Yes, I could
have drilled holes in the caddy and screwed it in place but
that seemed like an unnecessary risk of damaging something.
Besides, I don't like metal dust when working with exposed
electronics. The dust generated by the hacksaw when cutting
the bottom casing was so bad I had to clean everything up
and clean the motherboard with an air compressor!
The switch was worrying me a little because I was concerned
about drilling a hole in the frame. It turned out really
nice, though. I drilled it off-center and in the top so
that it's invisible once it's hanging on the wall at eye
height. I drilled a small hole in the frame, then drilled a
larger hole part way through from the inside. Then I was
able to screw the switch into the smaller hole from the
inside. The larger hole allowed the larger part of the
switch to pass farther into the wood. In the end, the
switch button sticks up just about 2 mm and is not visible
once the picture is hung on the wall.
At the bottom of this page is a picture of the
motherboard attached to the backboard. There is no hard
drive and the picture is dark and it's upside down and the
LCD cables aren't attached. Bad picture, I know. Sorry.
Let's move on.
