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Borg Cube Case
Steelduck writes "A person nick-named Xor'Arch at the CaseJunkies forums has made an uber-cool case mod. A Borg cube based on a Via EPIA-M platform. The project took them 9 months, in which they spent 250 hours of their spare time. In total, they used about 60 meters of steel wire, and 1,5 m2 cardboard.The Borg Cube is presented at Casejunkies website.
http://www.casejunkies.com/index.php?upn=010001&hl _id=1873"
Just in case the site goes down..... http://biggestpos.com/pics/gallery/borgcase/
What, me worry?
Introduction
A couple of months ago, Xor'Arch posted some pictures of his new project on our forum. These first pictures created such a huge anxiety and hunger for more that we contacted Xor'Arch, and decided to keep the project a little bit secret. This way we could prepare ourselves for a worthy Caseview that this case absolutely deserves.
CaseJunkies proudly presents: Xor'Arch's Borg Cube.
We asked Xor'Arch how he came up with the whole idea. He explained that his Router had some problems with his ISP's Cable internet connection. He needed another way to provide his network with an internet connection. The only possible way was to implement an extra computer to share the internet connection, so the router would be unnecessary. Read on, and see how the project went from idea to reality.
[Inline picture] [Mirror]
Why Borg?
The plans for an extra PC, functioning as a router, firewall and download-machine were made long before I got the idea to make the Borg Cube. I first intended to use a small midi case (A-Open H340B) with a Via EPIA-M 933Mhz chipset and 256MB RAM memory. After having put it all together, I was not really satisfied with the way it looked. It looked kinda boring to me, and that's when I got the idea to build a case myself. Here's why I chose Borg to be the design's theme:
* To Route: Collective - A central point where everything comes together and gets sent out to multiple computers.
* Act as Firewall: To prevent hostile attempts to penetrate the system, and neutralize them.
* To Download: All your bytes will be assimilated...
* And, the Borg are just cool.....
Since I wanted the project to be 100% original, I searched the internet for similar projects. Fortunately none of them came close to what I planned to make. After having collected as many pictures and information as possible, which was harder than I first thought, I started the construction of the Borg Cube.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
The problem is that in America, we have bullshit laws like the DMCA that make the status of proxies less certain. If you run a proxy and someone downloads illegal material from the web, are you liable for damages? It's an uncertain enough question that nobody wants to set themselves up to be the legal test case.
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They're here.
-Turkey
The machine is a 900Mhz Duron with 512MB RAM Running RHL. Nothing fancy, in fact most people have better desktops now.
The key seems to be a carefully configured Apache using in-memory caching where possible, generous "Expires" headers for caches, long keepalives, and having the server thrash as little as possible starting and stopping children. Even under the most extreme load the box tends to be responsive, and has impressed the hell out of me for doing so.
With cory moving from SSI-based pages to the DB-driven MT, it will be interesting to see exactly what happens to performance as his next /.-ing :)
http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/ 879641
this site has some pics of the case.
enjoy
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"