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Creative Uses for 5.25" Drive Bays?
ZeLonewolf asks: "Like I'm sure many slashdot readers, my computer has a number of free 5.25" drive bays free. After the requisite burner, DVD drive, maybe a tape drive, there's invariably a few slots free. Do any slashdot readers have any creative suggestions for filling the gap?"
A Creative Audigy 2 Platinum with all the connectors in a 5.25" slot.
How about a plate for the probes of your sound card oscilloscope ?
You can put cool little metalic flip switches in to control system fans and light and stuff like that. It would make the space both cool looking and practical.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
One can never have enough fans in a case. 'Nuff said.
1. LCD Panel from CrystalFontz, Matrix Orbital, or make your own.
2. I/O panel such as a FrontX. These are great.
May I suggest a cupholder?
you put your weed in there.
Damn, relooked at the article and it talks about 5.25" slots, not sluts. Oh well.
As for how you can use them, while not removing the plastic covering themselves, I stick extra harddrives there. Never can have too many of those (damn IDE!!).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Every computer needs a lighter!
I'd suggest cement - that gap is way to big for normal fillers.
:
The "Standard Mix"
4 parts sand
2 parts gravel
1 part cement.
Mix with water until it's a smooth paste, and trowel it on in. 'Float' your trowel over the surface a few times to get a smooth finish.
Leave it a few days to cure and you're ready to go.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware/senfu/senfubox /superbox1.htm
Lots of 'em.
I reccomend one of these fine products: http://www.onzin.nl/fufme/index.shtml.htm
I suggest to leave some of them free for the air flow, either with or without fans. Expecially near burners and other stuff that tends to get hot.
If you want to have them look cool you can always paint (or paste, or... whell, get creative here) some geeky stuff on the plastic covers.
I've filled a couple of slots with 'mobile rack' (why do they call them that?) removable IDE caddies.
/james
They're basically a plastic caddy into which you put a hard disk, and a 5.25" size bay with a flip-down cover on the front. You wire your IDE ribbons to the connector on the back of the bay, which stays fixed in the PC, and you can swap the drives in and out to your heart's content (erh.. when the computer is switched off...)
I use them for carrying stuff to friends' houses, and also recently when I had to run windows for a while I just swapped in a new hard disk rather than messing with my partitions.
After my DVD-ROM and CD-RW, I have my hard drive mounted in one (yes, you can get the brackets still), with fans on the face blowing over it. (Got that from Fry's.) The last 5.25" slot has a panel with four potentiometers controlling the fans. (Got that from pcmods.com, whom I recommend.) Wanna watch a movie in the same room? Dial down the fans and you can hear a pin drop!
Also, pcmods.com has LCD displays (always cool!), port boxes (convenient; has front-mounted sound, joystick, USB, Firewire, and mouse), and a bus monitor (for speed tweakers).
If you'd rather get creative and are mechanically inclined, build in a slide puzzle. If you're more technically inclined, a Cylon/KITT-style speedometer.
Be careful about how tightly you pack stuff in... too tight and you run the risk of having no circulation area near hot drives!
Just make a hole of the right size, pad the edges so as to not hurt yourself, load up some p0rn and stick it in it!
... fufme.
Click here for the Icky Badness, or hit http://www.fu-fme.com.
Real geeks have a 5.25" floppy drive in there just in case. Also, you need an 8" floppy drive on your desk.
Well I like the idea of keeping some of your most commonly used CDs handy in those extra bays with one of these CD holders.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
60 W PiMPO!
/sarcasm
Includes a subwoofer. Oh yeah...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I'm not aware of anyone porting the drivers to Linux or Windows however.
...this also purchased: 450W Power Supply
And what's the bet that's _just_ for the ciggie lighter! These things can use 5 amps @ 12V! Might explain your PC hanging every time you push it in...
Ever since I saw a mod long ago when a man fit a dismantled Furby into his case, I have wanted to do something similar.
With a bit of hacking and some knowledge of electronics and device communication, I think one might be able to design one hell of a fun gimmick.
Tear apart the Furby, leaving it's eyes and mouth and whatever sensors it needs, stuff em into a flat face plate for the 5.25. Add in a seperate mic and digital camera.
If you have the programming capabilities, hook the Furby's 'on' switch into a screensaver, as well as giving network access to the camera and microphone, maybe even the Furby's speaker.
When your computer goes idle, your Furby will turn on and start talking to the people walking by, people who will hopefully start talking back, all of which you can watch, interact with, and/or record from another computer on the network. Every once in a while have the Furby say "Satan" in a deep voice just to get a rise out of em...
It could work...
Make some nice drawers that fit. Perhaps you can have your CDs and such in there.
It might be a good idea to check the final picture at the bottom of the page first to see what the author's goal is.
6 types of memory cards, 2 front USB ports, a firewire port, and audio in/out
Everything we do echoes in eternity...
Use it as a condom dispenser. With all the time this crowd spends at the computer, it'll hold a lifetime supply!
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
i think quantum started making these again recently...
Delicious pudding. Mmm...
--Dan
The Vantec Nexus fan controller or similar products are a great idea. (Sorry for linking to an online store, but it was the only site I could find with good pics and info)
This thing is pretty nifty, 4 knobs linked to Pulse Width Modulation controllers to let you dial up or down the RPM, and thus noise and airflow, of your case/CPU fans. Great for turning down the noise overnight, and turning up the cooling when gaming or overclocking. My plan is to buy a few Vantec Tornado 92mm fans and hook them up to the Nexus, allowing me to decide what noise level I feel comfortable with. The blue LEDs also look pretty cool, IMHO.
Try looking at accessories on Pricewatch.com or any number of computer tech sites.
I know that I have all my 5.25" slots filled, and I would fill any extra pretty quickly. My current flavor includes:
DVD, CD-RW, HD-Fan, Temp Control/w LCD Panel, front USB ports w Firewire. (I'm not going to link the exact products because there are so many to choose from).
Just walk into any real computer store and look for different accessories they have for those bays.
The best advice I can give is find a need for something (even if it's a geeky), and then use the front slots to fill it.
howabout any ports you want? frontx lets you "roll your own" front panel ports with a reconfigurable system for adding usb, 1394, key/mouse, audio, and just about whatever else into the front of your pc by way of a 5.25" drive bay face plate.
Actually, ColaMan is correct but he's incorrectly refering to finished product as cement, it's actualy concrete. Cement is a specific binder used to make concrete, and acts to amalgamate the other ingredients into the final product, concrete. Sure, it might be splitting hairs, but at least the guy tried.
And yeah, this kinda off-topic, I've got the karma to burn.
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
--didn't we have a story here about a complete PC that would fit in one of those size bays? That would seem a good thing to add. Like jello,there's always room for more! A "spare" PC could be used for any number of purposes, perhaps for your router or any other dedicated purpose you might not want to do constantly with the main mobo, etc.
Think a mini home rack system, or microrack.
One I was working on with my junk,one that is still sitting uncompleted of course with my other unfinished projects, would be some way to have a vcr in there, the slot appears just large enough to accept a VHS cartridge. I actually would like something like that. It looks easy enough if you cut the case and had it load out the side, I wanted it to be normal front slot loading, just like the cd and floppy. I was limited by only one spare vcr I would contemplate cannabilizing,and it just isn't designed correctly for the task, so I skipped that really, put it on hold for now, but maybe if you were to look around hard at used vcrs and find a different designed one that might fit better. The VCRs that come as a combo unit with the 12 VDC TVs look a lot more promising in initial design for that. We have one like that here, and when my girlfriend caught me eyeballing it and when I started mumbling about doing a project like that she goes NO YOU DON'T because it's sorta kinda technically her TV she watches, so.....
Try the Senfu Super Box. I have one, and I think it's very useful. I keep a screwdriver in there, spare floppy, jumpers, pen for labelling CDs etc.
this?
Your credit card information wants to be free.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I installed a USB hub that lives in the 5.25" bay. Makes it much easier than reaching around back....not to mention that my PCI USB 2.0 card has a header on the PCB allowing me to hook up an extension seamlessly....it is a fantastic use of a bay.
...they were right about you...
I realised early last year that I really didn't need a huge tower for my main PC, so instead of trying to find things to put in it, I looked into smaller systems. I personally came across a Shuttle XPC and found it met my needs, but before then looked at quite a few mini tower systems. Makes it much easier to move around to LAN parties and such. I have several machines on a network, so if I really need more something, I can make it accessable over the network. But so far, that hasn't been an issue.
A tape transport ripped from a car radio could easily fit into a 5in drive bay, the audio in/out spliced into the soundcard.
Advanced project: implement an interface to the Play/Reverse/Stop/Rew/FF via Parallel, serial or USB port and its corresponding MCI driver or IOCTL block device.
www.cyberguys.com has lots of cool things for your computer.
Best is probably a port bay, bring USB, media, etc ports out to the front panel. (item #202 0710)
With two open drive bays and some careful plexiglass work, it's the perfect place for a Siamese fighting fish (betta). Add some lighting; I'm sure fellow geeks would appreciate the "betta tester."
Since it'll be nice and warm, you could instead use it as a terrarium...and keep a small tarantula in there. You will have 100% guaranteed that no one will ever feel tempted to mess with your computer again, especially if they are female.
Another idea, that preserves ventilation: use two sheets of plexiglass and make an ant farm. Be sure to back light with red LED's or cold cathode.
How about a Q job? Any international spy...uhm, geek, could use a computer with hidden access to a handgun, or perhaps an emergency Mountain Dew. The right key combination send a command to the drive bay doors, and the top one swivels up, the bottom swivels down.... Voice recognition, "HAL, open the pod bay doors!" I once wrote an application that used a voice recognition SDK, I had several commands programmed in there and ST:TNG computer acknowledgement sounds, so I could walk into the room and: "Computer," "Current time!" . Despite all that, I'm not as geeky as one might think.
If my extra bays weren't being used for cooling, I'd probably just install a Cardbus/CompactFlash/Firewire/video access panel, but you asked for something creative....
...
--thanks for the tip! Looking at the innards of the vcr I had to start with, I saw that it wouldn't all fit in the bay, I was more interested if just the front slot loading could be accomplished. The biggest difficulty is that VHS tapes in VCRs all appear to load sideways, the width is too great, whereas if they loaded on-end it looks possible, as long as you have the room to the side of the bay area for the rest of the mechanism. The 8mm and DV tapes I have never used, so wasn't aware of how small they really were.
I wanted to do it with the vcr tape so that I could occassionaly watch movies via a capture card I have, and also to use the blank tapes for audio recording of long talk radio shows I pick up off netfeeds, without using any of the hard drive. The hard drive I use is very small, I mostly own all antique class computer equipment right now. I also am very cramped for physcial space here, like to have an all in one computer/media whatever rather than a lot of separate pieces of equipment. I will remember that compact camcorder tip! Good idea!
Most likely I will quit being such a tightwad and actually get a newer and much larger hard drive sometime. Besides that I just like fooling around with electronic junk, see what's possible with what I can scrounge and already have. I hate chucking out still good and functional stuff.
Please see this link I posted a while ago. Enjoy.
May I suggest a smaller box, perhaps?
just put a couple intel or amd chips along the bottom, power'em up and put in your favorite easy bake oven treats.
Get a small chunk of wood. Screw it into an open slot. Screw a wall-mount bottle opener on it.
Having a place right next to you to pop your beer open is one of the small pleasures in life.
Keep going until the PC fails.
check out this cool accessory from your pc
http://littlepc.com/products.htm
it is a complete pc that fits in a 5 1/4 bay. It also supports Linux!
I have an NTL cable modem, and it fits perfectly into a 5.25 bay, though not completely filling it. The cables come out the back, and go out through a PCI board hole (sorry, dunno the technical term). Works well, and is very neat.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
A second CD-Rom make cool coffee holder :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Please note: the use of the term duct tape refers to any brand of grey 40 MPH (64.4 KPH) tape and is not intended to infer support or recomendation of any specific brand, nor to dilute any brand or trademark. Trademarks are the property of their specific owners.
The revolution is now being blogged
Hand lotion dispensor?
With all the references to pr0n made everytime there is an article on mass-storage... I know at least a few slashdotters would get a use for this.
How about adding a 6-channel baybus ? Even if you don't have fans to connect to it, there is something I find funny about having analog switches on the front of a computer. The only real problem is that the LED's are far too bright. Of course, if you have nothing connected to it, you can turn them on or off at will. When your friends and family ask what the lights and switches are for, tell them they are blinkenlig
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
One of the more functional uses of an extra 5¼ drive bay is something like this, a cooler to blow hot air out of your case. At least buying one of these is easier than cutting extra holes for fans in your case.
It's a Bagel.
I thought it would be interesting if one took a full tower, and took up 3-4 of the drive bays and turned them into a fridge. You could probably fit fit 6 pop cans in it. No more need to get up from your chair to go grab a drink!
Watch your system stats or that xmms playlist.
CrystalFontz has 2 line & 4 line displays that go into drive bays very nicely.
How to fill a 5.25in slot? Well, let me think here for a minute...umm..NOT with my penis!
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
How about putting in a little acrylic Sea Monkey tank? You could even have an on-board web cam so people could watch them eat at their little tables.
THAT IS NEAT!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The Force is a powerful field created by all living things; it surrounds and penetrates the entire galaxy.
... can the force of magnetics actually be shielded against? Is there any material or composite that you can put between a magnet and iron filings (or whatever) to keep the former from affecting the latter?
... they were affected to the extent by which they could be affected.
Ok this is a little off topic, but having studied a little electromagnetic wave theory back in the day
I'm being serious with this question, I was under the impression that magnetic radiation simply existed in 3D space around the magnet and if something crossed the path of those magnetic waves
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Y'know, like the joke can of peanuts that shoots 10-foot long spring-loaded worms when you open it?
There ought to be some way to make a fake drive that shoots spring-loaded worms at curious children/co-workers/spouses/cleaning staff etc.
If you've got the extra space, put the 5 1/2" cooling fans in the drives, and mount a harddrive behind it. Keep them drives cool and they'll last longer....
I use to hide my stash behind one of them flimsy plastic drive bay covers... does that count?
Do any slashdot readers have any creative suggestions for filling the gap?
Duct tape. 'nuff said, eh?
ID-10-T is a way of life
Get one of these!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Scratchbuild a little drawer that has tiny holes in it. Use the natutal heat and airflow to dry out that new crop of weed you just harvested. You will never have to suffer smoking the moist green shit anymore, the power of an Athlon CPU will ensure your stash is nice and dry.
I'm not sure if you could find a mechanism that would fit, but I've always thought that it would be really cool to put an 8 track player in a 5.25" drive bay, and run the audio to one of the CD inputs on the sound card.
I wonder if I can find any perl scripts on the net to automate ripping 8-tracks to mp3...
What about putting on of these in it:
http://www.totalimpact.com/briQ.html
Let it run your compiles for you while you play the latest shoot-em-up game or set it up to run SETI@Home 24 hours a day... I'm sure that there are better uses than this, but I'm not very creative today.
Creative Uses 5.25" Drive Bays?
Sound Blaster Audigy
Hell I wish I had more 5 1/4 bays. 3 3ware drive cages , and extra drive , dvd-burner , and the cd-burner fill all available slots in my workstation. but then again that's a 4U rackmount case.... only found one case with more bays but they wanted waaaaay to much.
so when are we gonna get external SATA cases?
eof
What would be really cool would be to take up two spare slots: one for a minature monitor that had command line capacity.
This could be done like:
In Windows: A second monitor
In *nix: an alternate terminal or second monitor
If you could plug a second keyboard in there,
then you could always have access to a command screen.
Handy for those KILLALL -HUP moments in the middle of a game.
although they have commercially available 5.25" equalizers,
lots
of
old
automotive
equalizers
will work great in a 5.25" space.
most car equalizers are 5.75", so you have to be a little creative with cutting off that extra half inch to squeeze it into an old cdrom case. but for a cheap/free secondhand EQ (and that 1X cdrom that you were never going to re-use), its definitely worth the effort, visually and audibly.
Somewhere on this page I have hidden my signature.
I have my hard drives mounted in accoustic enclosures. I hate the whine of hard drives. I built mine from scratch but you can order them for ~US$30 from places like QuitePC.com. --adam
This seems neat: CD Home (it's a (10 disk?) CD holder that fits in a 5.25" bay).
CPU Temp Monitor and Fan Controller in mine along with the Audigy Drive bay, CD Burner, and DVD drive, all 4 of my 5.25 bays are full oddly enough.
"Yeah, that's only going to happen when a paper dog sucessfully chases an asbestos cat through hell." The Chosen One
A 5.25" floppy disk drive?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Put tropical fish in a glass enclosure inside the drive bays then run your coolant through the fish tank to keep it warm.
.....
Just be careful when feeding the fish
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
Removable disk mounts like that are critical for backups and upgrades. In addition to the "easily install/run other operating systems" that somebody else wrote about, the rapid drop in disk drive costs and increase in sizes over the last couple of years have made extra hard disks one of the most cost-effective backup media available, and they're pretty much the only thing that won't go obsolete or incompatible quickly, unlike many of the writable DVD formats, which seem to be the only near competition.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
.... always wondered how those things worked....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Nah, probably someone would try to ban that...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I warm up the (wrapped in plastic) grilled cheese sandwich I make in the morning for lunch in an empty drive bay of a server in my office above a 10,000 RPM disk. I suppose it either heat sinks the hard drive it's sitting on or prevents it from cooling properly.