Some more parts arrived

Bought two more parts over the last couple of weeks: a 2.5" laptop hard drive and a 3.5" to 2.5" hard drive adapter, though I already lent the hard drive to a friend whose laptop broke down. The only parts I'm still missing now are the mainboard, the PSU, the touchscreen and a custom case. The touchscreen and case are not necessary, and I can make due with a normal ATX power supply for now and just attach the mainboard to my KVM for i/o, so I'll probably get started on the software as soon as I get the mainboard I ordered today. It will be fun to see yet another media project PC start out as a bunch of hardware lying loose on my desk...

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to design the case, but without the rest of the stuff here there's little point to it. I got schematics for the Mini-ITX mounting holes, so I could get started on the bottom plate if I wanted to, but I'm not yet sure how to lay out all the different components inside the case. I've attached the Operating Guide containing the schematics to this post for those interested. I also included the Via Epia MII Manual for completeness sake. You can also download these files from Via's Spearhead Initiative site. Good luck finding them though...

The relevant part of the Operating Guide are the three schematics, most importantly the Mounting Holes schematic, and to a lesser extent the Back Panel and Height Distribution schematics.

Click thumbnails for a bigger version
Mounting Holes	Back Panel	Height Distribution

This being said, I guess my next step is to figure out how deep the case can be. The deeper the maximum depth, the more room I got to lay out the parts inside, plus it allows for better airflow. Seeing as how I'm probably gonna drive that car to Spain during the summer a couple of times, case cooling in general becomes a rather significant design element. The Travla carpc cases all seem to be 254mm deep, so I'll probably aim for something around 25cm deep. I got a basic design in my head, just have to commit it to CAD and work out the kinks. It's probably gonna be based on a 3mm thick aluminium base plate with the rest of the case attached with a hinge and locked in place with a couple of screws when closed. Another possible design is making the base plate u-shaped, so the sides extend upwards, and then make an u-shaped sheet-metal cover for it that can be held in place with a couple of screws so it's firmly attached. I still have to figure out the best design, and the one that's easiest to fabricate with my limited metal working tools... Either that or find a place where I could work with decent tools for a couple of hours when making the case.