|  | April 14, 2007
The "Digg" Case January 19, 2007
The "ITX-Laptop" December 07, 2006
The "Tortoise Beetle" October 02, 2006
The "DOS Head Unit" August 31, 2006
The "Janus Project" August 05, 2006
The "Leela PC" June 26, 2006
Nano-ITX in a Football May 17, 2006
The "EPIA Alloy Mod" April 11, 2006
Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods February 18, 2006
The "Rundfunker" |
| | | | October 24, 2005
The "ITX TV" October 06, 2005
The K'nex-ITX August 05, 2005
The "Waffle Iron PC" July 21, 2005
The "Supra-Server" July 18, 2005
The "Mega-ITX" July 07, 2005
The "Encyclomedia" May 25, 2005
The "Accordion ITX" May 16, 2005
The "FileServerRouterSwitch" May 15, 2005
The "Mini Falcon" May 13, 2005
The "Bender PC" May 11, 2005
The "BBC ITX B" May 10, 2005
The "Frame" April 20, 2005
The "Jeannie" March 09, 2005
The "Cool Cube" January 30, 2005
First Nano-ITX Project? January 17, 2005
The "iGrill" January 15, 2005
The "Gumball PC" December 15, 2004
The "Deco Box" December 03, 2004
The "TERA-ITX" October 06, 2004
The "Coealacanth-PC" |
| | | | September 17, 2004
The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD" August 26, 2004
The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX" August 25, 2004
The "SEGA-ITX" August 13, 2004
The "Quiet Cubid" August 06, 2004
The "BMWPC" July 14, 2004
The "Moo Cow Moo" July 02, 2004
The "Mini Mesh Box" June 17, 2004
Jukebox ITX May 24, 2004
The "ERN005PC" (KANA) March 13, 2004
The "Underwood No. 5" February 04, 2004
The "Humidor CL" January 23, 2004
The "Attache Server" January 22, 2004
"Racing The Light" January 21, 2004
VIA's Flat Panel DevKits January 20, 2004
The "Ambulator I" January 19, 2004
The "Borg Appliance" December 19, 2003
The Gingerbread Village Server December 04, 2003
Custom PC's XmasTreePC December 01, 2003
"Windows XP Box" November 12, 2003
"R2D2PC" Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "Accordion ITX"
Introduction
My friend Jim Wiggins and I have been working on a special case mod for a music server. Here are some photos of the completed computer showing the steps I took during the process of converting an Enrico Bertini accordion into a SUSE Linux RAID5 server to play our library of music from our CD collection. It was a blast trying to figure out how to modify this accordion to fit a computer.
Construction
The original accordion (top, rear, front views)
The first thing I did was systematically gut the accordion by removing all the reeds, levers, and left hand button mechanics, leaving only the outer shell and the keyboard.
Wood base (side & front views)
Next I stretched the bellows into a curved shape similar to the first picture above (original accordion top view) and drew the shape onto a piece of 1/2" plywood, where I would be creating a base to mount the hard drives, motherboard chassis, etc.
Added motherboard chassis/power supply (front & rear views)
One of the amazing discoveries was that the back wooden plate where the left hand buttons used to be was exactly the same dimensions as a 3U rackmount case! My rackmount case supplier from my DAW business furnished me with a chassis that fit perfectly, along with the hard drive brackets you see in the above pics of the wooden base and an Enermax ultra-quiet 2U 450W power supply.
Duct taping the bellows to the base (inner & outer edges)
Using a mitre saw, I cut out the back portion of the bellows in order to mount the wooden base to it using duct tape. This way I could keep the airflow controlled and moving from the front of the accordion to the back without leakage.Then I used two white coat hangar wires to reinforce the top part of the bellows so no one would try to squeeze it once I got the computer operational (this was later removed as it proved unnecessary).
Added hard drive bracket guides and securing mechanism
In order to secure the hard drive brackets into place, I made guide rails from 1/4" wooden strips and glued+screwed them into place so the brackets wouldn't slide around. I also chiseled out an area on the base and screwed metal strips down so I could slide the metal clip from the base of the bracket into place, thus locking the bracket to the wooden base. Even with that, there was still about a 3/4" gap between the bracket and the top of the bellows so to further secure it, I slid a 1"x3"x5" piece of acoustic foam into this gap so the bracket wouldn't move when I tilted the accordion up to it's display position.
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We are now accepting deposits for the PX 10000 at the Mini-ITX.com Online Store. We serve the UK, Europe, USA and beyond. Reserve your place in the queue today! |
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