Hi again.
Ok, I'm playing around with case designs. Why? Because even though Q60 is THE upgrade, there are others coming, and they may or may not be cased... I've gone through the thought process of buying a bunch of black PS/2 keyboards, removing the backs and adding a tray to hold the cards/drives/psu, and worked out it basically won't work within the keyboard format. Expansion is the key. A Eurocard (most QL expansions are *almost* Eurocard sized) has the expansion connectors on the short sides of the card, which means these have to face outwards. The metal gasket on these is a standard size, 1"x5". If you work on the idea of stacking two cards on top of or beside each other, you end up with two cards on top of each other (adding 2" height to the case, minimum) or side by side. in which case they're 10" wide, and would have to face backwards. In that configuration, you would have a 2"+ taller keyboard, and all expansion cards facing backwards, with a backplane along the front edge of the case. However, the room left to the right of these is not adequate for a floppy and HD, and the power supply would have to be external. Also, people are of many nationalities, so different keyboards would be required, and it would be difficult to buy a quantity of keyboards with the exact same mouldings in several languages. The existing QL upgrades using Aurora/GC/SGC/QubIDE etc all need to fit too. So, in summary, I think using a keyboard as the basis for a case of a proposed future machine would introduce design limitations artificially, and won't be persued. It is feasable to use standard cases, particularly MicroATX cases. Unfortunately, this doesn't give us anything - the PSU won't connect and would have to be replaced, and all cutouts/gaskets would need to be remanufactured anyway, resulting in higher costs. This leaves a custom manufactured case. Can someone web a photo of the MinisQL case and send it or a link to me? I'd like to see somone else's solution... Dave ql.spodmail.com
