Further adventures with Ikea PC

Last night I fitted my power switch. And here it is:

As previously noted, it's a proper arcade machine button. A few years back, when I had aspirations of building an arcade machine (or at least some arcade controllers) I picked up a whole load of them on eBay - used buttons with new microswitches; eight red, eight blue and white one and two-player start buttons. Then I didn't actually get around to doing anything with them at all.

From this top view you might be able to make out that it's hooked up rather nicely. I didn't do what Retro Gamer magazine made the mistake of and solder the wires to the microswitch, but got proper spade connectors, soldered them onto my cable, crimped the ends and sealed the joints with heat-shrink tubing. Heat-shrink is the best stuff in the world for hiding all sins against soldering.

You can also see the power and hard drive LEDs flapping around in there. I'll find somewhere for them later.

When I took the second photo the PC was actually on as well! I discovered that the laptop drive I'd dropped into it had Windows 95 on it, and looking at the files lurking on it, was last used in my very old, very dead laptop several years ago. I don't remember where I picked it up from though, because that laptop had a 600Mb drive when I got it!

So what's next? Finding some way to attach all the components securely and fabricating a back panel, I think. I'm also thinking of replacing the fan on the CPU for one that's less loud, though I think minimising the vibration that's being transmitted into the hardboard base might achieve some nice quietness! Eventually I'll see about a paint-job inside and find a nice soft rubber to get rid of my pencil marks outside. Once that's done, installing a new OS I think. I stumbled over 98lite yesterday which lets you strip away all of the stuff Microsoft said couldn't be removed from Windows 98 in their anti-trust lawsuits - big fat liars that they are - so I might have an ultra-compact Windows 98 installation. I'd go for a more recent one - LitePC can strip down a lot of Win2K and WinXP - but when you've only got 1.6Gb to start with you need all the space you can get. The same company can get Windows 98 down to 8Mb, but they don't have a free version of the tools to do that, sadly...