|  | April 09, 2013
Installing NAS4Free February 28, 2013
Building an XBMC 12 Home Theatre PC January 25, 2011
XBMC Guide updated to version 10.0 August 06, 2010
Building a Green PC February 15, 2010
Building an ION powered HTPC with XBMC October 10, 2008
The "Cambridge Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 2008" September 12, 2008
"Florian", the DVD burning robot September 05, 2008
The "i-EPIA" May 22, 2008
The "GTA-PC" 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" Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "TERA-ITX"
Introduction
The intent with this project was to build a low-power (low-heat and cost-effective) file server to cut down on my electric bill, using as many parts I had handy as possible, to cut down on up-front costs. I have another more powerful machine to act as domain controller, database server, etc, so this one just has to serve MP3's, DVD video, and the like. (There's another Epia M10K in the process of becoming my HTPC machine.) I had many of the components sitting around from previous endeavours, including the Epia M10K mobo and the fancy drive-bay gizmo (which is why I used parallel ATA) Had I to do it over again I'd use SATA with a suitable SATA PCI card as it's soooo much easier to cable...
Construction
Digging around Silicon Valley's surplus places netted me this drive cabinet, which previously held four 5.25" devices. It used a standard AT power supply and even had a 3.5" bay up top.
Though wide enough to fit a Mini-ITX board, the bottom drive bay had to be notched out to allow board to fit. The Dremel is my friend.
The old PSU was punted in favour of a shiny ATX style. In a fit of industry, I disassembled the push-on-push-off switch for the old PSU, took out the latch mechanism, and reassembled it, making it a momentary style compatible with these newfangled ATX systems :D Rather than waste a perfectly good drive bay on the boot drive, some angle aluminum and more Dremelling later, one drive mounts to the power supply in the back.
Some small 4/40 standoffs were collected from the hardware bin, but due to close tolerances, I couldn't fit a nut on the far side (the cover slides over three of the four.) After deliberation, JB Weld, the redneck's best friend, was employed to hold the standoffs down. In retrospect, I probably should have hot-glued them or the like, as JB Weld is prone to cracking :(
The motherboard fits sideways with fractions of an inch to spare. I chose this orientation to fit a PCI card in without having to use a horizontal riser. This is an el-cheapo ATA card, to allow me to control more than four drives. I'd like to have used a real hardware RAID card, but my Adaptec 2400's are larger than the enclosure, so software RAID will have to do. My write:read ratio is so low, anyway, that I won't take enough of a performance hit to justify the hassle.
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Plenty in stock at the Mini-ITX.com Online Store. We serve the UK, Europe, USA and beyond. Order in-stock items before 7.30PM GMT and we'll ship same day! |
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