Well after installing the Fairywren I needed some USB ports which of course an NLX tower system like the Pheobe back in 1998 probably wouldnt of had. So i purchased some USB extender pci style brackets…

Slotted and secured them into the spare slots and plugged them into the Fairywren powered USB sockets along with the GPIO extender socket in the backpane and HD socket extender. Next I had to work out the pins for lights and power switch was quite easy…

I then plugged in the mouse and keyboard into the new rear USB sockets. And using a HD to SVGA convertor plugged in to the back HD socket to my monitor i then turned on the Pheobe by holding the on button for second. (seems to be how the Fairywren work) and bingo booting into the latest build of RiscOS…

Next I will cover how to add a front loading CDROM drive…

Part 3 coming soon…

So I manged to get hold of a Phoebe case from ebay in great condition. There are are only 50 odd of these ever produced which never saw the light of day when Acorn scrapped the Pheobe Risc PC2 and broke up the company in 1998. The only one that ever worked is a prototype in the Cambridge Computer Museum.

So the thought occurred why not make an Arm v7 version using the Raspberry Pi…

The first task was to acquire something that the Pi would mount to or provide expansion. So enter the Fairywren motherboard…

Made by Geekroo, the board comes with loads of cables and mounting brackets, the Pi just slots into the boards GIPO socket and is bolted secure…

So now i had my ITX solution i needed figure out the mounting brackets in the NLX Pheobe case…

After some playing about I found the way that worked best so that the PSU would connect to the board. PSU was a whisper quiet 300watt from early 2000’s…

So now we had a PSU and mobo solution with plenty of powered USB sockets, unlike the Pi in its native state it really lacks the extra powered USB sockets you would need for keyboard, mouse and USB devices.

Part 2 coming soon!