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The pin height could also be fixed by putting in a right angle pin header connector, that way it’s still detachable and will give you a height reduction.
And also a "centre positive" indication on the case as a final warning. An even better way is to solder inline a high amperage diode or MOSFET so any reverse polarity applied voltage gets blocked
The LCD looks best with the clear minipet. The mini pet looks modern and it sort of matches the color scheme/theme of the LCD monitor.. so 100% that is the best monitor to go with it.
@@StriKe_jk Oil can heat up to 300 degrees C before it vaporizes, not optimal for acrylic which melts at significantly less (depending on the composition though).
Overall a nice job. A few tips as an acrylic fabricator / laser cnc professional for over 20 years. If you decide to make an acrylic case for another product. Laser engraved acrylic should be done without the original paper on. There is a special paper you use to re-coat for cleaner cuts. I also would have flame polished and beveled the edges. Especially on the front so you don't have sharp edges when typing on your wrist. Also the seems look like there are bubbles. A proper glue should give an almost bubble free seam between 2 pieces. Also there are special acrylic bits that make it safer and easier to drill. If you know how you can convert existing bits to drill better. And a step bit is not needed generally. Also acrylic can really attract static. Bad for electronics. So polishing the acrylic with a proper spray will give some additional protection. An interesting thing. Acrylic fabricators are pretty protective as to techniques they use. So there are not to many diy videos on working with acrylic that I have found that really teach the secret sauce for a gallery grade product. I was one of the lucky ones and worked under a 35 year veteran as an intern, and he in the 80's was trained by a acrylic guru. After 20 years I still consider myself a novice.
Knowledge, especially expert-level, shouldn't just die with the person that possesses it but should be passed on and spread to help advance people's understanding of a given subject, otherwise what was even the point of learning it all. This used to be a no-brainer, I don't know why it doesn't seem to be anymore, again, particularly with advanced subjects like this...
Maybe you should do some write-ups, pr try to communicate your expertise in some more extensive (long-form) way. Seems you have a lot of valuable knowledge that people would be interested in taking part of.
A small amplified speaker in that top removable cover might be a good addition, with one more toggle to select either it or the external audio jack as output.
Yeah, you could do that for around $10, the only downside is you would need the guy to laser a new case top with the speaker grill. Otherwise that mod would be no more than $15 for the small amp and speaker.
@@Arachnoid_of_the_underverse Except using a laser he can have 100-200 super small holes that would be impossible by hand. And since I didn't see a drill press, I wouldn't recommend drilling even 10-20 holes by hand.
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 it has nothing to do with how retro the sound is - speakers in closed boxes never sound good. a speaker is just a membrane that vibrates and pushes the air molecules around it. when it pushes to the front, the molecules in front of it get a kick, and when it retracts, it kicks the molecules on its back side, so you get two sound waves that have exactly the opposite phases. in an enclosed box, those waves have nowhere to go except to hit the walls of the box, and since they're in the opposite phase, they cancel each other and you get a very muffled sound outside of the box.
I always like when David adds his own mods to his cases. Nowadays, people are used to restoring old computers to brand-new, fresh from the factory condition. However, in the eighties it was common for customers to mod their cases to add new features, solve problems, or just to customize them. After all, the first computers were actually sold as kits that people had to assemble piece by piece. Kit computers like the KIM-1 didn't even come with a case at all, and some users would build their own out of wood or scrap metal. Taking a drill to a case to add new ports was a very common thing back in the day.
mostly useless info; in 2015 someone in texas found the original molds for the c64 shells, made a few colors in a large batch and then sold the molds to someone in i believe norway. that owner made a few runs including a black and a clear abs (both of which looked pretty awesome). sadly, that store has long since folded and who knows whats up with those molds now. i just was trying to find an active production case of any sort just yesterday. seems that there isn't any right now, and probably won't be unless someone else gets their hands on those molds (or finds another set). and as sexy as acrylic looks most of the time, it's a little too fragile for me to want a case in it for much of anything.
@@kenabi Shouldn't be too hard to take a set of molds from an existing case that 's in good condition. Of course, injection molding is done at pressures that might drive the cost of such molds way up. I'd only go that route if I anticipated enough of a market to make it worthwhile. Has anyone with a CNC router attempted to fabricate a Commodore case in wood? (Somebody alert LGR..)
While inserting a full bridge rectifier at the 9 Vdc input would certainly make the computer polarity indifferent, you have to also keep in mind that regardless of the power connector's polarity, you will be introducing a 0.650 Vdc insertion loss on both the positive lead and also the negative lead by doing this. That adds up to a 1.300 Vdc voltage drop in total, since both of the active diodes in the bridge rectifier will be in series. A 1.3 volt drop may or may not cause a problem in this particular application, I honestly do not know, however I thought that I would at least mention the parasitic losses inherent with doing this, possibly causing issues, if/when you might consider other use cases, Fred
@@electronicengineer Correct. In fact, for many laptops, the reverse polarity protection is a diode that *short-circuits* the power with a fuse inline (though the diode may not make it either).
Nice unintenional retro touch: over here in the UK, 'Channel 8' were one of many publishers of the Mysterious Adventures range of text+graphics adventures, such as Feasibility Experiment, on the old 8-bit systems.
I was going to say that maybe he's used to using a PET with Commodore BASIC 1.0, but 1.0 didn't have any disc operations at all. So maybe the way he did it is the only way to do it in 2.0 on a C64. Most home users would be more familiar with that, while anybody who used PETs in a computer lab with a disc drive was using 4.0.
@@customsongmaker He used the CATALOG command which is a BASIC 4 command. I knew this PET replica uses BASIC 4 ROM (at least by default) anyway. It also has a ROM with extra commands that let you do things on disk with even less typing but I'm not thoroughly familiar with it. Either way I always found it silly that with BASIC 3 it was necessary to wipe the program in memory with LOAD "$",8 or whatever to see the list of files on a disk. Bottom line: David is evidently well aware of how to use BASIC 4, he just didn't remember how to do the operation on drive 1 instead of 0.
You finally got the holy grail of beginner desoldering tools. The Hakko FR-301. That thing is amazing. I bought one about two years ago and it has served me very well.
ooh, looks super cool! i saw a set of commodore-style keycaps floating around on the mechanical keyboard internet. i think they were maybe on drop? if they match the pet layout for the most part they’d be worth considering. they’re dye sub, not doubleshot, but that’s not really too big a deal. i think i’ve even seen some clone sets on aliexpress
I missed out on Commodore's and Amiga's during that time period, and it's retro channels like this that makes me appreciate them that much more without ever having used one.
Acrylic catches the light beautifully! I love the stuff, but I'd forgotten about it in the decades since I last did anything like 'making'. I'll definitely have to use it if I do anything like that again. Acrylic panels and chrome toggle switches... yes. :) Ooh! It does look good.
Beautiful case! I love the fact that we can see the PCBs underneath. I would also choose that Sharp monitor, the text looks very clear, definitely readable and usable. Plus, it gives the whole setup a retro-modern feel.
Симпатичный корпус получился! Видел разные самодельные аппараты из советских институтов с похожими прозрачными панелями, всегда интересно было поглядеть как оно внутри.
Center negative makes sense from an electrical standpoint, when you plug it in you always have the ground connected first no matter what. Sony is known for this so maybe they did it figuring everyone else were to follow but they didn't. I always double check with a multimeter nowadays since I have blown up too much stuff in the past!
I would add "Arguable" to that. The problem with center-negative is that the exposed outer shell is positive. So if you use a metal socket like David did in this video, the socket ends up being positive. With a center-positive power supply, the exposed outside is grounded, so less chance of damage when there's a short circuit.
Negative is not the same thing as ground, the negative on most DC power supplies is left floating so it's not a true ground. Also, what you say is important for something like a 120V circuit, but basically means nothing at 9VDC
@@mal2ksc Yeah, this. The DC barrel sockets switch the OUTER contact so it makes sense if you want to automatically switch between battery and external power to have the outer contact positive. Certainly annoying though...
Even though you literally explained everything you were going to be doing. When you removed the motherboard from the case, for some reason, my brain instinctively thought "It's retrobrite time!"
Great looking case. It's really good to see everything working. There's something nice about the sound of floppy drives but they have to be 5 1/2" or 8". The PET was my dream computer, my reality was a the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 with 16kRAM pack. The PET was 18 months gross salary for me back then, I just couldn't afford or justify it.
Another nice way to keep the DIP switches accessible would be to solder them in on the underside and just have a cutout in the bottom of the case for them.
Had PET computer lab in our highschool in the 80s. Used to laugh at them once the Apple IIs and macs eventually took over. Boy do I miss the PETs nostalgia now.
I used both at my school, starting out with a PET computer. I marveled though at the open architecture especially thespecially the IEE RS232 interface on the back. You could hook all kinds of equipment into that. I got a second hand one that was given to the school after our local pulp mail had these 4 sitting around and I was allowed to buy the non working 1 for $200 because it had a memory issue. I took the board out and took it to CONTI Computer in Vancouver and left it there for the day while they fix that.
That turned out pretty awesome! Nick did a great job on the case design. As for the keyboard pin height, why not use a right angle pin header connector? That way it’s still detachable and should give you the proper height reduction.
Plus there was nothing wrong with the way he modded it. I understand y'all just looking at original parts but the value was sorted the moment he decided to put that acrylic on the computer. Good thing he knew what he was doing
@@SupremeNerd I never said anything was wrong with how he did the keyboard connector. I simply asked a "why not do it this way" question. Also, since this isn't an original PET motherboard, it's not something that needs to stay original per se. I have zero issues with him or anyone doing mods or adjustments to make somehing work. I've done similar things with my hardware in videos on my channel as well. At the end of the day it's awesome what he did with the project and I clearly said so in my original comment 🙂
@@SupremeNerd My question was for David (8-Bit Guy) not you ;-) but I do appreciate your opinion and your hot take on it. Unrelated, I checked out your channel, specifically your Top 20 Atari 2600 games video since I've been a Atari player since the 1970s. I agree 100% Galagon is one of the best homebrews to come out on the console in a long time. Galaga is my favorite arcade game. Keystone Kappers is another 2600 favorite of mine. Cheers!
awesome case, and great mods. could you have replaced the built in speaker, with an older tv speaker (the small cone ones you see on crts) or a laptop speaker. then have mounted it to a wall or the underside of the top-plate and drilled some sound holes?
Some IDC connectors and a piece of ribbon cable would have keyboard connection perfect. No need to de/resolder all kinds of connector headers. Either way, I totally would buy that enclosure and keyboard (I already have a MiniPet)
but see-thru cases are a thing of the 2000s, specifically PC tower cases with leds and big acrylic windows to showcase the coolers, multicolor pulsating lights, etc.
Great job as always, glad you found the acrylic guy. Hopefully my tips also helped with the case as well. Would love to see a video on the restore of the 4040!
I feel like a lot of the problems with this case could've been solved by just communicating with the case designer a bit more. Like you could've asked him to make sure there was a spot for a power switch, some holes for connectors, and to make sure the wires could fit properly.
Acrylic is easy to work with if you understand how it fails. A hot bit will melt it, water or liquid soap is a good lubricant. The step drill works by scraping the sides of the hole, a twist drill cuts like a chisel and it's the last moment as the outer points break through and do not complete the final rotation that over stresses the material and fractures it. Backing the hole with a wood block or another acrylic scrap supports the drill point and allows it to continue cutting as if it were one single piece.
I'm old enough that I was using these things when new, so I'd normally go with retro to make things match. But in this case, I'd say the Sharp monitor wins hands-down. This is based partly on it having quite decent video, but mostly on styling. It is simply the best match for that ghost-white keyboard and the clear case.
My guess is the reason for the enter negative connector, is there a huge availability of low noise power supplies used with guitar effects pedals. Very much a standard in that world.
it turned out very nicely, good work 👍 i would also add a diode as safety incase someone plugs in a center negative barrel jack by accident, it could save the board.
This is the most badass looking computer, every component looks absolutely mind blown level amazing! I am so glad this turned out the way you wanted it to, and also it's so cool to see a PET on steroids like that :)
There are two types of people in this world: those who believe center positive is the right way to go for power connectors, and those who are completely wrong.
I love the Tandy monitor, I'd say the lack of built in speakers just begs for a small follow-up project for a plug-in back mounted mini-pet "mini speaker". Something that you could swap between different projects so you'd never be without sound. Maybe it could even include some bonuses like a channel splitter, or what have you.
A Commodore PET was the PC used for my very 1st programming class in grade 8. Of course, it wasn't called "programming" -- just "computers" and was a subset of the Industrial Arts class.
