Posted on 5/31/2002


           Project JellyBean

"The Beginning: In late February, I received an email from Fiona Gatt at VIA asking if they could use pictures of one of my previous case mods, the GTRPC, in a presentation they were doing on the cool things you could do with small form factor motherboards. Fiona also inquired as to whether I'd be interested in doing something similar using their new, ultra small Eden platform. Naturally I agreed, after all this was an opportunity for me to raise the bar that I'd set with the GTRPC. Smaller, quieter and DVD equipped. After preliminary designs and measurements were made, it was decided that the new case would be a 1/10th scale vehicle. 200mm wide, and around 420mm long. That was the easy part. It took the people at VIA about a month to decide what kind of car to do. I'm led to believe there was some intense debate in the Taipei office on the choice of model. In the end they settled on the new Volkswagen Beetle. Because it's small and cute, just like the Eden motherboard. (Editor's note: JellyBean is Antony's name for the project - we're still debating!)

Then the process of procuring parts began. I remember the day the Eden board arrived, it's not often that as a male, you appreciate a bunch of people pointing at you and commenting on how small something is. But small it is, at only 170mm x 170mm for a complete PC, there isn't much you can't build around an Eden board. Over the coming weeks other parts arrived. Slimline DVD, Laptop HDD, wheels, tyres etc. While things were being sent in, I spent a lot of time at Bunnings (editor's note: Bunnings is a really large hardware store in Australia) getting screws, angle aluminum and other bits. I can't complain, it gave me an excuse to buy a Dremel. Finally, everything had arrived and construction started on the 6th of May. It finished on the 26th of May. After 20 days of continuous effort and little sleep, these pictures are the result."

Full Article:
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=120