Well, I've never done this but for 20 bucks you can buy a sweet jewelery case from walmart and 10 bucks more will buy you a tube of expanding insulation foam from home depot. 15 bucks for white glue and black spray paint, but you'll likely have that lying around.
1. Knife the shit out of the lid of the box or whatever. make grooves so the foam will stick to it. Then spray the foam, and use a reciprocating saw, dremel, exacto knife, whatever to cut the lid pad to shape. Use white glue to smooth it over, and then paint it if you wish.
2.Cover your gear with saran wrap (WELL!) and then add a layer of wax paper so the foam won't stick. Use pins or jenga blocks or whatever to figure out how high your gear needs to be in the box. Fill the box with foam and hold your gear in place. !THE FOAM HARDENS REALLY FAST, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO HAVE THE SLOTS BEFORE HAND!. I would also use jenga blocks to make a route for your cables to go. It probably won't be pretty, but you can pretty much use and exacto knife to clean out extra foam. Then use a tub of white glue to fill in any holes and make it look smooth.
I figure this project would take about 2-3 hours +drying time for the glue to do it right.
That's how I would make a cheap hard case. I actually am planning on doing this for my HP touch desktop (There aren't really any hard cases that will fit, you have to forge your own sometimes), with some added mofo fans for cooling. That way I can lay it down flat in front of me and use it as a controller+wicked ghost story effect on stage.
