WONKA - retrocomputer rebuild

my father in law is a bit of a greypube and a hoarder. i've been helping him clean out his house, and he let me keep anything cool i found. so i found this monstrosity (pink floyd sticker is mine). it needed a bit of cleaning, but i needed an HTPC/file server and didnt care, so i slapped a bunch of stuff in it, jammed it in a corner, and turned it on.

i named it "schillinger" and it worked as a linux server, but i also used it to watch stuff on my big TV in my living room. i dunno how many people out there still rock with HTPCs, but i love mine. i would never put schillinger in a landfill

he caught my eye cos he has a firewire 800 port and optical audio out. perfect for a soundbar, and my old weirdo soundcards (i used to be a ppc powermac guy, i know firewire died a long time ago). ignore the PCI-e extender, that was for testing (and a bad idea, i know lol). i added USB 3.0 to it, and put in an old ATI radeon HD 4800 (1GB vram - good enough for 1080p video, fine by me)

i managed to rescue the stickers. the cross is iron, in case of vampires. i dont fuck around with vampires man

i know theyre only sposed to hold 2 hard drives, but i took a hammer and smashed it until it fit 3. fuck the police

it aint alot, but its enough. i like having SATA and PATA. it can support eight hard drives, 9 if you count the compactflash reader. of course the GPU hogs all the space, so i used an extension ribbon. im really lazy, i will probably super glue it to one of the PCI slots. im never gonna use them.

my father in law said he last turned it on around 2010. it had some hiccups, and i had to repair a couple-a-tree things, but i got it booting. the cpu itself wasnt too cheesed up. i made sure to clean it nicely, but i did not take a pic of the fresh paste because people start fighting about it in the comments and thats stupid

anyways the whole point of this post was that i found this bitchin purple paint and decided i wanted to gussy up the computer a lil bit. so i made WONKA. heres the first coat

had to paint the front panel too

he got his shoes on now

power supply is sittin pretty. i dig the contrast

i am not the greatest at cable management but i am prepared to do my best

o7

bluray and dvd, just cos i wanted to fill up the space, lol. its heavy as a mf too. all together, it has 2 optical drives, 1 solid state drive (the boot drive) and 3 SATA HDDs and 1 PATA HDD, all of which are for cold storage/file sharing.

im ordering a sheet of plexiglass to cover the side, since it had no side panel. i used a cheap piece of plastic with some weak magnets to hold it on to the case. ill drill holes for ventilation, of course.

thanks for reading and looking at my stupid hunk of junk computer! in return... heres a disturbing picture of my dog. she says thanks for stopping by.

guys please, dont just throw out old computers. its a fun hobby for me, sure, but throwing working PCs in the dumpster is just fucked up and bad for the earth. and bad for your privacy! i never keep hard drives when i find stuff, cos who knows what kinda weirdo mightve tossed it out... but please, at least donate your old stuff. give it to a friend. dont just throw it out! recycle!!!

love to all