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VCR Mod
(Guest) Authors: Jimmy Hagen & Andrew Herdrich
Date Published: 06/06/04
Introduction
Over the recent spring break I found myself looking up a bunch of case mods, thinking of what I should do to surprise people next. I was looking at some interesting case mods: cubes, suitcases, old Macs and such. Then I found that few people have tried to turn a VCR into a computer. What's cooler than having a VCR sitting in your home entertainment center playing your favorite mp3's and DVD's? Since the original VCR used in this project looked like it was from the 1980's, it was a lot easier to design a system that would fit inside. This mod implements all your favorite parts of a home entertainment center: TV, game emulators, movies, music, and internet access, all into one unit without having to waste tons of money on expensive home theatre equipment. Let's begin with the walkthrough of the parts gathered for this special project and the complete specs.
Specs
- Case (price: free),
Heavily Modified JVC VHS cassette recorder. - Motherboard (price $35),
AS-Rock M266 P4 motherboard. - CPU (price: $108),
P4 1.8A OEM. - RAM (price: free),
512MB PC-133 system pull. - Video (price: $38),
ATI Radeon 7000 64MB DDR. - Hard Drive (price: free),
Maxtor 30.0GB IDE 7200RPM. - DVD-ROM Drive (price: $26),
Hitachi 8x DVD-ROM. - Power supply (price: $25),
Sparkle 180W ATX PSU. - Wireless Keyboard & Mouse (price $42),
A4Tech Wireless Keyboard & Mouse combo.
Cost
Due to the fact that I had some spare parts lying around and the limited budget, the total cost of this system was quite low. The total came to a little over $250. That doesn't seem too bad considering the specs of the system.
The Time Consuming Build....
Building the VCR computer turned out to be more of a challenge than we first thought. Throughout the project I think I must have changed the overall design 3 times, going from one idea to the next because of problems that arose.
The Guts!
The first step in this process was to completely gut out the original VCR components to the
point where there was only the basic frame and screw holes, so that the faceplate and case
could be re-attached. First, I removed the steel casing, and slowly took out all the needed
screws that kept the VCR's guts in the VCR.
The Mounting System
With the VCR stripped to its plastic frame, I laid it on the floor and began to ponder (quite honestly, for a few days) how to mount everything to this. This is where most of the design changes took place. Since there were quite a few extra plastic mounts and fins for the original internal parts, a lot of it was cut out using a dremmel.
At first I thought I could just place the motherboard on the plastic casing, but that proved impractical and messy. My next thought was to remove the plastic where the motherboard would sit and attach a thin piece of sheet metal, but I learned that it would be a pain to do, and dropped the idea. Finally, I just removed all the bottom plastic from the frame and attached a sheet of 1/8 inch plexiglass. I cut it to fit what was left of the original plastic frame and fastened it down with screws. To mount the motherboard itself, I took regular case mounting risers and drilled pilot holes into the plexiglass. I also found some glass sealant and screwed the mounting risers in with the sealant to make sure they wouldn't move. This allowed the motherboard to sit 1/8 inch off of the plexiglass, allowing air to flow under the motherboard. To attach the hard drive to the plexiglass, I screwed motherboard risers into the hard drive the wrong way, so that the part of the riser that is supposed to have a screw in it was glued down, giving the drive a 1/8 inch clearance and setting the DVD-ROM up to be the correct height to eject out the tape door.
The Last Bit of Hardware
Placing, mounting, and fastening all the hardware inside of the VCR was surprisingly easy. The only other components I really had to deal with were the DVD-ROM, PSU, and video card. The DVD-ROM was simply attached to the top of the hard drive using double sided adhesive tape. The PSU (which was the perfect size for this project) already had mounting holes for screws in the back of, where the power cable would go. I drilled two small pilot holes where two of the mounting screws holes would be and attached the screw holes. With the ultra slim video card, there were no worries about making fit. The only problem was that the PCI faceplate was too tall, and was easily solved by just removing it, since there is only a VGA out and an S-video out in the first place.
Tackling the Electronics of the VCR (this section was written by Andrew Herdrich)
Jimmy was originally going to throw out the front cover and make his own buttons, but he
eventually called me to help him use the buttons and circuit boards that were already there.
We began soldering, stripping wires, and tapping into circuit trace pads, and after about four
hours, it was done. We ended up using the VCR's power button as the computer's, and the lights that were
behind the translucent power button for the power light. Since the power LED was rated at
2.5 volts, and the mother board was putting out between 3.3 and 5 volts for the power LED,
we soldered into a conveniently located variable resistor on the existing circuit board of
the VCR (in this case the 'tracking' knob). This means that as you turn the tracking knob,
the power LED gets brighter or dimmer. We also soldered a reset switch. The reset button
leads to an actual toggle switch, so to reset the machine, you have to flip the switch up,
and then back down.
A DVD eject button was wired to the reset button on the VCR's exterior. This took a little
more work, as we had to remove the DVD's faceplate and solder to its actual eject switch
contacts. We did run into some problems since the VCR was wired to come on when eject was
pressed to eject the tape, which meant that if the system was off and you pushed the eject
button it turned itself on for a brief period of time, ejected the DVD-ROM, and then
turned itself back off. We had to spend half an hour digging into the circuit boards cutting
circuit traces before we finally isolated the actual switch electrically and fixed this annoying
problem. As a final step we wired the hard drive light to the "play" LED on the VCR's exterior.
This made for an interesting play LED that blinks for the Hard Drive activity.
If I were to repeat the project, I would definitely use a 3 or 5 volt relay to trigger all
the lights on the front of the VCR when the hard drive was in use, for a better light show.
As it is, it is very hard to tell the difference between it and a stock VCR.
