neilhart's Tower of Power (TOP for short) - a file server

[neilhart]

It has been about three weeks and I need to catch up.

Per usual I operated on my optical drive and brought a pair of wires out for an external "Eject" switch.
I made up this switch bracket assembly using scrap ABS bits, ABS glue and a small aluminum tube.
.

.
And here it is installed in the final system.
.

.

More shortly,
Good modding,
neil

 

[neilhart]

In the final system, I decided to install some internal blue LEDs (and as you will see in a few posts) these LEDs provide some interest.

I wanted to be able to turn them on and off and thought that using a touch switch that I had would be a good way to go. This then caused me to search for a way to toggle the LEDs on and off using the touch switch which acts as a momentary switch.

I found a schematic that did what I wanted that used two relays and one momentary switch.
Check it out here: http://www.emil.matei.ro/onof2.php

The momentary switch in the diagram and the touch switch were not interchangeable so I added a third relay.

My wiring diagram is drawn with the relay pins as seen when looking down on the inverted device.
.

.
I used RTV to secure the three miniature 5 VDC relays to a small bit of ABS which in turn I attached to the under side of the optical drive shelf.
.

.
I spaced the touch switch out from the right lower internal panel using some resilient dense foam (painted black) so that it is in contact with the right panel when it is in place.
.

.
I added three blue LEDs to the optical drive shelf. The LEDs are inserted from the top through holes in the shelf and held by RTV. I also used an 80mm fan on the Icy Dock which had blue LEDs so I modified the cabling so that I could include them in the switching.
.

.
The LED touch switch works like a charm.


More shortly,
Good modding,
neil

 

[neilhart]

As you can see, I diverted from the normal G5 PM and thought very simple grey acrylic side panels would be appropriate.
I made up some small corner brackets and attached them to the bottom mounting plate rails. The brackets locate the side panel front to back.
.

.
The right side panel is secured with the G5 PM sliding latch and rear latch lever.
The right side cover latch receptacles are "super glued", using Rhino Glue, to the inside of the acrylic panel seen here.
.

.
The left side panel is located the same at the bottom by the corner brackets. I made up an adjustable stop which is attached to the optical shelf.
The stop screws in and out and has thumb screw jam stop to hold the adjustment.
.

.
I am using two ceramic magnets, stacked which are held in place on the inside wall of the left panel, again secured with RVT.



More shortly,
Good modding,
neil

 

[neilhart]

This project is mostly complete and I will summarize.

The intent was to build a file server to replace the two LINUX machines that I use to keep soft copies of just about everything that I own or have created. This is a primary and a backup file server, both running Ubuntu and SAMBA. I respect LINUX and appreciate that it is free and runs on almost anything that can pump bits. However my love is OS X and thought that I would move everything over to this new machine.

This system is no slouch as it is running an i7-2600K and the Zotac Mini-ITX motherboard has 6 SATA ports (two are SATA III) and Gig Ethernet along with 802.11bgn WiFi. The Zotac 9600 GT runs well in the single width slot and is better IMHO then running HD-3000.

I updated the system drive from OS X 10.8.4 to 10.8.5 last week and was pleased that everything works well. Sleep and wake from Sleep. Blinking power LED in Sleep.

I am going ask my son to generate some 'mod by neilhart' artwork for logo labels to dress up the plain Jane panels.

And I am playing around with PICAXE starter kit trying to get past the blinking LED stage with intent of adding the appropriate sleep LED function sometime, following the path set by MacTester and Ersterhernd.

Also, with the hard drives on slides out the back, I can have the ones that I want in the machine and the others immediately available with a reboot.
.

.

.

.

.

.

.
I wll set up and do a line up again: TOP, Short Stack and my G5 PM hack. Also I should provide an photo of my work site in my home office.

That's it for today.
Good modding.
neil