After I got everything else all done on this project, I finally got around to picking a nice day and getting it painted. I painted the chassis and built the system. I decided not to redo the top cover, because I feel like it gives it a bit more character, and even more of a “sleeper” look to it.
I put up some plastic and hung the chassis from some metal wire over a porch beam outside. This was part of my excuse for not getting this done sooner… I need nice weather (or so I’m blaming, anyway).
First I applied SEM self etching primer before I painted the entire chassis flat black inside and out.
I ended up doing a couple of coats just to make sure I had good coverage and nothing showed through.
I also hung the fan brackets from the beam of some clamps to paint those as well.
Everything finished drying and I let it cure for a couple days to make sure they weren’t going to get dinged up while installing hardware.
Next I was on to the installation, starting with the fans and power supply
After that I installed the motherboard, GPU, and hard drives and got that all wired up.
I got the CD drives installed in the chassis, and got the top cover put on. You’d almost never know looking at it from the outside.
Monitor on top and it’s booting!
I got windows XP installed on it, and everything is working excellently.
It’s almost hard to tell from the back of it too, unless you actually know what to look for on an original.
Last thing I had done was put the IBM 5170 badge back on the rear of the case.
With this update, this case mod is finally complete! I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. The mod is very under stated and unassuming. Unless you really know what you’re looking at, I think most people would be hard pressed to notice it.
Thanks for following along!
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