The Filing Cabinet Server

[slytherock]

Have fun!

[Drum Thumper]

Have fun!

Did I ever. Sadly (or not, depending on one's outlook), not much work was done to the FCS while I was out in beautiful Central Montana. I did, however, manage to put 60 + rounds through my 870 Express 12 gauge in roughly 45 minutes--left a bit of a bruise on my right shoulder/bicep area. The joys of skeet shooting!

That, coupled with a relaxing tube float down Big Spring Creek in Lewistown, MT made for a relaxing 4 day get-away.

As soon as I find my camera, I'll post some pictures.

[Bopher]

Sounds like an awesome time man. Just what I wish I could be doing. Just chilln' out and relaxing.

[Drum Thumper]

Small update--got the door hung. I'm not all that satisfied with the end results. But I think I know how to make it work properly.

I did get a chance to take an angle grinder to part of the inside of the case and got the riser that the rails rode on removed from the left side. After that was done, I fired up the dremel and cut the left inside lip so I will have better access to the bolts for the hinges like this:

Here's the door open:

And closed. Notice that the damn thing is crooked.

I'm thinking I might get some bigger hinges and redrill.

I've still got to sand the lock hole a bit too. That will probably get done tonight when I get home from work.

And on a different front, Xubuntu is giving me hell--can't install it to the 40 gig hard drive that I wish to use for the OS. I'm going to try to set said drive up as a slave and see if I can get it to cooperate with me that way.

[Drum Thumper]

Some minor progress made tonight in the OS realm--turns out my 4 gig hard drive isn't bad at all, so I installed FreeNAS on it.

It's too damn hot to paint, and it looks like it's going to stay that way for quite some time, so on Friday (or maybe later today, we'll have to wait and see), I will reattach the front door and migrate everything that I have available into the cabinet.

And the PIII is about to be retired. I just found a dirt cheap Socket 478 board on Newegg. 4 IDE drives and 2 SATA drives equals a 5 disk RAID 5 array. Until I get the money socked away to buy the 5 drives (which will most likely be 500 gigs each), I'll run a JBOD configuration that will have roughly 200 gigs of storage.

2 Terabytes of storage. I'll have room for all my bootleg concert FLACs, that's for sure!

[alphastryk]

looks great man!

I just started on my socket 478 fileserver...

[Drum Thumper]

With the exception of painting and installing my newly ordered hardware, I think it's safe to say that this part is finished.

All that is left now is a bit of soldering for the fans and switches. Still undecided if I'm going to add a HDD activity light.

Anyways, onto the pics!

Installed the new hinges, and I'm really tickled with the results this time!

Front shot, all nice and even this time.

A bit of a closeup of the top.

Enlarged the hole just enough to get the locking mechanism installed properly.

Backside of the door.

I'm also still undecided on whether or not to install the two blue CCFLs that I have on the bottom of cabinet or inside, or even install them at all.

Finally, I'm going to have to get a new soldering iron and some solder as well, since I have no idea where my old one is.

So here's the recap of what's left to do:

Hardware
Solder
Paint (hopefully late August or sometime in September).

[alphastryk]

looks much better with the new hinge setup. once you paint it, it will look like a miniature of a rackmount cabinet... xD

[Drum Thumper]

Alright, the fans have been mocked up, the weather is getting a bit cooler, and in addition to having to work the next six days, I also start my next block of college classes on Monday. Dunno how this is gonna work out here, I guess we'll have to see.

Mock up of the CCFLs. Looks alright, but I kinda like this better:

That's what it looks like with the lights inside. I'll ponder it for the next few days.

And as promised, fan mockups!

Bottom fan. Forgot to put my spacer in, and it rubs a bit on the gutter guard. This is why I'm doing mockups.

Top fan. Spins freely, due to the way it's installed.

I'm thinking of installing this inside of the case as well:

An 8 port 10/100 switch. Expandability literally built in if I do.

Just to give you an idea how small it is:

I might try my hand at shaping the gutter guard so it will sit flush with my ghetto grommets. Shouldn't be too hard to do, I'll use a CD spindle as my mold.

Mobo and RAM arriving on Tuesday. I won't bother you, dear Constant Reader, with the mundane task of getting that up and running.

But I will, however, give you the current specs:

Intel Celeron D 315 Prescott 2.26GHz 256KB L2 Cache Socket 478 Processor
BIOSTAR P4M80-M4 Socket 478 VIA P4M800 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Kingston KVR400X64C3A/128 128MB DDR400 PC3200 Memory

As previously stated, I'll be running a 5 disk RAID 5 array once I buy all the disks (roughly $100 a pop). Until then, I will be tearing Blue apart and canabalizing the 200 gig HD out of it and using it in conjunction with 2 80 gig HDs for a total of 360 gigs plus whatever isn't being used by my 4 gig (yes, that is correct, a 4 gig hard drive) by FreeNAS.

More than enough storage for the time being.

[jdbnsn]

The gutter guard looks perfect!