Day 5
Today's job: Get the motherboard tray ready to mount and get the power adapter ready to attach.
First, I used JB weld to re-attach the standoffs. Be careful -- there are 8 stand-offs that are one length, and 4 (I think) more that are a little longer. I used the 8 -- they give a little bit of a boost to the motherboard tray, which helps the motherboard line-up correctly with the back panel.
My method was just to spread them out to support the tray adequately. No fancy measurement. Just make sure they'll be ALL underneath the tray, even if the tray can move a few millimeters in either direction. I put some JB weld down, stuck the stand-offs in them, rested the motherboard tray on top, and put about 20 pounds of weight on them. The JB weld sets in 25 minutes, is solid enough in 4-6 hours that you can move the case around and continue working. They recommend 15-24 hours until yuou put it in use… so I guess, don't put any really pressure on the stand offs until you've waited overnight.
Putting the stand-offs down:
And weight 'em down:
I did this in the morning before heading off to work. That gave the JB weld time to cure.
I came home and my IEC receptacles had arrived. Time to make the adapter to extend the power from the PSU to the back of the case.
I was a little nervous about this because soldering actual things where real electricity goes through freaked me out a bit. But once I saw the IEC receptacle I realized it's a pretty simple job.
The receptacle has three solder joints on the back: Live, Neutral, Ground. They are labeled. Consulting Wikipedia, I learn that Black goes to Live, White to neutral, Green to ground. Great. So, I cut an IEC power cable to about 10" long, trimmed the rubber off, and got ready to solder the ends on.
These are the steps I recommend:
1. Get "helping hands" for soldering. You cannot do this well if you have to hold up everything.
2. Strip your cable and leave enough bare cable to get a good wrap around the solder joints.
3. Cut a big piece of heat shrink that you'll use, to the extent possible, to "bring together" the three power attachments. Slide this down the cable.
3. One at a time (I did Live first, then Ground, then Neutral): Cut an appropriate size heat shrink to cover both the solder tip and the bare part of the cable. Slide it on. Next, thread the bare ends into the solder joints. Twist as tightly as you can, with the cables orthogonal to the solder joints (remember, the cable will run off this).
3. Use clips on your helping hands to hold the IEC receptacle on one side and the other side of the cable.
4. Heat up the solder receptacle with the gun and apply solder. This can take a while -- the solder connectors take longer to heat than, say, a wire.
5. When you've got a good joint, slide the heat shrink wrap over the connector and the bare part, and heat it up.
Here's what my process looked like at this point, with 1 connection made (ground):
6. When all three connections are made, slide the big piece of heat shrink up to "hold together" the three attachments. This will also cover any left over bare wire if you have any and make things look better. Heat it up. All done.
This is what my final product looks like:
Time to test it! Will I be able to plug in a regular cable into the female end, and the male end into a monitor and make it power on?
It works!
You'll see in the above picture that there's a messed up IEC receptacle. Luckily I had the foresight to buy two of the things (they're only 85 cents), knowing I'd probably mess it up). The first time through I screwed up in two ways: One, I held the gun too close to the plastic and heated up the plastic and one of the connectors shifted a little. No good. Second, I didn't get a really solid threading of the wire to the solder joint, and as a consequence the joint wasn't "straight". So don't make my mistakes.
Next, I cut out a place above the back panel to snap the receptacle in. I did this by first, outlining in tape the receptacle -- not the widest part, but the part where ethe cable actually goes in. Using a drill bit on a dremel, I cut it out. It's going to be too small. I then just extended it little by little until I could fit the cable AND receptacle through. Then it snapped on. It's not the tightest snap int the world, but it does the job. If you really want it to be 100% secure, use a IEC receptacle that screws on.
Here's the final result:
I was feeling energized, so I started to work on the front panel harness. Which means I separated all the different wires and labeled them with post-its. This is tedious as hell:
Then I soldered on two jumpers for the power switch and power LED. I used red for power and yellow for LED. That made sense to me. Whatever floats your boat. Here's the power jumper, soldered, but not yet heat-shrinked. Yee-haw:
That's a lot of work for one day!