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?"

Comments

Two ideas

[BlueLightning]

1. LCD Panel from CrystalFontz, Matrix Orbital, or make your own.
2. I/O panel such as a FrontX. These are great.

see that drive bay?

[commonchaos]

you put your weed in there.

Cigarette lighter

[Dahan]

Every computer needs a lighter!

Re:Cigarette lighter

[Some Dumbass...]

Every computer needs a lighter

Nowadays you just touch your cigarette to your heatsink...

Removable hard disk caddies

[james b]

I've filled a couple of slots with 'mobile rack' (why do they call them that?) removable IDE caddies.

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.

/james

Party Fun

[Terminus0]

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...

JukeCD

[Card]

I saw this modification on a Finnish case mod site. The idea is to create a flashy way to carry up to 30 cd-r's in a dedicated storage bay. Unfortunately the text behind this link is in Finnish, but you can get the idea by looking at the pictures. You need just an old, non-working CDROM drive for this mod.

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.

Re:Filling a 5.25" slot?

[autocracy]

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.

Ummm... cement is recursive?

Re:5.25" Floppy

[Mr. Shiny And New]

That's funny because just the other day i actually installed a 5.25" floppy in my Athlon XP 1700 w/ 512 Ram. Just so I could play games made in 1984 (Sierra * Quest games, running under Linux with emulation). I felt like there was something morally wrong with what I was doing though. :)

USB Ports

[cdmz1]

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.