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PC Cases with Side or Top Mounted Drive Bays?
Coplan asks: "I'm a computer musician, and I have a couple of those drive-bay interfaces in my computer. While it is nice to have such cables and ports easily accessible, they can easily get in the way on the front of your case. Ideally, the ultimate case would be one where there were drivebays on the sides or the top of the case for this purpose (or even a special shaped case). I'm not into modifying my cases with dremel tools and the like, but I havn't exactly found a commercially available solution either. I believe that someone in the slashdot community might have similar needs, and might have found such a solution. Does anyone have any recommendations?"
fr0st p!st!!!!! everything i needed to know about being a man i learned from batman by Seamus Heffernan There are a series of classic questions that plague all young men, boys who have emerged from their childhood but have not yet boarded the neon hormonal freight train known as puberty. We all argued about what the truly greatest chocolate bar experience was; we pondered over what was in the middle of golf balls and what made that rattle inside spray-paint cans; we agonized over what the best Star Wars movie was. And, of course, there was the tough question in my circle of friends, boys weaned on too many Saturday morning cartoons and late-night horror flicks, boys whose vision of the world was seen through the pop-culture goggles of good versus evil. We were ten-year-olds who thought comic books were literature, and the greatest Before We Discover Sex question of all was this: Who is your favourite super-hero? I always said Batman. Often, my friends scoffed at me, pointing out the foolish limitations of my choice. Batman could not fly. He was not bulletproof, super-fast, or blessed with the proportionate speed and strength of a spider (whatever that means). There was nothing particularly super about this hero, and yet he captivated my hyper-extended imagination as a child, and it went beyond the dark costume and the looming bat-ears. My interest has lasted into adulthood, and I assume that my friends now think that I keep a Batman action-figure on my desk as a claim to youthful charm. I may let them think that, but it runs far deeper. While other heroes were often imbued with an "aw-shucks" charm that was meant to re-enforce their humanity, quite often it left me with resentment for what I saw as their smug self-satisfaction. Bullets bouncing off their chests, their power-rings ablaze or their laser eye-beams blasting through the bad guys, they were always ready to clap one of us regular folk on the back, give that toothy the-world-is-just-bully-'cause-the-good-guys-alway s-win grin, and reassure us they would be back when we needed them.
Conversely, Batman was one of us "regular folk." Without powers, he was forced to rely on his skill and his wits. Oh sure, he was rich and had access to an incredible amount of gadgets and technological innovations, but lose the Batmobile and the well-stacked utility belt, and you were left with just flesh and blood. His humanity was a huge attraction to me, as I found it hard to relate to his super-powered brethren. Perhaps I equated them with the kids who were too good-looking, too smart, or too athletic, but in Batman I saw a guy succeed in life because he wanted to, and not because he caught a few breaks.
Of course, I was too young to articulate this at the time, and probably just said "Cool, man" and chugged some more cherry soda. But Batman has stayed with me when other icons of my pre-adolescence have slipped away.
First, there's a darkness to Batman that is quite appealing to the older comic book fan. Since Batman was distanced from the campy TV show and re-introduced to his darker roots (thanks mainly to Frank Miller's work in Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns) he became perhaps the mot psychologically compelling character in comic books. Here was a guy who saw his parents get gunned down as a kid, and carried that with him for years. His whole life is about trying to fix that one wrong, and he can't. In real life, we'd probably pay a bunch of psychiatrists to anlayze his feeling and explain what was going on, and they'd tell us he was a control freak suffering from delusions of grandeur, driven by revenge fantasies. Thankfully, this isn't real-life, and in comics we're spared the Oprahfication of modern society. As a character, he's simply hard not to care about, because he cares so much himself.
It is this drive that separates him from the typical spandex-clad vigilante. Batman did not become a hero because some fluke accident - that seemed to invariably involve "radiation" - left him with strange abilities. He has his share of titles and accolades (world's greatest detective, world's best escape artist, world's best hand-to-hand combatant, etc.) but ultimately, he exists as an example of a man who pushes himself to greatness through discipline and an unshakeable confidence in what is right. His dark beginnings prove that he did not have heroics thrust upon him; he grabbed heroics by the throat and took them for himself.
As I have become increasingly individualistic as I've grown into adulthood, it is this quality of my childhood idol that sticks with me. Never once did you see him complain, or cry victim, or bray about a misplaced sense of entitlement. He was guided by an unwavering sense of justice and never compromised his principles in the face of convenience. Here was the "rugged individualism" of the classical liberal, leaping to four-colour life on the pages before my young eyes, a man whose "powers" could be emulated far easier in my day-to-day life than, say, Superman's.
Batman is a permanent fixture of our culture, a name that enjoys almost universal recognition. He symbolizes something more than the cape and cowl. To his fans, he represents a darkness we have all faced, a question that we sometimes cannot push away: Will I have the courage to push myself, to not be a coward, to do the right thing? In that sense, this fictional character very much represents real life, and our own self-doubt. Batman never had one of those big, the-good-guys-always-win smiles. He knew better.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
After searching in vain, I finally gave up and bought a rack mount case. Supermicro has a nice 2u case that has 6 (six!!!) spaces on the front for removable HD chassis.
There are pleanty of SCSI removable chassis for $25 or less, and a couple of solutions for ATA drives. I'm using a SCSI system myself, but the new ABIT board with the over abundance of ATA interfaces (something on the order of 14 devices IIRC) would probably be a good match.
The only drawback is the lack of ports on the front. I fixed this by making a 1u plate out of annodized aluminum with all of the jacks that I'd need on the front.
This all sits in a nice anvil-like case that I built out of MDF and carpeted. There's a trunk-like spot in the top that holds my 15" LCD, keyboard and trackball.
I don't use the computer too much for gigging, but when I'm recording with the band, it comes in handy.
Good luck!
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
One machine I've worked with that is very easy to access is the Dell 4U Rackmount. It is a top end machine, so I don't recommend people go out and pick one up for personal use, but it is almost completely toolless in it's approach, rich down to the rails. The only place you need a screw driver is if you want to go in to where the CPUs and Cards are. One screw, to make sure you really want to do it. The drivces are hot swappable, requireing only a push of a lever. The Power supplies are triply redunadant and again are hot swappable w/out tools.Even the fans.
I'd love to see some of that technology come down to the PC. 4 Hard drive bays, where you can add and mount a new disk system. MMMM
I assume your big complain is that the sound car your using has a port off the fron of the machine, where you are pluggin in MIDI/Mic/Speaker cables and you want to be able to have that separate from the Hard drives?Personally, I have a tower, and keep emn separte through sheer bulk, but it isn't really a scalable solution.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
i got mine on a foam pad, sitting in my freezer mouse hangs down from the automatic ice despensor. to hell with the "cooling mods".
oh yeah this was about cables wasint it?
opps computer froze again..
EOU
There have been people who weld ATX cases together (or AT cases, as the case may be), in order to get more drive bays in front.
You could just as easily turn the top addition around to face the back. That way all the cables going into the drive bay interface will be in the back of the new conglomerate case. The back of the addition (where the other case's power supply would be) would now face the front of the Frankencase, and could be used for ventilation.
sig is
Then you could use all that room on your Fulltower as a small shelf.
How many interfaces do you have in the front that it's causing such a mess? Anyway, I would go with the 1u rack mount option like the guy above. There's a ton of small rack boxes, I use one for my solid state guitar rig. I plan on buying a 1u rack mount case and building a custom PC for recording and for holding synth hardware. Otherwise, learn how to use that dremel you mentioned.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/1298/sc750a.htm l
Consider looking at http://www.spinserver.com. These are rackmount cases that are designed to bring the expansion slots to where they're accessible; the front. However, they also make perfectly reasonable desktop-style (flat, not tower) cases; several of my friends use them that way (I recommend the 3U for this purpose). What you would want to do is use the whole thing backwards... have both drives and slots away from you. The only wire blocking your desk would be a power wire... I don't know of any case that comes closer to your demands, although admittedly this isn't perfect. Also, if you have other musical gear, the 19" rack formfactor may be a selling point. If not, take off the ears and just put it on the table.
I've had this sig for three days.
Is this correct?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.