Putting it all together took a fair amount of time, and I customised the case BEFORE I received the Mobo & CPU.

As with all modifications involving power tools and your expensive new toy you should:

a.         Take your time.

b.         Measure everything before you do something permanent.

I had originally decided to cut a wavy hole in the side of the case, but a pencil sketch on the side panel didn’t look very good.  I had a maximum of a 30 x 30 cm hole to cut, but I wanted to avoid the usual rectangular window, with or without rounded edges.  Ten minutes with a sketch patch discussing ideas with my wife, I fired up MAME and paused a game of Space Invaders.  More measurements later the winning Invader was chosen.

I drew a 12 x 8 grid (same dimensions as Mr Invader) then simply shaded in all the boxes as appropriate.  I drilled a 10mm pilot hole roughly in the centre of the image and went to town with Mr Jig Saw.  I made several radial cuts outwards so that no great amount of metal would be hanging off while sawing.  It flaps up and down making a scary noise.  I recommend you do this out doors, wearing eye protection and ear defenders.  The noise is horrendous.  An hour’s labour resulted in this:

It doesn’t look too hard, but some of the leg areas were difficult to work in.  I then simply filed down the rough edges.   I masked up the Floppy, Power and HD LEDs with paper masking tape, which I stuck on and carefully cut to size with a shape craft knife.  Get a grown up to help you kids.  If the weather were fine it would be worth painting outdoors.  As the weather is crap, I did it indoors.  Make sure you cover everything with old newspaper, particularly if you are spraying.

Once this was done it was time to paint.  A quick trip to the local DIY place had me home with a £5 spray can of what appeared to be a dark Gold paint.  As my golden rule with software and hardware is to read the docs before doing anything, perhaps I should have read the can.  The effect required a Black undercoat, not a Tan one.

Obviously I popped back to the super store when it became obvious that 1 can was not going to do the job and bought two more.  “That will be £10 Sir” – Cha-Ching!  One more can later the PC was getting a nice Pearlescent Pink look Doh!  This obviously required a rethink, one can of Hammerite later….

This was the first coat of paint, as you can see it was much nearer the original colour, one £5 tin did the whole PC with some to spare.  Oh, it stinks while it dries; I read the instructions on the tin before I started this time!  While the paint is drying I turn my mind to the build itself.  The chassis is naked and it makes good sense to install the guts of the computer while things are easy to get at.

There is a strange plastic fitting at the front of the case, which includes the PC speaker & a filter.  I had two problems here:

a.         The nut & screws from the DIY centre came in 25mm or 50 mm lengths.  I needed about 30mm.  So I fitted them and then introduced the screws to Mr Hacksaw.

b.         With the front fan secured to the case, the plastic speaker holder and air filter wouldn’t go on.

After much head scratching I realise the front fan should be fitted into the fitting, not onto the case.  It’s a shame the case doesn’t have a manual.  I now had to cut the screws down to about 10mm and only needed two, as the plastic mount had to retaining lugs moulded in.  One further tip, the front fan should suck, the rear one should blow air out.  The two 80mm Sunon fans I fitted had arrows on their frames illustrating this; you obviously could simply plug them in and see which way the air is moving, before making a mistake!  The second fan mounted on the pre-made hole in the rear of the chassis with 4 screws and bolts.

OK, so the paint is dry, time to fit the seal to the window, and then the window itself.

This is the side panel drying, and then with the trim fitted.  I simply cut the sections using a craft knife to make 45-degree cuts.  To fit the Perspex window, you use silicon sealant; the same as used for bathtubs, fish tanks etc.  Generously squirt it where the window sits (having outlined the window with a felt tip on the rear of the panel) carefully place the window down, pop a pile of books on it and leave over night.  Voila! One Invader window.

Damn all this waiting!  OK, so the following day you have a big pile of components to put together.  I suggest you move to a roomy, light location; it’s called the dining room table in my house ;-)   Put out everything where you can see it, gather in your tools, a screwdriver and pliers in this case and then begin.

OK, putting a PC together is not as scary as you may think, take your time, and read the motherboard manual! The motherboard frame comes out like a sliding door using just one thumbscrew.  This makes it nice and easy to get the brass mobo spacers fitted, and to insert the metal plate that surrounds the ports, Serial, Parallel etc.  As you can see, by this stage I have also inserted the CPU & mounted the Chrome Orb.  Tips: Make sure the CPU is perfectly flat in its seat before locking it down.  I couldn’t fit the heat sink and careful examination of the chip revealed that one corner was about half a mm off of the socket mount.  Fitting a Chrome Orb is kind of scary too; once the rear is connected (it only fits one way people) it takes a lot of pressure to lock the clip down.  I found the best technique was to bend the clip towards the retaining lug as a whole, rather than to simply push on the spring leaf itself.

After slipping the mobo frame back into the case I began connection up the various cables.  The large power cable only fits one way, so no problems there, CPU fan, simple, the collection of LEDs, Reset button & PC speaker are all in one bank at the bottom right of the mobo.  All the connectors have their identities printed on them, as do their locations on the board (oh, if they don’t work, turn them through 180 degrees and try again).

I then added the HD, Floppy & CD ROM.  Simply line up pin one on the ribbon cables (it’s the red wire on the outside) with the ‘1’ marked at the mobo & respective drive.  At this point I started adding the spiral wrap, which fluoresces under UV light.   Stand by for a glow in the dark PC. 

I then re-read read the instructions for the UV light kit.  You simply have to cut off the cigarette lighter connection, splice in a switch, and add a Molex connector to the end.   The written instruction sheet makes it sound complicated, but it is very straight forward.  You drill a 6mm hole in the case for the switch, I put mine on the rear, but you could equally add it to a baybus if you have one.

The light comes with some double-sided sticky foam stuff for mounting the light.  I chose to attach it to the underside of the Power Unit, this left the other end flopping about, so I attached it to the side of the CD ROM bay using a tip wrap.

I have modified the HD & CR ROM Ribbon cables into round ones.  I was going to post a link to the site, which gave a guide to this; unfortunately I managed to lose the link!  I did not take photos of this, but here’s a description:

 I remove the middle connectors, they split off when attacked  with a screwdriver.  I very carefully made a 2 to 3cm long split between every 6^th track and then peeled the two sides apart.  At this point I fitted it to the PC and checked to see if the cable still lived; it worked, I shut down, removed the cable and continued.  I pre-cut some 1.5cm strips of masking tape and then laid 4, 6 wire sections over one another neatly and taped them together every 6 or so cm.  I repeated this until I had taped all the 6-wires sections together.  I then taped the 5 larger bundles together making one finger sized cable.  Again I installed it, fired up the PC, and confirmed it worked, shut down and removed the cable.  I then added the fluorescent spiral wrap (the larger sized stuff) and refitted it.  I repeated this for the CD ROM ribbon. 

Now for the easy bit - pop on the sides, front & fire her up.  She is absolutely smokin’

I would like to thank Woody for the loan of his digital camera, which as you can see takes excellent pictures.  I successfully fluffed up the low light shot by myself being unfamiliar with his camera.  I have taken some conventional photographs with my camera, but as we get them developed once in a blue moon, don’t hold you breath.

Neither the digital camera nor especially my webcam do this the appearance of the machine with the UV light on any justice.  Still, I never claimed to be David Bailey!  I do have to paint the front of the CD ROM yet, but I have not got round to it yet!  Take my work for it, it glows just fine and really does look amazing.So, there you have it.  Building & modding a PC does not require the abilities of a Rocket Scientist.  Start small, think it out, & cut nothing until you have measured and checked it twice, oh and last but not least read the instructions it would have saved me £15 worth of spray paint.

I borrowed another digicam shortly after adding a baybus to my PC and took some high quality pictures that you can see here.