14 DAY TRIAL // Jeffrey Stephenson might sound unfamiliar to you, but he's the one that built a case mod that he likes to call "The Skyscraper Photo PC". The product is said to be a tribute to the art deco 1931 Hammond Gregory clock. The photo display is performing via an LCD taken from a vehicle DVD player, so it allows any user to customize it according to his taste, to update the piece of art, wherever he changes the parlor furniture.
The Skyscraper Photo PC has the main unit structured in basswood with a mahogany veneer. The back panel is birch plywood painted with industrial aluminum paint. The 60mm Vantec Stealth fan is designed to pull air through the gap at the bottom.
The LCD panel is connected to the computer's composite TV-out jack. Besides that, the LCD panel was scavenged from an automotive rooftop mounted DVD player. It measures 11.3" and has a native resolution of 800x600. The original mounting plate had to be trimmed at several spots around its perimeter. The wood work started with a new frame for the LCD.
According to Slippery skip, Stephenson himself stated: "I cut a sheet of paper to use as a template. I used overlapping butt joints for strength. Panel shims were glued into the frame. A box was built to create space behind the screen. All the veneer is finished except the faceplate. Veneering took about 60 hours and consisted of 49 pieces with 82 finished edges".
When manufacturing the device, he used a VIA CN10000EG motherboard with a fan less 1GHz C7 processor. The single memory slot is filled with a 1GB stick of Crucial DDR2 533. Apart from that, the power supply is of 120W picoPSU with a CF IDE adapter and a 2GB Crucial compact flash card. Apparently, this is not a powerful system but it is dead silent.
Overall, Stephenson succeeded in making a system that looks so traditional-like, but which is also very revolutionary inside. However, no word on either pricing or availability yet.
