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Toolbox rig

Bimmersbaby

Hi. I'm Stew Pid.
Joined
Jun 17, 2001
Messages
235
Me and a couple of friends are looking into building a very low-budget PC in a toolbox for kicks. Any tips you guys can give us? Any links? I wish Kyle would bring back the search function, I know there is info on here pertaining to the subject at hand :mad:
We were going to purchase a 1.6 Gig Socket A Duron with a PC Chips M82L5U MicroATX mobo and a POWMAX 230W power supply (is that sufficient?) from newegg; we already have a hard drive and RAM. We're looking at spending sub-$200 on the whole project.
 
Custom mods rule, good luck to you and your friends. The only thing is .... toolbox mods have been done. If you really want the [H]orde to hoot and holla, think of something completly and ridiculously original.

good luck.
 
Yeah, I know it has been done (I told them so also), but they really want to create a toolbox PC for some reason. I just want to do some modding! If I think of a more original idea, I'll see what they say and post it up. Thanks for your response :)
 
Check pricewatch.com. It's likely you'll find better prices than newegg. I know that's paramount to blasphemy around here (and my computer is built of stuff I bought at newegg), but often you'll find better places to get hardware.
 
Sorry to pimp my FS thread, but I have something you might be interested in: Single Board Computer system You could easily fit the motherboard in a small hand-tote toolbox (like you might stash in your trunk or behind your seat in a truck), though you'd probably need a smaller powersupply (I could probaly hook you up with one).
 
Good work on the case, very practical.

Have you worked out where you're mounting your drives?

Also, using acrylic dividers would not be such a bad idea... acrylic, or metal. Whatever happens to be more readily available to you, as I know you're trying to keep cost down.

Acrylic would be much easier to apply, due to the toolbox itself being plastic... just use some cement, and you're done.

Post some more pics when you get the chance, I'd love to see more.
 
We decided to go with a Biostar M7VKQ PRO mobo instead of the PC Chips one. Any comments on this?
I forgot to mention that we're going to be using a metal toolbox.
 
Thats the exact board i used. Pretty solid, took some work to get all my onboard stuff to work in linux. the biggest down side is no AGP slot, but if its just your every day machine (like mine is), it'll do very well. its also hasa pretty small footprint while not being matx
 
Gotta love the small yellow toolbox rig, I'd imagine you can mount a cd drive on the side and such, I'd like to see more pics of where the plugs are on that!

I'm wanting to go ahead and build a small box to put in my car for an mp3 player, with a small gameboy LCD screen or something, but thats a ways off as I'm a n0ob to such things.
 
Hey guys, this is one of Bimmersbaby's friends. we thought of something more original than a toolbox, just wanted to throw it out into the pool of [H] thought. we were thinking of using a VCR, where the drive would pop out the front of the tape eject door. just wanted to get some opinions. thanks!
 
well if you can fit it in, slaping a mobo tray in there will save you some time an save on cutting it up so much (one hole where the cut will be hidden vs cuting the card slots, and back panle individualy. cut holes smaller than you need them and work your way out when you smoth out the cut.

if you have an antec case lying around you can use their psu mounting pannle that comes out as a templet for the hole you have to cut (or take one out, cut one square hole and mount their panle over it)

just some ideas of the top of my head

dont bother listening to people that have no usefull information to give you and tend to just say "thats dumb do something elce" its your mod, hae fun with it alot of it depends on how you want to work the pc, (top on or off when the pc is on, psu showing or internal, optical drives or not and if so where on the case do you want them to pop out.... and so on


good luck happy modding
 
VCR is a killer idea, that'd be awesome stuff! You've got your power button, I wonder what rewind/FF/P/Stop would function as?
 
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