NES Mini ITX

The original game slot was trimmed to hold the cd drive and provide a more stock look, so the innards cannot be seen through the open door.

The mount didn't fit quite right, though, so we salvaged some plastic and made little shims to level the thing up.

We had gotten a wireless USB network card, but we had to make it way smaller. It took quite a bit of trimming to get things to fit, and we accidentally destroyed the thing in the process. It still looks just fine, but it doesn't do anything productive.

Once that was done, we could see more or less where our card was going to fit. Since the card in the picture is dead, we'll be using a much smaller version I've picked up more recently. It'll fit just about anywhere.

Almost everything will be mounted to the top of the case, because it seemed convenient. The motherboard fit almost as though the case were designed for it. Notice that the connectors face into the case - this is because they will not be used externally at all.

We then had to decide what to use for mounts. We had originally saved some plastic bits from the Nintendo, but they were too small. In the end, all that we could find that was easy and cheap was wood. So everything will be spaced with little chunks of wood.

So Dustin drilled some nice holes in some nice chunks of scrap to make usable mounts. He's lucky he kept his finger, doing things that way.

We had to roughen where we intended to glue mounts, to make sure they stick.

When gluing wood to plastic, it would be nice to use a glue that will stick. Our best choices were cyanoacrylate and two-part epoxy. We ran a test to see which would hold better, using some more scrap plastic. It turns out that the CA works way better. The epoxy pulled off of the plastic fairly easily, whereas the CA actually took a chunk out of the plastic with it.

And this is what the thing looks like all stuck together so far. Of course, the new smaller network adapter will fit nicely just about anywhere, so a 2.5" laptop hard drive will probably end up where the network card is in the picture.

Part	Price
NES	$5
Motherboard	$100
USB NIC	$19
Shipping	$9
TOTAL	$133