Rather late posting of this as the rack was built some 3 or 4 months ago but only had the vertical mounting rails put in today after i built something else which needed them. After I spotted the dell 20" tft post in the bargains section i pondered about buying and eventually found myself buying a pair whihc look great. however this left me with a 19" crt and a 17" tft spare, the crt is still redundant but tft bugged me having something like that lying around spare. Previously in the rack i had some netowking gear i'd picked up for my dissertaion and some misc computers which ive also aquired, shown below. The rack is made from an Ikea wardrobe carcas whihc was in the bargain corner for £5, no doors/shelves, just the shell and some slight damage to the bottom of one side. After i got it home i set to work on cutting it down to size so that it was the right size as i wanted it to match the height of my wardrobe so i can gain a larger storage shelf above it for 2 more boxes of pc's/parts As you can see, the screen in there was a a 14" job that i got about 8 years ago with my first pc (ICL P60 \o/), but it cant handle anything above 640x480 happily, and given most gfx card wont go lower than 800c600, this is a problem, as the image is distorted greatly, so i thought about putting the 17" tft in the rack. Then had a better idea. Put the tft on an arm, at the same level as my 20" tfts which can be moved around over my desk when in use, and move back to the rack when not. After about 5 hours work yesterday i made this: sorry for the poor pic quality, i'll try to remedy this later. the arm is made of 20mm box steel held toegether with M8 bolts. the arm moves remarkably well however there is slightly more sag than i'd hoped, so i need to adjust some stuff and make a new bracket for the tft to compensate altough its only really noticable when its over the desk. So, the rack now looks like... Which is far nicer, the 3Com superstack 3300 is now at the top out of the way and ready to be used, and the 3Com 3500 Corebuilder is still on the shelf with the cisco above it, as its ****ing heavy Underneath is my linux box, a Sun Ultrasparc 10 and an old P2 350 i got from my mate a cpl days ago inplace of the HP netserver (which was a PPro 200 with 3x4.2GB scsi array). With the tft over the desk its more noticable about the sag. I'll post more pics if people want and tally up how much this has cost me in total, i'm fairly certain its under £50 tho (including hardware )
erk, forgot i sized the pics rather large, havent got time to sort them now, but i will reduce them later.
thats pretty funky, beats my headless p3 in cupboard alcove, all its got are some runners on a shelf so i can move it out to change bits!
Done a quick calculation and the costs are pretty good all things considering. Ikea Cupboard £5 2 pieces of 30mmx30mm angle iron £8.83ea 10 x 30mm M6 bolts x 10 £1.30 24 M6 30mm dia. washers £3.90 100 M6 nuts £2.21 So for the rack itself that comes to £25.07 the arm for the tft: 20mmx20mm steel box section £3.94 bag of M8 washers £1.22 3x M8 bolts £1.08 2 M8 nuts £1.22 (!!!) 10 x 20mm M6 bolts £0.90 which comes to a grand total of £8.36 bearing in mind that this used some of the 100 M6 nuts from before, its still not bad. A rack cupboard and tft swing arm for <£35 The equpiment in there is probably well under £100 for the lot too as the most expensive thing in there is the replacement PSU for the cisco 2621 whichw as £30 shipped from US ebay. The 2621 itself was £10 from the BT forsale forum and the 3Com stuff was £20 for the 3500 and £10 for the SS3300. so £70 for the networking equpiment. The pcs are pretty much free, the Sun box is from a mate, as is the gateway ps 350, and the pther one is a celeron 1.1 whihc was being thrown away at uni complete with cdrom, psu and mobo, so its got 3x256mb ram and a 40gb HD i had spare and is a linux box to play with and a webserver once i get it setup I'll take more pics if people want and post later once i resize the other ones.
That's a freaking ace idea. I've got 3 2Us and an old tower, all housing PIIs and PIIIs, that are running stacked underneath the basement stairs right now. May have to make a run to Ikea soon and be on the lookout for something like this
I had an idea like that but realised I would just use it as an excuse to buy more computer stuff. Nice work.
zachjowi: Its a great HP init i've got mine setup as a pocket media player, plays videos nicely, although you've got to adjust them a bit, i'll write another thread somewhere on software and stuff in the appropriate forum if you want. and yes the Hds work, in that pile there is 3x 250GB, 3x 200GB, a 160GB and a 120GB, then theres another 250GB from the same pile currently in the my main rig, all going in the server eventually (see project log) Tibby: The 3com at the top will be plugged in soon (once ive quietened down the 3x 60mm screamers) to replace my DLink 8 port on the desk atm, the cisco and 3com are for my dissertation mainly, so will be powered up soon for that. Speedfreak: yes... its a horrible HORRIBLE temptation but i get given enough stuff as it is Aduno: Youve got to be quick and make sure you can get it home easily, cos they wont hold it for you, have to buy it when you see it which is a problem but they do collapse reasonable easily with a screwdriver.
Heh, ive got the darth vader on with a stormtrooper falnking him either side, i'll post a pic at some point
Pics resized and ive taken a few more of the arm and desk setup in full which i'll post alter tonight.
Right, more pics of the desk and rack and tft. Couple of shots of the back of the tft and the arm. The tft bracket was of the hardest bit to make and took the bulk of the 5 hours. The rack itself is far better now and much tidier, this i expect to last a good day... maybe less... The desk now looks rather impressive with 3 screens accross it and as a whole....
Looks pretty scwheet. Good use of space. What's driving the 710n (which PC)? And wtf do you have on all those HDs?
sadly its not a 710n, its a 172v which is iirc the previous model but even so, its coming from a switching box behind the curtain wedged between the rack and the wall, its only a two port at the moment which has the server (on the other side of the desk leg opposite the PC60) The second port just runs to the bottom of the rack currently for when i'm fixing other computers which makes life easier, going to get a 4 port at some point and put the webserver into there along with the sun box (although the sun needs its own kb/mouse) The drives have, erm, perfectly legitimate material on, yes, thats right.... Not a bad idea, but i'm going to make a pull out tray for them under the 3500 on some full extension draw runners.
Hey, nice work there. That arm looks really professional, I can't believe you made it!!!!! You could use a program called "Synergy" I think it is, to control the other pc's from your main one through the network. BenJ
Looking good. That TFT bracket is awesome. One question, how far apart are the two angle brackets used for rack-mounting? I know it's called 19" rackmount, but are they really 19 inches apart? I'm gonna make something like this for all the rackmount equipment (amps etc) in my church's sound system. _C
