The panda house is also coming along, but not yet finished.
Since my last post, the face got a very nice sanding, and 9 coats of Polyurethane. I also was able to buy the 2 28 pin headers needed for the expansion slots. Unfortunately 28 pin sockets are darn near impossible to find. I ended up getting one 30 pin for the power switch and light, and one 8 pin for the usb expansions. Both are IDC type, meant to have a ribbon cable clamped into the top of them, much like older IDE cables. The power switch was fully wired and installed. One of the two USB cables was also inserted. In both cases, I’ll be permanently gluing the back pieces in place, and trimming the cables soon. The gluing is necessary because at least the 8 pin connector needed to have the side latch trimmed off in order to still fit on the header. Then all that is left is to permanently mount the CD and HD drives and create the front panel. It’s looking really, really good.
Finally, an image of my shack as it stands today.
