Project Tranquillity

[mashie]

It is time to start one more little project to do before I continue with the Time Machine.

As you can see by the name it is yet again inspired by the characters in Peter F. Hamiltons The Night's Dawn Triology. For those of you who has read the books knows that Tranquillity is a big space habitat with roughly a cubic kilometre of brain matter.

That is where all similarities ends though. Tranquillity here will be used as some kind of router lab by friends in need so it will have 9 motherboards and 30+ network cards in the smallest possible volume. The construction material will be MDF so a good exercise before starting the work on the Time Machine.

Anyway, time to get the work started.

ModCam status:

[mashie]

So nine systems, nothing fancy needed really. The minimum specification on the list I got was:

CPU: 200MHz
RAM: 64MB
HDD: 1GB
PCI slots: 4
Integrated video or able to run without videocard installed.

The best place to find cheap old specification hardware is and will always be eBay. After winning two auctions with six computers each I ended up with this pile of 12 very heavy units. The hardware in nine of them did fit the bill with Celeron 366MHz, 64MB RAM, 4.3GB HDD, MicroStar 6117 motherboards (AGP, 5 PCI) as well as 140W PSUs. The other three will be sold on to another friend since I won't need them.

Another auction brought me 33 Intel Pro/100 NICs :cool:

Two evenings had to be spent extracting the hardware from the cases, not to mention chasing the dust rats with the vacuum cleaner. The blue bucket is filled with hardware to keep such as videocards, soundscards, NICs and IDE cables. The plastic bags contain the plastic parts destined for the bin.

A little bit of jumping and the old cases became flat packs and will meet the bin as well.

The steel is over 1mm so they are very heavy, but then again they were designed to be used in the most rough environment imaginable - public schools.

With the disassembly done, this is all that remains.

[mashie]

Allright, minor update.

I removed all brackets from the NICs and installed them in the motherboards to test different layouts.

After a few trial and errors this ended up being the most efficient layout, a switch will be included as well to provide management connectivity.

With the general design in the head I quickly draw the whole case in CAD. Each vertical "tray" will hold two motherboards with HDDs and PSUs. Only the mobo/NICs/CPU are drawn since the HDD and PSU is one layer further back. Each tray is 325mm (12.8") high and 340mm (13.4") deep. The whole unit will be 800mm (31.5") wide, 500mm (19.7") deep and 450mm (17.7") high with casters installed.

[mashie]

Update time.

Finally time to do some actual contruction work and not only cleaning old hardware which seems to be the most common case lately... So with the case being built by MDF board has a few advantages, the main one is to have it all precut in store. However next time I will make my life easier by drawing out the cut pattern in CAD as well instead of trying to place out all parts on the fly in store to generate as little spill as possible. Here we have the bottom half of the main frame laid out to see if it fit.

The box is slowly drilled and screwed together using 2.5" screws and L-brackets to get the angle square. The brackets will be the rear of the finished unit btw.

The outer layer of MDF is 18mm (3/4") while the internal spacers between the aluminium profiles are 6mm (1/4"). The spacers and the profiles are simply attached using PVA glue.

Profiles and spacers on both top and bottom glued in place. With nearly 1" thick material this unit is getting heavy, can't wait to install some casters tomorrow or next week after MML.

If any of you attend MML this year you will see Doom 3: Hell Inside in action, if not you get a second chance at QuakeCon.

[Xbrid]

Tranquillity is a big space habitat with roughly a cubic kilometre of brain matter.

that sounds.... interesting. This will be interesting to watch

[mashie]

Final update before I leave for MML.

To make the final unit movable 4 caster wheels were added using M6 bolts and nuts.

With the assembly of the outer frame done I was curious to see how it all looked like with some hardware in place. Next step will be to make the hardware trays before continuing on the outer texture/finish. I will definately go for a techno/armor kinda look.

[Xbrid]

that's a lot of hardware! How long will you be at MML for?(i.e. how long until next update?)

[Cardan]

looks like this is gonna be intersesting

[public_eyesore]

What is the point of having all these pcs hooked up together?

[Xbrid]

Tranquillity here will be used as some kind of router lab by friends in need

there you go