Hi all! Most of you probably know my other project(s) and although they are progressing slowly i have another one which is half ready now. Rack-IT is (as the name obviously says) a rack project. I got tired of all the lan and phone cables antenna cables(cable modem) and stuff hanging around so since i already was putting up new wallpaper and repainting why not do something about that mess o wires aswell. The idea is/was to put all lan / phone cables etc into a rack that isn't in the way. i want my room to be organized finally (got new furniture custom made on the way). So the first thing was to make the rack itself. The rack: -I wanted the rack to be large enought to fit in everything and also be decorative that's why my choice of material ended up to be pine-wood. It came out to be a 5 u rack just the size to hang it above my door. The mounting rails i made out of an L shapred rod of aluminum. Also i will be putting up a tinted plexi door onto it which will open upwards. The wires you see coming outta the wall above the rack...those are the ones I tapped the 220V in the wall with so there's no need for a plug for the rack. -For all the LAN and phone purposes i decided to get a patch-panel and since it's my home i only needed a small one (smallest i could get was this 16 port one).One half serves LAN purposes the other phone. Since it has a small space between the two lines of ports i will be building a phone line busy signaling LED into that space. You can see the patch-panel installed and the router and the cable modem already working there. -The router and the cable modem don't have any rackmounting ears so a 1U rackmount will be custom tailored for them (both will fit into the 1 u mount and maybe even a tiny 5 port switch will go there). More about this later. I will post a drawing about them the next time or maybe even the finished version if all goes well. -A rack is not complete without a rackmount pc which will be my server. I am trying to locate an older pc late pII or early pIII for this purpose since the stuff going into this is currently a 2500+ amd barton which will go into my portable music studio. anyway the mobo size is the same and the psu will stay which is a pull from an old p1 dell. It's silent as death itself since it has a small 6cm fan which has a really low rpm. The case itself is made out of 1mm thick aluminum which will be reinforced along the lower edges. The pc started out to be a 3U chassis but it ended up 2.5U. There will be a backlit 4*20 char parallel LCD in the middle displaying network traffic and stuff, along with one mobile rack (if i can fit it into the case since the depth is limited) and power hdd activity and such leds. For hdd there will be a 80 gig 2.5"hdd in there since those are exceptionally silent. No need for a cdrom since after one install i won't need it unless something goes terribly wrong. It's gonna run win2000 server with all service packs and patches OR linux debian or such haven't really decided yet but that can wait. more pics will be up tomorrow or maybe even now dunno yet.
nice project. i will be watching it but i think you should install a linux distro instead of win2k because its a server and i think linux is more reliable
Oooookayyyy starting to write this post for the 3rd time gets a tad annoying after a while... So since my 4*20 char backlit LCD is arriving tomorrow morning i don't really have anythig to show you except the pics left out yesterday. The rackmount with the half assembled rack case mounted... Front view which will look somewhat like the following pic The aluminum piece you see at the bottom will be cut to size along with other ones and riveted to the bottom all round to make the case more solid. Inside of the case empty... Showing psu and mobo placement. Inside with a standard hdd on top of the psu (oneof the 2 possible solutions of hdd) Inside with the 2.5" hdd should fit nicely (that's not the final 2.5 hdd this one's just 20 gigs). The matrox card that will be used for video(or if i can get a good laptop lcd for next to nothing then this will control it) The mobo of the dell (as you see full passive cooled but only p1 this will be used if i can get the sdram shaped EDO ram the fckheads used) and the cold cathode that's gonna be inside of either the rackmount or the rack case not sure which one yet. The PCI and ISA slots on the riser board of the dell with a nic a soundcard and a ide driver.
Why use a 2.5" harddisk? They are slower and more expensive then 3.5" and there seems to be plenty of room for a 3.5" harddisk. Txx
Thats now true. My seagate barracude are very silent. Actualy it more silent then the harddisk there is in my ibm laptop.
dunno never bought a seagate after one of'em i had to rma 3 times ... AND i don't have the cash to buy any new hdds the 2.5 i already got
Okay i got the LCD and it's up and runnin. pics later I also got my old 3 line lcd running (it's 2 lines plus 2 half lines in one row) but i got a small prob with that if anyone could help i'd appreciate it. The topic is also on the Electonics forums
