Today was very productive with my new tweener build. Not only did I get the mother board mounted into the case, but almost everything is completely wired up with the exception of the power supply connections and a couple of possible power/reset/hard disc switch and LED cluster issues.
I can't believe the idiot seller. He included a power supply with the case, but it's an ATX power supply with a cooling fan on top which protrudes into the hard drive mounting area. In order to install even one hard disc, the power supply has to be removed and replaced with the correct one. When I contacted the seller, he basically told me I was full of crap, and that there is no way that it would have shipped with the incorrect power supply. He even went so far as to tell me not to buy from his company in the future. Needless to say, I forwarded his responses to E-Bay along with a complaint. I'm still keeping the case though. Just because the guy is an idiot... well.
Luckily, with all of my other spare parts machines, I have a few power supplies which will fit this case properly. As of right now, the power supply issue, and the fact that I'm awaiting the arrival of the final two pieces; a beige 3.5 floppy drive with built-in card reader, and the USB connections for the mobo header, are all that's really holding me back.
Jimmy assured me that he already shipped them out on Thursday, so they should be here by the end of the week.
As I have mentioned; everything else has been pretty much configured in the computer, so when the parts do show up, all I have to do is plug them in and and fire this baby up! I'll be holding off on installing the power supply until the remaining parts arrive too. But that will be an easy install.
I am a bit worried about booting it up. Since this was my first build where all of the ports had to be added manually, I double and triple checked everything from jumpers to switches and everything in between. There are a couple of things in the front panel cluster that have me curious. On the motherboard, there are two places to connect the case speaker. One is labeled Speaker Ground which is slot 3, and the other is labeled Speaker Main slot 5 or 7. Since all of the connections on the board are paired, and the connectors match perfectly, I.E. 2 pins, and one connector with 2 connectors for each pin, there is no way to connect or bridge the two speaker connections. One set of 2 for the Speaker ground, and one set of 2 for Speaker main. (Did I explain that sufficiently?) So which one should I use? I could just wait till I wire up the new power supply to figure it out. Whichever paired pins work will be the right one... I was just hoping to get it cleared up beforehand.
I was right about something else too. So far, this has been a fun build. There were a few little quirks the case seemed to throw out there as I assembled it and added the drives. For one, the rails seem to be set back on the drive too far by about 1/2" This is not on just one drive either. The rails are positioned as far as they will go to the front, and yet the drives won't set flush to the case. I'll have to drill new holes on each of the guide rails so that when they're mounted, there won't be any movement by the drives themselves.
Lastly; there are absolutely no markings on this case whatsoever: no serial number, no manufacturer sticker, no manufacturer stamp, nothing. Is there some way to find out anything about this case; when it was made, and by whom? I would like to know SOMETHING about this case, when it was first built, what company produced it, and if it was some kind of special run for a specific company. I've seen a few of those previously, although those were typically manufactured in the 2000's. From what I can tell, it appears that this particular case was manufactured so later than about 1998 or 1999. I mean when was the last AT socket 7 sold as a new machine?
Thanks everyone, your insight, and direction were especially valuable for this build.
I'll post some photos soon.
