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RiscPC breaks 1.5GHz barrier By Ian Hawkins. Published: 12th May 2004, 13:40:30 | Permalink | PrintableCalm down dear, this is a case mod You may have read my previous article in which I took a standard 200MHz StrongARM and overclocked it to a stable 305MHz with nothing more than 2 peltier effect chips and a couple of large heatsinks. Well the butchery has not stopped I'm afraid, and in this article I take a standard ARM610 RiscPC1 and transform it into a power spouting, heat pumping, 1.67GHz workhorse2.
Disclaimer: This article assumes you're competent with metal based practical work and any modifications carried out on your kit is done entirely at your own risk.
Sweet innocence
Here we have an ARM610 based RiscPC. Once the flagship of Acorn's range of computers, it has lived for over a decade and has more than proven that the design of computer from motherboard to case has been through thick and thin, and the whole concept works, or worked, extremely well. Indeed people still, alledgedly, use these as their daily machine - which isn't bad going and as a minority platform, it's quite useful when all the email worms, virii and other problems with today's computers simply don't happen.
 | |  | | Acorn RiscPC 600 | | 2 or more slices = expandability |
So to recap, in today's harsh and fast moving, world the RiscPC is now:
- Simple
- Slow
- No frills
- Slow
- Has a very expandable case design
- Did I mention that it was slow?
The ARM610 is slow. So is an ARM7500. Useless when compared to today's computers. A StrongARM may have stood a small chance, but basically they're all way, way too old. But PCs, now they're going somewhere and so is emulation. So, the first thing we do is open it up and rip out all the guts inside, making way for our modifications.
 | | RiscPC base, void of electronic bits |
Planning the comeback
Now we have a nice empty case ready for new, faster, better, innards. After a quick look around to see what I have available, I return with the following:
- 1x 40GB ATA-66 IDE Disk
- 1x 52x IDE CDROM drive
- 1x Micro-ATX form Motherboard
- 2x 256M PC-133 SD-RAM
- 1x Athlon XP 2000 Processor
- 1x Flex ATX power supply (180W)
We now have to make sure that everything is going to fit before I commit myself by drilling lots of holes and getting busy with a fretsaw. The worst thing is having a 'swiss cheese' case, or something that looks like a 3 year old tried to sit on top of to make things fit.
So first we take the base part of the RiscPC case, and lay our components out on it. As you see from the photo below, everything fits quite snugly and I am even able to fit the harddrive into the original mounts. The PSU is the same height as the RiscPC PSU, but considerably shorter in length, and width. If you look closely you can see a right-angle PCI connector adapter. This will come in handy later on in the article
Once everything is nicely arranged in the bottom of the case we mark the positions so I can later drill holes. A fine tipped pencil is ideal for this.
 | | Laying components out |
Careful now
Now everything on the base unit is marked out we can finally get busy with the power drill and hacksaw. I waste no time at all in chopping large chunks out of the case for the ATX bracket, and drilling holes for the motherboard mounts.
On most RiscPC base units the insides are coated with a rough conductive type of paint. This was intended to reduce the electromagnetic inteference that the RiscPC generated - to my knowledge it only just scraped through the tests. Because of this you have to treat any swarf generated by cutting as if it was made of metal (ie: as if you were drilling holes in a metal case) and removing all traces of it before putting your new CiscPC guts in, otherwise you could be in for a shock. No, really.
After carefully milling parts of the case out you should end up with something like the image below:
 | | Hacking the base for the ATX bracket |
Good, it still fits
Once all the drilling is out of the way then it's time to start assembling the base. I had an old ATX case lying about, so I pinched the motherboard mounts from it and carefully attached them to the holes drilled in the case. One of the best things about the RiscPC case is that it is made of plastic. This means it is really easy to cut bits out, or cut huge chunks out of.
 | | The base unit with everything mounted so far |
Sliced, diced
Once the base unit is more-or-less out of the way with it's time for the first slice. RiscPCs can be upgraded very easily by a simple stacking system comprised of 'slices'. Each slice has room for 1 x 5.25" and 1 x 3.5" as well as expansion card space at the back.
All we need to do for the first slice is remove a small chunk at the back for the ATX metal backet, and chop a small section (pictured below) out from one of the plastic brackets in the middle of the case to allow the RAM to snugly fit under it. Again, if the case is coated make sure you remove all swarf after cutting.
Thanks to the ideal placement of the podule bay, it makes it really easy for us to ditch heat from the CPU out of the case. As you can see from the picture below the simplest solution is to literally just blow the air out the back of the case (through the now vacant podule slot). The blower used is the same high-volume one as is used inside the webserver drobe.co.uk resides on.
 | | One of the plastic brackets needs adjusting. |
Too tall, sir
Full height PCI cards will not fit into the case if stood upright, there is just no room in the RiscPC case if you are only going to use 1 slice. If you're going to use 2 slices then go for it. You're only going to be limited lengthways by the 5.25" drive bay that the CDROM drive is normally housed in. For this exercise we are going to be using half-height PCI cards, but will use a right-angled PCI connector adapter to make sure we have no height problems.
 | | Full height PCI cards are a no-no. |
Assembled
Here you can see everything assembled. Everything fits quite nicely, even the graphics card has room to spare. As you can see the power supply is quite short, and has no power switch at the front unlike the original RiscPC power supply. The original power switch can be used as long as you find a suitable replacement for it to push against. I used a normal ATX power switch from an old spare case lying about, and with a little help from some superglue, fixed it in place at the front of the case so I could keep it looking 'normal'.
 | | The CiscPC with new innards. |
First stages of the dark side
Here's the rear of the case with everything plugged in and working. If you look on the LCD screen to the right you can see the box is busy running the ever wonderful Windows XP. It could equally be running Linux just as well.
 | | We are gates of Borg. You will be assmutilated. |
Still to be done
As you can see, the back of the RiscPC still leaves a lot to be desired with the large gaping holes, and the case also looks a tad 'tatty'. The holes will be solved with a simple bit of wire mesh, to allow air to still be directed out of the case, to keep things from falling inside the case and to make things look nice.
The case will also be degreased and receive a coat of paint. I'm thinking possibly a nice orange colour would go down a storm.
So, what have we ended up with? Lessons learnt
Well, I now have a faster-than-StrongARM RiscPC, with the aid of VirtualAcorn, and a PC that can run the latest applications, games and spyware from the darker side of the OS world. Who needs all this native computer nonsense when it's dead simple to build your own for a little cash, readily available components and a little time, around 7 hours.
The RiscPC case is stupidly easy to modify to take an ATX style motherboard, and it took no time at all to do it. The resulting CiscPC is quite quiet in operation (the blower is very quiet as opposed to a conventional fan) and also looks cool. Which is what counts.
Damage done
I had to buy a couple of bits (that were not donated) to this little project, and here's a rough breakdown:
| Component | Bought from | Price | | Flex ATX PSU | Maplin | about 45ukp | | ATI Radeon 9000SE PCI | PC World | 49ukp | | Pot of superglue | Halfords | 3.99ukp | | | | TOTAL | ~ 97.99ukp | 1: Well, the case survived, nothing much else did.
2: I call this creative license.
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