Pardon my dust….. this site is still under construction. Way back last year on Jan. 17, 2017, a new post appeared on the AtariAge.com Atari 8-bit Computers forum. A seasoned poster Mytekcontrols proposed a complete redesign of the venerable Atari 8-bit computer line he decided to call 1088XEL. Now that proposal had been made […]
Okay….. first thing. Take the Apex MI-008 miniITX case out of the box. Don’t unscrew, bend, staple or otherwise mutilate the case. Just look at it. Turn it around and familiarize yourself with the external appearance. That’s your starting point. Everything else will be measured against that. Before we start messing with the case and […]
Our next steps will be to disassemble the Apex MI-008 case to the bare metal. This will allow us to take measurements and expose possible locations for modification. Let’s get started. Unscrew the four screws on the back of the case and pull slightly to the rear, lift up and away the cover […]
Okay now we have had a look at the case, put the 1088XEL motherboard in it and powered it on. The next step is developing a plan for the accessory boards we will be installing into the case. Without modifying the plastic front bezel at all, this case has three existing external openings on the […]
It’s time to do the first modification. We’ll start with an easy one. The power cable modification. You will need: Diagonal clippers Electrical Tape 4-6″ long Zip tie The ATX power supply comes with four accessory power cables plus the motherboard power connector. There’s no SATA cable need any where in this build and the […]
This post we will be modifying the CD/DVD/5.25″ bezel opening. Currently it is setup to accommodate a DVD, which has a shorter length and height disk opening. We need to modify two parts. We’ll start with the back since it will be the easiest. A word of caution and setup. I would detach the front […]
Now we start venturing into a much harder and more visible mod to the front part of the bezel. The front piece should cover all sins in the previous modification of the rear portion, but to do that we have to be extra careful in how we cut/trim the front facing plastic away. The major […]
Okay…. time for the next step. This time we are going to be doing some dummy fitting of the accessory boards we decided we were going to put in the MI-008 case. These boards are still in the testing phase and are not fully a final version. We’ll be connecting most if not all cables […]