For the benefit of those who haven't read the article that leads to this one, Woody is the nickname of an Amiga personal computer housed in a wooden casing. It had been expanded beyond its original condition and the motherboard doesn't fit into any conventional cases—it's too long and the connectors are in different places—so it needed a custom case. It also had became unreliable any time that it was moved, the edge connectors would flex and misalign (they didn't fit together very well, and the original plastic box isn't sturdy enough).
There were some custom cases that could be bought at outrageous prices, far more than if I'd had one made up specially, so I decided to make something myself. The only spare materials I had was some wood in the shed, so that's what I used.
The box is a very simple affair, made of five lumps of wood screwed together, with a laminated panel front. But it's the strongest computer case you're ever likely to see, it can withstand being stood on with no problems (the wood is about 2 cms thick, and it's real wood planks, not chipboard).
I started off by cutting some wood to use as a base for the box, being a bit longer and wider than the motherboard, so the motherboard could be screwed flat on the bottom and it wouldn't flex if the box was picked up (moving things with edge connectors is always a recipe for disaster if they get flexed). The motherboard was mounted just a bit in from the back of the board, so the connectors don't hang out where they could get knocked on things, and leaving space in front of the board to mount other things. I didn't quite have enough space in front of the board to directly mount things like hard drives, so I put in a small wooden block to mount a larger platform above the main board, and mounted the hard drive there.
Then I cut some side panels that were tall enough to allow some other drives (floppy and CD-ROM) to be stacked above the main board, but not so tall to make the box huge. I probably should have made them taller than I did, so I could have put a shelf into the box to mount everything else on, but I didn't have enough wood for that. These drives were mounted on shelves attached to the side panel, but with a leg on the other side to stop them drooping. I also had an external Genlocker that I wanted mounted inside, so I attached its circuitboard to a shelf mounted on the other side panel, and snaked its cable out the back.
The rear panel is made in three sections. The two outer parts are metal panels screwed to the side panels, they've got connectors mounted in them for the sound from the back of the CD-ROM, the Genlocker, a hole for a keyboard connector to pass through (an IDC ribbon header mounted to the side panel), and another hole for the Genlocker and power cables to pass through to the motherboard rear connectors. Between them is the power supply (the power supply box from an Amiga 2000, but now with an XT style powerboard inside), it's held in place by those metal panels at the back, and has a foot screwed to the bottom of the box at the front of the power supply—it straddles over the motherboard.
The front panel is just some decorative panelling that's meant to be glued to wood (for making things like table tops), but I just glued it to a few strips of wood, so that it was a bit sturdier and had something to attach it to the front of the box with.
I had to do a few modifications to the Amiga: I attached the A1200's power cable to the inside of the power supply, but it still connects to the back of the Amiga in the normal way (allows for easy disassembly, and the power supply can be used for another Amiga—for testing other computers). And I removed the keyboard connector from the motherboard, soldered in a ribbon cable leading to an IDC connector mounted on the side of the case. I wrapped the cable in foil, grounded it, then wrapped it in an insulator—it was picking up interference from something and making the computer behave oddly. I took the motherboard's keyboard connector, attached it to the flexi-thing on the keyboard, soldered ribbon cable to its pins and made a short flylead to another IDC header mounted at the back of the original A1200 keyboard casing (I kept the keyboard in the original case). Now, the keyboard and computer are connected together by a 34-wire ribbon cable, with connectors at each end.
I briefly experimented with using an A2000 keyboard with the A1200, and found that it wouldn't reboot via the normal reboot keys, though the keyboard was much better to type on. But I couldn't spare the A2000 keyboard, nor find one to buy from anywhere. So I use the original A1200 keyboard attached via a ribbon cable.