will put a sketch of what i'm thinking about up tonight...
basically looking at building a vert projector with housing in the base to store a computer...
not sure if i want to just leave a large gap and shove a computer in there or go all out and secure the mainboard to the wooden projector box and have the backplate of the mainboard facing the back of the projector for all the various input/output cables (along with putting in holes for the vga cable/other preipheral boards)

securing the mainboard means that i could wire up a switch to the outside of the projector that turns everything on at once... i'd also have to consider power supply placement/ where to put hard drives/cd drives etc, but this should be fairly simple, i could simply pull the CDRACK/HDDRack out of one of the spare computer cases i have lying around and attach them to the walls of the computer housing...

the projector itself... i'm going to start out simple and use an OHP housed in the Vertical Projector box, which will eventually be stripped for parts as the project progresses... the final design will have the lens/mirror/control arm assembly staying intact for focusing purposes, the lens pointing straight out the top an hitting the mirror (so the center of the image should be roughly 1.45m from the ground, which is pretty much dead center of the screen, thus eliminating any need for adjusting for keystoning)

i don't have much experience with woodwork and i'll be doing it all armed with nothing but a jigsaw, a drill and my creativity... hopefully i get my measurements correct and don't screw it all up...
I envision putting the PC in the bottom of the PJ as the simplest hurdle to overcome

which would work better... split or unsplit fresnels?

I'm in the midst of a 17" pro vertical build and I'll be housing a DIY HTPC inside my build but in a compartment next to my projector. The case won't be a typical HTPC case but rather a standard tower so it won't really be an HTPC in that sense.

If you don't require keystoning unsplit will give you a better final projected image.

this brings up a point I've been meaning to ask someone.... I'm going to be doing tthe same as you durachko....ie, an htpc in a seperate compartment, but same unit(with wheels) as the vertical pj...and my ballast will be in a seperate unit also from the pj.... because of the ballast being basically a big electro magnet, do you think the pc will need any extra shielding or anything? I'm thinking the ballast box should be on the bottom(center of gravity lower) and was going to put the pc on top of the ballast box....

I'm keeping my ballast as far away from my PC as possible. I don't think it'll matter much - the PC case is a shield after all.

While testing my lamp (first firing) I happened to have my laptop practically next to the ballast and turned on and noticed nothing bad. I did move it though after I thought about it awhile.

well, I'm trying to keep it all in one unit , think an extra piece of metal might help between the ballast box and the pc? although come to think about it, they're only about 18" away from each other now and it seems to be ok..... I guess I'm more concerned with the initial pulse when turning on the ballast..

There are some folks here where I work that use a technique called patch-clamping. It's a very sensitive procedure to measure teeny-tiny (that's the technical term for it) potentials in single living cells - ion channels. They house their stuff in a thing called a Faraday cage. It's just a metal enclosure that's grounded to Earth. I'd say you have nothing to lose by slapping a piece of lightweight metal between yer ballast and PC and grounding it.

gee, if I put the whole unit in a faraday cage it would even survive the EMP when the bomb drops...

But who would be there to watch it?

ahhh..... I always forget the little details..... which explains why I'm on my 3rd rebuild....

wrap it in brass screen, just like the mythbusters do!

Unless you want wireless networking that is...well even then, you could stick the antenna outside the case.

hmm... looks like i'll have to rethink my design a bit as i only had room for the ballast in the PC area...

am trying to figure out how to use autocad so i can get an accurate - to-scale blueprint of my design... but that program is a bit tricky when you have no previous cad experience, basically i just wanna know how to enter coordinates for the start/end of each line in mm... any ideas?

Sure, you'll find lots of autocad gurus around here.

When you hit the line button, or type line, the first prompt (command line at the bottom) says enter start point. So type your x,y, e.g. 0,0, then hit enter, type your end point x,y and you're done. It is essentially unitless drawing unless you want to specify that.

If you want to just do distances, like say to draw a line from where you are to 10 mm left, 50 mm up you can use the @. So from your start point, when it asks you to enter the end point, you can hit @-10,50.

Well, a couple things.
To disrupt an EM field, a solid metal enclosure isn't very effective. You want an eratic one, like a mesh.
in fact, when you are doing the math on that stuff, a metal shell is considered a conductor of some of
the fields.

When it comes to AutoCad, there are lots of books out there.
Their are two methods of enterting coordinates. Absolute and relative.
if you enter just a number every time, it will be absolute.
But if you want to draw a line that is 10 units long, you enter the first number where you want it to
start as absolute, then the next one would be relative, unless you want to do the math every time.
You can enter your relative measurements in rectangular or polar form.

As far as autocad and every piece of modeling/drafting software I have used, the units are just that
'units' you only care about the scale when you want to transfer it to the real world, i.e. Printing.
You have to set up your paper space in autocad with the scale you want to use. If you entered
all your data in with the assumption that your units were inches, it is pretty easy.

I would give you exact syntax, but I am afraid of confusing the 30 different programs I have used
over the years.