I need to get my internal development server (running my CVS, MySQL, and some other handy toys) running so I can proceed with Airspace and some other things. It was previously hosted on Alexandria, an old IBM desktop that I bought from ICF when I left. It didn’t have enough storage, though, and no room to add it.
I went to the temple of consumerism and purchased a pair of 200GB SATA drives and a SATA controller. I’m intending to RAID 1 them together for integrity purposes and burn regular CD backups. I have a nice Antec case laying around, so the plan was to put the IBM motherboard and the new drives into that. No joy. The IBM motherboard is gigantically off-spec, with a huge riser card to plug PCI cards into. I tried and it just wouldn’t fit into the Antec.
So who needs a case? I set to bash together the quickest, dirtiest framework to hold all the parts together out of stuff I had laying around. Inspired by
Redneck 1 in production
Redneck 1 with the cooling fan I found out I needed for the drives
Redneck 1′s frame consists of a slab of particle board I had laying around, which I screwed and angle-bracketed into an L-shape. The power supply from the Antec case is held with more angle brackets and zip ties, and the drives are held in place with an old drive cage I found in my junkpile. The motherboard is screwed to standoffs mounted to the bottom plank, and shimmed with bits of cardboard to hold the riser card level.
With hardware this good, what could go wrong?
I didn’t notice until I got it all together that the SATA card doesn’t work worth a crap with the old IBM motherboard. It insists on trying to boot from the (blank) SATA drives and ignores the BIOS’s boot order. Sigh. Redneck 1, you will be missed. Guess I’ll have to get that new motherboard after all.
Respect++ for the TDK VeloCD. I had the 8x model and it was the best burner I ever had. Pity about the motherboard though.
Is that what that is? I pulled it out of a broken box the neighbor dumped on my doorstep.
–riney
Ow, my pride.
I think you forgot the duct tape
Dude..this post just made my day. I’ve been in tears all morning after reading this.
You can’t see it, but duct tape was used to keep the power switch and activity LEDs in place between the power supply and the drive cage.
There is *always* duct tape.
–riney
I wish it would have worked…now I have to learn what passes as a decent motherboard these days.
–riney
First, your imagination is umm…. ummm…. twisted.
I got an old pc and monitor in the closet if you want it. Hack it, smash it, trash it, use it… whatever. I haven’t powered it on in about 2 years. It was going to be a Freevo one day but I never bothered. All yours, just ask
- Jim