Summer Project: Custom Rack, Converted Case, and new desk setup

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obsidian_mh

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 26, 2005
Messages
463
Almost finished with my senior year of high school... just two or three more days left. That means summer is almost here and I´ll have time to work on my projects again. I´m going to be living at home and commuting to college (45 minute drive, but don´t really care to live on a Catholic Campus, St. Vincent). So, I'll have to maintain my desk in my room. It's a good 4'-5' desk, so there is plenty of space... it's just that I need more. =D

Overall, I'm going to need to build shelves on, above, and to both sides of the desk. I'm also acquiring some older A/V equipment from my school this year... hopefully some mixers, TBCs, and other assorted items.

I'm looking to build a custom 19" rack to house some of these items that I'd actually use. This is just meant to sit on my desk, but also remain portable (LAN parties and whatnot). I could just buy one, but I'd like the challenge and ability to customize it a little further. I'm looking to fit a 4U rackmount case that I'm turning into patch/amp box for audio, a 2U ethernet switch, and then possibly some other nifty items. I'll probably mount a panel mixer on the top or side of this as well.

Next part of the project revolves around a 133MHz Compaq Deskpro. I'm contemplating ripping its guts out and fitting an ATX tray in it. Add a SCSI or Fibre Card to it for some attached storage and throw in a TV Tuner (that's currently unused).

I'm going to shove my iDeq (current desktop machine) under the desk on top of the subwoofer, and put my AMD64 system on the top of the desk (when finished).

Pictures and more info will be up in a few days, as well as concept drawings.

Please comment. I wanna see what other people think and suggest. =D
 
Here's the mock-up of the overal design I'm aiming for. It's messy, but I haven't had much time with the end of my senior year and work (Buffalo Wild Wings).

desk3.jpg


Nice bulky 17" CRT there in the center. Next big purchase is going to be a 17" LCD to replace the CRT, but I plan to get a 19" and possibly an additional 17" for three screens. More on this later.

The SFF is a Biostar iDeq. It's a very nice machine, surprisingly. Once my friend returns from college (Drexel) and brings in his 80mm holesaw, I'm going ot mount an 80mm fan on the side of it just to make sure it's cool. It started as my HTPC, but I got annoyed with my tower and plopped my GF6600 and Sempron 2800+ into the iDeq. It's currently powered by Gentoo Linux. I'm going to move it above my subwoofer, as the arrow shows.

The tower is a LANBoy. It was nice when it came out, but the design is old... maybe I can mod it in the future once the guts are transplanted into a 4U Rackmount from the same friend mentioned above. The rackmount lacks a lid, so that'll be on the top of my todo list once I get that. Black paintjob, and some new buttons... should be good as new. I'm not sure if I'm going to bother with any case windows or not, as that machine is going to go underneathe my monitor (but dragged to LANs for the girlfriend to use, hopefully). Currently, it's a dual-boot, but I may cut it down to just Windows for CS:S, HL-2, and such gaming... as well as Photoshop.

From my school, I know I'm pulling a rackmount oscilloscope and 1U casing (not really a computer case, but I could mod it into a pull-out tray for cables and whatnot. I'm also getting an older video switcher from the same friend again... it was never usable, and I'm planning to gut it completely and make a new front front for it. I'm going to design some sort of normalized patch panel for audio and video, as well as throw in some amps. Unfortunately, I can't find any working mixers in our storage room at school, so that part will just have to wait. I'm going to design a portage rack to fit those items in, as well as the 24-port Linksys switch highlighted under my desk... It's an DSSX24, great for LAN's. =P Depending how easy I find building the switch, I might leave room for my other 16-port Bay Networks switch, too.

I don't know what I'm doing with the Dual P3. Keeping it, for sure. I haven't powered it up since our last LAN in march... heh. Only other part at the moment is to get some shelves build around the desk.
 
The project lives on.

It's been a while, but summer was a bit busier than I'd imagined. I managed to sell off and/or trade a lot of my unused hardware, and I got an LCD to replace the old Compaq CRT in the above picture. Happy.

As for the project, little or nothing has been done thus far. I'm still more or less keeping to the original plan, but I'm sure some things will change as it progresses.

At current, I'm stripping out an old waveform monitor (oscilloscope) acquired from my old alma mater (pictured below). Along with that, I picked up about three 1U and 1 2U rack shell (old video / audio equipment) that I will integrate into the project as well... given time.

scaled.jpg


5.25" tall, 17" wide (chassis, anyways), and 18" deep
Plans for the oscilloscope:
- Strip out old parts
- mount ATX / PCI backplane w/ integrated micro-atx C3 motherboard
- Replace CRT with 5-7" LCD
- Mount slim DVD-ROM / CD-RW below LCD
- Utilize various knobs as fan controllers, volume, and other assorted tasks (more to come on this... I'm not entirely sure how. =D)

As a side note, I'm looking for relatively cheap audio projects to use some of the rack shells for. I know I'm going to use one as a rackmount CD player, but other than that... I'm not sure what I can do. I'd love to do some homebrew audio compressors or something. If anyone has any links, please share.
 
obsidian_mh said:
I don't know what I'm doing with the Dual P3. Keeping it, for sure. I haven't powered it up since our last LAN in march... heh. Only other part at the moment is to get some shelves build around the desk.
Click to expand...
You should join the [H]orde and fold with it, of course! Distributed Computing forum!
 
I did, actually... right after I took that picture. I always have socks on, so I didn't even realize.
 
Are you going to finish this or what....looks like a 'grand design' and you've got a ton of gear to work with, so what gives?
 
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