LCD Displays That Fit In A 5.25" Drive Bay?

An anonymous reader asks: "Several years ago, I saw several manufacturers that sold LCD displays that slid out of the 5-1/4" bay, flipped down, and allowed you to have a minimal monitor that stored in the case. Since it slid out and flipped down, that meant it easily fit into 1U and 2U rack mounted hardware. Now that I'm about to get charged beacoup bucks for having a monitor at the CoLo where I have my servers, I'm looking for something like this again. (SSH doesn't help with hardware and BIOS settings.)" Read on for some details on what he's looking for -- you may be after the same thing (or better yet, have such screens to sell).

"Yes, I have tried Google, but no one seems to be making these anymore. There's scads of links to projects where people mount their own LCD display vertically in 3 unused bays in a normal PC case, but I need something that will hide in a normal bay (just like a CD-ROM drive), and there obviously aren't 3 unused bays vertically arranged in a 2U rackmount case.

Anyone know of a manufacturer? Got an old model that works that you want to sell? I might even throw one in my car since then I could hide the display when I'm not using it, and it'd give me a minimal monitor for that SBC-based portable server I've been meaning to build, and it might be good enough to play some games on in a mini-portable system, etc., not to mention the sheer cool-factor."

Comments

This isn't the answer you wanted...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but this is one reason why you should by a real server, and not a desktop PC hacked into a rackmount case.
Virtually every Sun made works can be maintained entirely with a serial connection. I have servers in Europe and Asia that I've never even seen, much less touched, but I can do everything remotely, including powering them up and down and reconfiguing the boot process.

You need to simplify

[supton]

You are going to spend money on an LCD display for a server that sits at a co-lo facility with noone looking at it 99.3% of the time? This is so 1999. I'm not trying to insult you, but question your understanding of the alternatives, which are likely to be more simple.

got Unix? Serial console!!! On Linux, edit lilo.conf, and edit /etc/inittab, put your consoles on /dev/ttyS0 - it only makes sense!

Windoze? A network-capable kvm is likely about the same price as an LCD display, and scales to multiple boxes. But even cheaper is VNC, which can be tunneled over pub key authenticated SSH for remote access.

Co-lo facilities are likely to be charging 15-25 USD per rack unit per month, and a 15" CRT takes up 8 units, so you end up paying at least 120 USD a month to not see a monitor most of the time. What a waste. If you go the VNC or serial console route, even without an expensive Mainboard with remote access to the bios setup, etc, you can still get away with no monitor - and when you do need one, your colo provider should have a monitor on a cart you can use gratis (if not, screw them and go elsewhere - it is a competitive enough business that they can't screw you).

The reason that the LCD in the drive bay thing has gone away is that it is too much of a niche item to survive in a commoditized economy where hardware has low margins (this is also known as reality). Welcome to 2003 - scale down your expectations.

Re:Liquid Crystal Display Display?

[ressu]

Ofcourse you do realize that NT did originally stand for N10 (pronounced N-Ten) the New Technology was the commercial name for the project

Aaah, There is nothing like a little nitpicking in the morning...

Look at your local high-end car audio store

[Jahf]

Alot of car audio stores sell dash-mounted DVD players that have a screen like what you are talking about. Often times the screen module is in a separate case from the radio.

You might be able to rig a setup where you get one of the car screens and connect it to a video card that has Svideo or component video out.

Not as high resolution as a VGA LCD (though who knows, maybe they have a VGA interface on some models, doubt it though), but you'll be using an alternate signal source, meaning your SVGA port will still be open, and it will look smooth with you press the button to deploy the screen ;) ...

This brings up a segue into a feature I really wish laptop makers would provide. I travel alot and use my laptop as a terminal in a NOC sometimes. I would really like an SVGA -input- and PS2/USB dongle on my laptop so I could use the laptop monitor/keyboard/screen as a terminal for another computer. If this were a fairly common possibility, people like the article's author probably wouldn't need to resort to weird things like built-in screens.