Scanner PC

This whole thing started when I saw this scanner-PC over at Burnout-PC. I realized that I had a scanner sitting around, with no use in site. It was a Plustek FBIVP - an old parallel port scanner, whose drivers were never updated to include Windows 2000 or XP. Since I had left Win98SE behind in favor of XP, this thing was rendered obsolete. No one wanted to buy it either - shipping it alone made it too expensive. It seemed destined for eternal storage, to be forgotten for years. So I figured I'd try to build my own PC-in-a-scanner, and at the same time, try to one-up the BurnoutPC model. I wanted to use standard components - none of these new Mini-ITX motherboards, and a tiny PSU. Plus, I needed a CD drive and a floppy drive.
Note too, this is in approximate chronological order, but it will stray at some points. Portions of the project would leap ahead, while others would stagnate. Or I'd make a change somewhere that would actually cause a setback somewhere else. I scoped out what I had with this scanner. I really didn't take many pictures of this in the very early stages; it's not as though it was really anything exceptional then anyway. I've got a few though.

Plustek FBIVP
That's the original thing. This picture was taken on April 22, 2003, and the project was finally finished sometime in August of 2004, so that gives you an idea of how long this thing's been sitting around doing nothing.		 Plustek FBIVP, Top View
I know this isn't a great picture, but it was just a part of a larger picture of various junk I had for sale. It offers a little view of the inside of the scanner.

I didn't think to take any pictures of the scanner during its first gutting; if you've ever seen the inside of a scanner, then you've seen them all. I took the inverter and the CCFL bulb and stashed them aside for later.
Early on I realized that the raised plastic inside the casing would make just about any expansion card an impossibility. Since this was originally intended to act as a Linux-based router, it'd need another NIC installed. So the plastic on the bottom had to go.


Dremel Flexshaft
The bottom of the case wasn't easily accessible with the rather fat tip of the Dremel; the Flexshaft made this task possible.		 Freshly Sliced Base
Some time later, this was the result - the raised portions were sliced out, as was a small area where the back panel connectors would go.


Baseplate Placement, Front Left
There's the base placement at the front-left. Some of the casing was ground away too to make room for the motherboard. I apologize for the bad focus here. These pictures were taken before I had a camera with macro mode. 		Baseplate Placement, Front Right
This is the front-right. Unfortunately, the corner of the motherboard needed to go here, so this hole needed to be made. Not the most elegant solution, but it works, and it wasn't really very visible when the project was completed.


Early Component Placement
This was an idea very early on for placement of a few components. Yes, that board in the back is the power supply. There was no way I was going to get a whole ATX PSU in there, so out came the board itself. However, this didn't seem to leave any good place for the other components - floppy, hard drive, and CD-ROM.


Floppy Drive Bracket
After some rearranging and some creative slicing of a conveniently-placed ridge of plastic, which for some lucky reason I didn't slice out in the first place... 		Floppy Drive Mounts
And some "careful" measuring for the floppy drive's mounting holes... 		Floppy Drive Placement
And yet another slice in the back of the scanner...
Final Component Placement
I figured out the final arrangement of components. That is a laptop CD drive you see there. A desktop CD drive simply could not be made to fit anywhere; the tray and its associated gears and motors just took up too much room.


Slimline to IDE Adapter
I needed an adaptor though to hook a slimline drive to a standard IDE connector. 		Adapter Pin View
And here it is - IDE connector, floppy-drive power connector, and two header sets for audio output.


Custom Mounting Brackets
On the sides of the drive are mounted some custom brackets I sliced from the ATX power supply's now-unused casing. 		CD-ROM Window
I had wanted a window in the CD drive, but as the project drug on, I realized it would take too much additional time to cut out a real window. This is a piece of thin plastic with epoxy around it, over an existing hole. Sophisticated solution, no?


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