VCR Mod

[Rapidgorgon]

Because I don't want to go off-topic in the PJ64 topics, I'll start here.

So, last summer I grabbed hold of an old VCR an an old pc. I emptied the VCR and put the old pc in.

Here come the pics!
Outside


HDD support

The inside

(I know, it's a mess. Even a bigger mess with de cd-drive inside )

I left most of the hardware intact. I replaced removed the faceplate of the cd-drive and glued the old VHS-drive cover to it.
On the inside, I had to remove the cover of the power supply and split the whole thing in two. As you can see, the power cable connects to the case on the left, but the power supply circuit board is actually on the right.



Specs

• Intel Celeron (the very first I guess, it's a Slot 1 processor) (@300MHz or 333MHz)
• MICRO ATX EX8 motherboard with onboard graphics (ATi 3D Rage Pro) and sound (YAMAHA YMF740)
• 2GB Fujitsu HDD
• an astonishing 64MB of RAM
• OS'es: GeexBox and DSL (dual boot)

It was meant to be placed under a television as a multimedia-pc of some sort. The only problem was I couldn't connect it to the tv (and my mom didnt't want it to be in our living room, sitting under the tv. OK, so it's a bit noisy, crank up the volume).

[BlueFalcon7]

I have to say, out of all the computer cases I have seen, that has to be the most ghetto case. I give you props for that, I mean opening a power supply, and mounting that in a case, nice job. Now just add in some cooling fans, it could use some.

[Rapidgorgon]

It sure can use some. Especially quiet ones. The only problem is, I wouldn't know where to put them.

[WhiteX]

Several small ones, under the little windows of the VCR.

[Bluesummers]

That's pretty freakin' awesome.

[A.I.]

Yeah, pretty clever but where does the video cassette go?

[Cyberman]

The first Obvious problem is the power supply I suppose if you carefully manage the power it will be OK. Most PC power supplies are rather ineficient flyback convertors. (30% of the input power goes off in heat 150W output means 45W of heat <think big soldering iron>)
The second one, is how do you get the door open on the CD? Do you have one of those programable input key interfaces?
The third one is, displaying the status on the front of the case, they sell LCD's that can be put on a USB cable (mostly for cooling information in a 1/2H slot).
Have you set up the computer to load MPC and or the like when a DVD or DVD with an AVI/MKV or OGM file(s) on it are inserted? For that you might want to abuse a web browser interface to launch MPC from a menu (or something).

Cyb

[Rapidgorgon]

@A.I.: We still have a working VCR hooked up to the TV, I made this thingy so we would have some sort of DVD-player (great DVD capabilities with a CD-drive ) If anyone is willing to send an old, still working DVD-drive to Belgium, be my guest.

@Cyberman:

The first Obvious problem is the power supply I suppose if you carefully manage the power it will be OK. Most PC power supplies are rather ineficient flyback convertors. (30% of the input power goes off in heat 150W output means 45W of heat <think big soldering iron>)

The reason the power supply is so nude, is because with the casing wrapped around I would've had either problems with the wall-power supply connecting or power supply-motherboard and this way, all is well. I made sure everything was nicely isolated with air or tape

The second one, is how do you get the door open on the CD? Do you have one of those programable input key interfaces?

I used the old board of the VCR with the buttons on it. Scratched trough a few lines, soldered a wire or two for each button and connected the other end. Either by using a connector ('Power', 'Reset', 'Power LED' and 'HDD LED') or by soldering the other end straight to the connector it was used for ('Eject button' on the CD drive).

The third one is, displaying the status on the front of the case, they sell LCD's that can be put on a USB cable (mostly for cooling information in a 1/2H slot).

That would be very sweet indeed. And I would like it to have a working IR-receiver, would be nice too.

Have you set up the computer to load MPC and or the like when a DVD or DVD with an AVI/MKV or OGM file(s) on it are inserted? For that you might want to abuse a web browser interface to launch MPC from a menu (or something).

MPC... Multimedia PC or Media Player Classic?
In the first case: I installed GeexBox along with Damn Small Linux on dual boot using GRUB. So whenever I boot, either I leave the PC and let it automatically boot in DSL, or I wait for GRUB to come up, pick GeexBox and hit enter to boot it. It took a while before I found out only a root user could change the file GRUB used, so I could only boot using the OS I installed last.
Second case: GeexBox is a multimedia OS built from MPlayer, I don't use DSL to play media, still have to set a swap-partition and the PC is quite strong enough to be running an OS and playing a 640x480 XviD.
And I still have to find a way to use WLAN, because plain LAN isn't going to work. (PC is upstairs now, router is downstairs)

Now I have to go clean up my room, it's a mess, just like the insides of my VCR.

[Flash]

Well, that's not a VCR mod, actually it's not a mod at all, just PowerBook G4 1Ghz w/o LCD (it was b0rken) and only thing that really modded is line-in jack installed. But i think it's still a really great thing - it runs all SNES/NES/Genesis/SMS/GG/GB(C)/NeoGeo/CPS/C64/PSX (dual boot OS X/OS 9, so VGS is here) etc, and of course native games, plays video, audio, it has WiFi and very nice feature from it's laptop past - built-in UPS. With 120Gb HDD and 1Gb of RAM it's unbeatable as emulator console (except maybe for heavy MAME games, but i can live without them, as i have desktop PC for that stuff).
And that's for about 160 euro. Sony says that PS3 has multimedia capabilities ?
Watch and learn, Sony!

[Rapidgorgon]

First I thought you were talking about my mod (using 'that' instead of 'this'). But then I found out you were talking about yours. Nice toy you have there! And removing the display from a laptop counts as a mod for me.