This is a quick mod made from scraps, think of it as a prototype.... My media machine in the living room (a Antec Minuet) runs Geexbox from a compact flash card to update the software means pulling the machine out of its living area cracking it open and replacing the card with an updated version. After some thought i decided the best place to store the flash card was in the floppy bay since this machine has never seen a floppy disk let alone had one fitted the bay is blanked out. Using some spare aluminium i've started a drawer to hold the ide adapter when finished it'll be secured into the floppy drive bay and stealthed behind the blanking panel. So we start of with a strip of aluminium. Unfortunately i've not got a metal break so these bends are done by hand and a 2x4, mostly 2x4.... These are about as sharp as i could manage it will do Next we cut two tracks to hold the truck and ride in the rails Couple of test fittings Drill holes to fit the truck into Riveted together. Cheapest rivet gun in maplin and it does a not bad job. Should have got one years ago. Test fit in a cage from an old oem box, my surrogate case, excellent for testing purposes. Had to remove a little bit of material from the bends, great thing about aluminium is nice and soft so the file takes less than a minute to remove a few mm of material bad thing is that its so soft if just gums up the dremels grinding stones. Crap pics aside, this is the IDE adapter sitting in place. Not sure how to secure it yet as the things power connector is on the other side very close to those screw holes. ] Some left over box section will act as the guide rails Final shots just now this represents about two hours work not bad for a Sunday morning,. The drawer works how ever could use a few improvements The movement isn't very smoth the truck moves around a lot in the rails, need to make it wider next time. the tracks aren't very secure on the truck and tend to move out of square I'm still not sure how to mount the cf adapter i'm also not sure how to secure the truck to the plastic bay cover. Comments and ideas for improvement would be appreciated.
great idea steveo! as to mounting the CF adapter, it looks like you have a lot of vertical clearance, can you mount it on some plexi with spacers and a cutout for the power input? What's that look like... fan header, 4pin molex?
Excellent, i think i have a piece of acrylic that just the job. I drilled and taped* a couple of holes to try and mount the card on some washers but it didn't really sit right but now i'll just secure the acrylic to those holes and do as you suggest cut a hole in the base for the power connector and mount the adapter on the plastic. Its ironically a floppy disk type power connection. * by tapped i screwed a (sacrificial) steel screw in to the metal with my powerful electric screwdriver, i really need to get a set of taps.
As modminded has suggested i've gone down the road of bulking out the truck with some acrylic. Ten seconds with junior hack saw and fresh blade and we have a good sized peice of plastic. Taped the top holes to secure the adapter to and the made the lower ones over sized so the screws just slip through and secure into the cross bar of the truck. Acrylic fitted nicely. Acrylic is a right bugger to photograph. That outlined area is the space needed for the power connector. Good fit with power connector. The screws connecting the acrylic to the cross bar are a bit high so i've had to tape them to stop them shorting out the card. http://forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=57&pictureid=575/IMG] Truck in place. All i need to do is work out how to secure the blanking panel to the rails.
Cool! Looks great. Glad I could provide a helpful idea. You gotta do something about the potential short though... rubber washers, hot glue, shorter screws?
