Macro Black

And there's more...

Normal view of the fanbus. The four switches form a keypad connected to the VFD display. Currently the switches are used to control the case lighting. The control knobs are frosted white to match the power button. At power on the knobs glow blue.


There is a red position marker run in fibre optic on each knob. The knobs control case cooling and CPU cooling. Both are also independently controlled by the VFD display should the temperatures exceed a set value. The bargraph displays flash to indicate when the VFD takes control.



The display is a VK204-25 VFD from Matrix Orbital. When switched off, the display is invisible with a black mirror finish to match the rest of the case. When powered up only the lit characters are seen, giving the effect of "writing on the case". It's quite eerie in the dark! Ooh is that the time? How to turn your PC into a big expensive clock!



A little personal touch - the chrome logo which glows white at power on. I thought white made a nice change from blue and helped the logo to stand out against the black background.



So there you have most of it: Macro Black. Over the next few weeks I will be updating this article with how I did the mods plus a few other things I haven't mentioned. If you have any questions or anything you want me to cover in detail post it here.