Huzzah! Huzzah! God I really need to start modding again. I miss the cold hard feel of aluminium in my hands and alu dust in my lungs..
I've only just discovered this build, you always amaze me with the speed that you get through complex designs, and super high quality work
Gotta say that I love the new shape... I just hope that I have the motivation, energy, time, and resources to make such a nice projects some day...
That didn't change much. Shape of a set top box, but Attila quality. I actually think that's a legit reference of quality now, Attila type quality.
Thank you all very much for the nice words. EDIT JUNE 3 2015 I guess an explanation of why I'm back here is in order. I had thought about completing this project several times but sometime last year (or the year before), I finally threw the last version in the scrap bin and gave up. Who needs a HTPC any more? All our our TV's are smart now. I've also been busy doing other things so didn't have much time to think about a new project. However while cleaning up the old workshop, I was confronted by a massive pile of old hardware. Fans, cables, motherboards, graphics cards etc etc. This is only in the workshop, in the house there is twice as much junk in various places. Among all this stuff was four portable hard drives in a drawer, what a waste, I thought. So the wheels started turning and the thought of the parts that were to be used in Arrakis came to mind. Now in our house people are always running around with usb sticks, transferring stuff from one device to another, so, I'll just make a nas box, plug it into the router and no more sticks. Even less need to get up and move around, talk to each other, keep fit, stuff like that. So I started designing another little box. But then the though of Arrakis came to mind, hmm, I went over and pulled the last iteration of the chassis out of the bin and could see how a conversion could be done to take a few hard drives and a sata card. And while I was at it, this project could be put here and allow me to finish this worklog. Super! So here's what I did...... Firstly all the hardware was gathered. All stuff that was laying around. The only thing I had to buy was the rocket card (there are only two sata ports in this board). This pic was taken before I decided to use Arrakis, so the psu as well as one hard drive when back into storage. The old chassis needed some modding. The sata card is mounted via some risers and some some extra holes are cut for cooling and access. A couple of pieces to make the chassis taller to accommodate the drives. To hold the drives, some 6mm bar is cut to size. The drives are mounted via brass risers. Four little blocks are cut and screwed into the corners at the bottom. These are the mounting points and the chassis will be fixed to the case with these and 5mm screws. Then the case is made up from some MDF of various thickness and some veneer applied. The vent area is trimmed in solid wood. Then the finish process, spray sand spray sand........about eight coats of poly. Wiring up. A gratuitous shot of my bench. A new back is made and just sanded and sprayed with clear. And that's it. Here's a bunch of pic's Some black tape is applied around the vent area. And until I make the new low boy, it will live here. Details: Latest version of Freenas About 3TB of storage. Asus/Atom/nvidia mobo 8GB ram Four drives including Corsair SSD. Used by about nine devices including TV's, ipads, pc's, and laptops, more when the rest of the family is around. Hasta la vista
Yippie, it´s alive again. Nice design swift btw. I never told, but this picture actually triggered me into building 4M, my MOTY contender. You can obviously see the resemblance =)
Liking the new shape, more in-line with your studio days I think. Nice to see you back in the shop too.
