On day 4 (Yesterday), the case arrived. It's absolutely beautiful. It's also much smaller than I was imagining (I wasn't mislead about its size when I bought it, I just have a poor sense of scale.

I realize I haven't told you all the details, such as what the case is. That's because this is a Christmas present, and the person whose Christmas present it is may be reading this blog. You'll find out next year.

So day 4 was spent building an external case for most of the hardware in the form of a pedestal. Here's how it went...

72. Yoink the motherboard.
73. Convince myself that no, this motherboard is not going to fit in that case
74. Cut a piece of lawan to the dimensions of the motherboard plus the power supply.
75. Realize that I ought to have left an inch on each side for the side panels. Oh well.
76. Measure how big this will be. Yoink out the wavetable and video card
77. Make sure it still works
78. It does. The bios makes some new and exciting beeps (probably the "I couldn't find a video card" beep), but it works. Huh. I wonder what that wavetable does anyway.
79. Extract the little stand-off nuts that the motherboard screws into.
80. Drill holes through the baseboard for these little stand offs.
81. Discover that the board shifted while I was marking the places to drill, so only two of the stand offs are in the right place. Drill new holes, which work
82. Experiment with setting the power supply on top of the motherboard
83. I don't like how tall that makes it, or how unstable. Screw down the power supply beside the motherboard
84. And now I need feet on the bottom since the screws went right through.
85. Trim the baseboard -- but this time remember to leave an inch on one side for a side panel.
86. Cut sides out of 1x4 -- coincidentally the same height as the power supply.
87. The back has to be attached low, since it bolts to the feet. I justify this on the principle that it will make a vent.
88. Build a top out of the heavy cardboard that was originally the back of the cupboard in my desk. The top should be load-bearing, but nothing else I had looked nice enough to be functional. I will shift the load onto the sides.
89. The back looks atrocious. Replace it with more cardboard.
90. Run the wires through the top. Realize that the physics of IDE cables precludes putting the hard drive inside the upper case. Stick it in the pedestal
91. Trim a quarter inch off the front place of the CD drive to make it fit without compromising the structural integrity of the case.
92. Slip with the saw and cut my thumb. Bleed for about 15 minutes
93. Finish trimming the CD drive. Try to work out how to secure it. Fail. Nail the back panel on. Whack my thumb with the hammer. Bleed some more.

So this is where we stand. I still need to rig up the controls, which will involve a trip to the home despot to buy some knobs and dowels. The speakers are in the mail. I may buy a sheet of fiberboard to replace the top. Looks like I've got one more day's work ahead.