A Big important thing that everyone has left out (you covered it) is what tools you have access to, budget and what you can make. For my job I make a lot of custom furniture and sheet metal art work. About anything you can think can be made, but might not be feasible in your current state, I.e wanting to make stuff out of stainless steel or elaborate frames. my suggestion is after you flesh out what you want to make, figure out what materials you need and the cost, then sort out what tools you need and the cost, and finally how it will be made. For instance a very good example is the circular passive radiator I have in my present log, On paper its 8 concentric circles. Now the tricky part is how to bend 60 feet of soft copper tubing, get them all within dimension AND not have it kink once. I find when I sort out all this stuff my mod starts building itself and things evolve. AT any rate check out my work log if you want to see a definately non standard looking case
I broke the "measure twice, cut once" rule this week end and cut the window for my mod the wrong way around . Never mind i was gunna do the window again anyway.
ok...i've started using sketchup and i created the rough shape of the HD caddy...then i realized it was too long, so i'll have to go back and change that got a couple of questions 1. how would i "cut" a hole in sketchup (going to go back to the tutorials to see if there's anything about that) 2. how do i post pics? thanks
There are probably a few ways to do it, but I usually draw the shape of the hole on the surface I want to cut from, then push (as in opposite of pull) it into the surface to the depth of the surface. So for a 10mm thick panel, I'd push it down negative 10mm. SketchUp automatically removes the two superfluous faces and adds faces to the inside edges of the hole. On this board? Use the "img" tags. There should be a little link to a page that explains how to use them in the "Posting Rules" box at the bottom of the page when you're writing a reply. Nezuji
Either I buy scrap from local plastics shops (if I just need clear stuff or I don't need to be picky about thicknesses or colors) per pound or I order exactly what I need from http://www.mcmaster.com
hi again, i haven't been working on the design in sketchpad lately, but that's because i realized that i hadn't planned out the frame (which i'm doing now on paper) got a couple of questions though could anyone comment on what was posted in posts #32 and #38? what material is more expensive, acrylic/plexi or fiberglass? thanks
i've put off the HD caddy component of the mod (the planning) for a little while, but now i'm ready to get back into it i've revised the dimensions...probably going to be 75cm deep, 120cm is just too big width dimension still stands, and height will be 45cm max, 30cm min. btw, those questions in my previous post still stand, if any of you are able/want to answer them thanks edit: 75cm, not 90cm
a quick question would it be possible to wire up the HD caddy so that when the power button is pressed the 2nd time (on the comp case) that it feeds power to certain molexes (the ones powering the HDs), and when the power button (or switch) is pressed/flipped on the caddy, it only feeds power to the fan controller (and in turn the fans)/temp monitor i hope i worded the question in an understandable manner thanks
OK! As far as I know, yes. I've never put a HDD into a heatspreader jacket, but even so it seems to me that 5cm could be considered quite safe. Cautious, even. I can only say that you should check how much current your drives draw on each voltage line, and then make sure that your PSU can cope. I'm pretty sure that you're going to need one rated at 1.5-2 times the total Wattage that the drives consume, though, unless you get some kind of specialised jobbie. A standard PSU is built to output a variety of voltages that HDDs don't use, which means unused/wasted capacity in this situation. I don't know anything about that, but I'd wager that there are a few good threads right here on Bit-tech somewhere, for starters. You've said "caddy" a bunch of times here, but you haven't really explained what that means. Obviously it's not going to be an off-the-shelf unit, so that leaves things a bit vague. In theory, you can wire anything up to trigger in any sequence you want. It's only a question of parts and maybe a little circuitry. As far as I understand what you're asking, if you use SATA drives, it should be possible. Nezuji
hi Nezuji, thanks for replying by caddy (i thought this was the right word) i mean a cut down case to store HDs (16-24 in this case, a bit of an overkill, but a harmless indulgence) something that "popped up" in my thoughts was maybe having troubles with cable length (can SATA and ATA cables be extended?)
That's about all I got. The main thing I was unsure of was whether you intended to also include any interface electronics (like a commercial external drive case), or just to run all the HDD cables from the caddy into the main case. But then you just said: So that pretty much clears that issue up for me. First up, PATA/IDE drives MUST be powered up with the MB. So if you were to use PATA/IDE drives, you couldn't do a "second press" activation; They would have to come on with the PSU in the main case, although that is still possible. With regards to cable length, well someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I've recently been reading about PATA/IDE vs SATA, and it seems that the maximum length for PATA/IDE (I guess what you're calling "ATA") cables is 18". And while SATA cables can theoretically be any length, it's only practical to go to about a metre (~34") without any boosting/repeating circuitry. So from what you're looking at building, I think you'd be better off to go with SATA drives (or PATA/IDE drives with SATA adaptors, but that would just add bulk and cost more than native SATA drives) due to the fact that the SATA cables are much narrower, and longer to boot. Before we get any further into technical limitations and configuration possibilities, I have to ask; Just how are you planning to connect all of these drives to the MB? It's going to take a buttload of expansion cards (either SATA or IDE RAID), since I'm pretty sure that your MB doesn't have that many HDD connectors... Nezuji
well, there are 8 port SATA RAID cards, and a lot of motherboards on the market now have 8 SATA ports, so it would be a combination of motherboard and RAID cards it's good to know that SATA supports that long cables, although i had already started to rule out PATA because of the bulky cables (which you mentioned[Nezuji]) thanks for the linky to the G5 mod hydro i'm starting to think that i should forgoe this being a harddrive caddy and turn it into a case that can house two computers (one on each side), nothing too fancy (save that for later ) but something to start me off building a case from scratch (while still encorperating[sp] the features i would have in the hd caddy) thanks again guys
I harddrive caddy would be pretty easy. If you want helps designing it I have a few ideas which involve pull out HDD racks.
hmm, i hadn't even thought about using pull out racks an HD caddy might be easier, but i don't think it would be terribly practical for me to have a caddy that size (to fit under the main project) so i'm going to rethink it and make a case the same size the caddy was going to be (possibly a bit taller) containing 1 or 2 complete systems OR go the route of a mountain mods ufo case and have HD and optical drives on one side and motherboard (and maybe a WC setup) etc on the other side
ok, it's pretty certain in my mind that i'm going to do a 180 on this and turn this into a case capable of supporting 2 motherboards (going to make 2 motherboard trays, 2 3.5" external drive cages and 6 hd drive cages (up to 12 hds per mother board)...however, i would only use 1 motherboard in my case, put most of the drives to one side and use the room to hopefully install a WC system couple questions though does anyone have any detail schematics of motherboard trays (or know where to find any), as i'm having trouble visualizing a tray and how to secure it what size screws do drive cages use? i would like to use M3 screws through out (don't know about fans though) the case, but would they be able to handle the strain? thanks
