Well I finally borrowed a friend’s digital camera and got some pictures of my Home Dock.

It's a all plastic box. I have a FAN because the box temp got up to 120F without it, with the fan barely moving I have a temp of 91F. I have an inline variable resistor which allows me to change the fan speed from outside the box.

You can see the docking Ethernet (Used Mark Lord's idea..)

I mounted the serial connector from the sled harness right to the back of my box, and then bought a straight through 9pin cable.

Here’s all the pictures. I was going to start an album on riocar.org but I couldn’t decide which pictures to post!

http://members.rogers.com/bwithers

The car install pictures are in my ’94 Taurus Wagon, the main stereo is a Pioneer 9200R.

I do have a un-soldered power plug to trick the MkIIa into home mode when needed.

Neat boxes. So what got cannibalized to provide those plastic cases? Looks like really old external disk drive or modem cases.

I personally think that that looks better than any of the metal cases I've seen, just because the plastic of the box looks so nice with the plastic of the empeg, it looks like it belongs.

time to rummage through the trash at work for some old boxen.

eli

Very nice! I am particularly jealous of the gleaming back panel gold. Where'd you get those threaded RCAs?

Jim

Nice! Could you explain how you wired up the power?

tfabris, TheTwin314 - The box came from Supremetronic in downtown Toronto. It cost $12 Canadian! I have a feeling it's an old-time clock radio box (there's vents which look like a old school speaker)! The box came with both front & back solid plastic and I used a dremel/drill press to cut the holes. TheTwin314 I agree the fassia of the MkIIa matches the box almost perfectly.

jimhogan - The threaded RCAs came from the same store about $4 Canadian. The plugs are quite heavy when compared to the RCAs that Radio Shack sells.

The rest of the "gold" are brass screws.. hehe... But they match quite well.

Loren - The power/RCA was wired up as follows:

- From barrel connector on the back the negative went the negative of the wiring harness. Also went to the negative of the fan and LED

- The positive (centre pin) went to the "off" part of the switch.

- The "on" part of the switch, I soldered the harness Orange & Yellow wires (Constant power & ACC, Ignition on) and the 500 Ohm resistor for the LED. So when the switch is either flipped (my bro’s box) or pushed the LED comes on. I was actually thinking of buying a photo-resistor to have the MkIIa dim automatically when it got dark, but I couldn’t figure out the best way to wire it up.

- For the RCA connections I used a gold plated RCA cable from Active Surplus ($2) with the ends cut off, soldered to my RCA jacks.

- The docking cage is actually held in with industrial glue gun glue (it’s yellow and is damn strong)! The glue on the RCAs was just to strengthen them. You’ll notice that under the dock is a wood support with holes that’s to provide air movement under the player. When the player is removed from the dock after hours of play the entire player is cool to the touch.

- The variable resistor is soldered inline on the positive line of the fan it’s a 1K Ohm max resistor, in the back picture http://members.rogers.com/bwithers/large/Picture%20027.jpg you can see the little hole which allows me to adjust the fan speed. Which will probably have to be faster during the summer months.

>The box came from Supremetronic in downtown Toronto.

That's the shop next to SushiTime (awesome!) and Active Surplus, right? Three of my fav haunts when in the big city (like.. today!).

Cheers

Yep that's the one. I got the Case, RCAs, Switch, LED and power plug from there.

The LED holders I got from Radio Shack (There very nice and made from metal).