Hi, This is my latest project log for my latest (third to be exact) full-project. I want a PC that will be easy to access the hardware, with no obstructions or sharp edges to cut my arms on, but still keep the other components safe and out of the way. Inspired by the HSPC Tech Station and Navig's project, hopefully I can accomplish something of those natures while keeping on a budget. I hope to have a the motherboard mounted on the outside with a hard drive, and PSU, CD, and OS drive in the case. My very first concept drawing, when I was still planning on using angle aluminum to make the frame. An early Sketchup rendition; The Victim; Lock rings and easy button case open. The former hardware; Pentium Pro = old; Slide-out expansion card daughterboard; Continued on next post.
aww cute! a dell expansion daughterboard! i havent had a computer thats had one of those for what, 6, 7 years now? ditto mankz. rip. it. to. shreds.
Aww man, I saw an ad for that computer in a magazine back in '96 or so, and it cost like 20 thousand finnish marks (1 euro=6 fim)
As is my style, I haven't touched this project since nearly a month ago. Today I forced myself to get some work done, because I'm one of those people who won't do something until close to the due date, so if theres no due date, it never gets done. Anyway, I plotted out the top of the case. I put in a removable HDD cage in the spare drive. Top view of the pencil marks. Showing whats what Front again. Drive cage. Out with the (really) old: Put-in-place mockup layout The plan is to make rails that I can attach fans to as needed, depending on the hardware being worked on, and also to allow for a radiator if I want one in the future for overclocking tests. The fans will be on special movable pieces most likely made of plexiglass. There will also be holes for wires to pass up to the board from the power supply and devices inside, and power and HDD LEDs as well as a switch located just in front the top HDD. Anyone with any ideas for things I should add that would be useful, please let me know. As always, comments welcome
Mini-update. I got to work drilling some holes for where the wires will reach through the board, unfortunately, I had some trouble and need to work on some measures to get around it. The metal under the plastic is thicker than I thought, so I think I will need to dremel patches off where I will be making cuts, so I just have to deal with the plastic. 44mm holesaw, worked a charm. I drilled through the metal underneath the first time ,but didn't for the second one because it was destroying my drill bit. and OMGWTFBBQ GAH WHAT HAPPENED!?!??!?!1 I hate my tools. I didn't have a holesaw big enough, or a drill bit big enough, so I had to use one of those flat bits for drilling wood. Somehow, that combined with a slightly off-center drill chuck resulted in two terribly unaligned holes. Just more file work for me, and chances are it will look like total crap when I'm done. I'm really mad. So far so good, no catastrophic miscuts. Hopefully I'll crank out a larger update soon. This project is moving at a snails pace, but I will be doing some research for what the best way to mount the fans, and then it will speed up I hope. Works been gobbling up all my time lately.
initially I wasn't going to paint it, because I didn't want to have to deal with all that mess, and bare plastic is the ultimate in durable. However, its butt ugly and I am wanting to do some bondo work on the chassis, so I think paint or vinyl dye is necessary.
An Optiplex! We use one of those as a gateway at our High School's Computer club EDIT: they rule as servers, 250% stable
Yeah, our school has like 30 of them. Except we just use them as expendable Win95 VB6 robotics stations.
I don't like where this project is going. It looks like crap, the case is difficult to work with, its heavy, its too large for my purposes, and this image inspired me to make something better. And thus, Revision 3 is born! New Sketchup drawings, which are based off a mix of my original design and that one I linked to. It will be made of angle aluminum and heavily stained pieces of wood. What type of wood and colour I'm not sure about yet, but I'm looking for something with little grain and a smooth texture, so it can masquerade as plastic. Comments? Hopefully this new, simpler design and summertime (yay) will pick up my work pace.
i wish i could build a test rig like this. right now im just using a barebone chasis to do all my work on.
cool project. up until a the end of this school year our School was running old Pentium 3s. good old memories with the old Pentiums. Anywho, My only question is how are you going to run the Sata/IDE Cables To/From the motherboard, based of your latest sketchup, without creating such an interference of cables should you need to change something?
Good question. Hopefully I can run some cables underneath the top level using some kind of clips, that way they are held up tight and not hanging, and extra long IDE and other cables will be routed to the top around the edges. Not very elegant, but its really the only way. Maybe some molex connectors mounted in the wood to allow for easy connection using secondary cables.
are the HDs SATA or IDE? because if they are IDE you could salvage an old HDD cage with the drive rails and just stack them and if you needed to pull one you just flick 2 tabs then pull the drive out, then you dont have to worry about streching the IDE cable and running out of cable for the CD drive. I would even recommend stacking them if the are SATA , from a powering POV it would be easier to stack them so the power cables dont have to criss-cross the board. A good example would be like out of a Xaser III from ThermalTake, i literally flick a tab and the HDs come out.
It is important that I can change the HDDs easily... I was just going to leave them lying on the neoprene mat, and not stack them because the top one will slide off easily. Maybe a box around the master, which won't need to be changed very often, and a neoprene top on the box that the slave (which will be swapped frequently) can sit on. I'll deal with that hurdle when the time comes.
ahh much better design but let me ask you, why spend so much time on the textures in sketchup? i mean why not just do precision mearurement, i mean more credit to you, the look unbelevable, but anyways... And im ont positive on this one, but lowes/homedepot are really chillaxed on their returns, so can you buy a hole saw, use it, and return it saying your drills horrible and has a tiny chuck that won't fit with the hol saw?(and obviously get your money back)
