Soldato
I am not sure yet. Freenas? Windows file sharing? IDK.
Basically my NAS is full and it is over ten years old. It is SMB1, so I continually have to keep telling Windows to see it, and then enabling the drives every time I log on. I have been meaning to get a new NAS, but I wanted something that has more scope.
A single bay Synology is £100+. Dual and god forbid 4-6 bay? a fortune. So, I decided that I had the room for something full size so may as well do that. I bought this a couple of days back for £30.
Apparently it is fully functional.
However I am not into playing with old MACs. It is boring, frustrating, and inevitably a total waste of time because they are like hot toffee dog poo. Very slow.
So my intention was to gut it out and convert it to MATX. I ordered it, wondered why it was so cheap and then it hit me. It is BTX. Fudge.
This isn't out of my realm, as I do believe I was the first person ever to mod a G3 into a PC in 2004. I also painted it florescent colours and called it Radiomactive !
Like I said, that was 16 years ago and it was the fashion. I also did a bloody good job of it, if I do say so myself.
It was time consuming alright, but inevitably quite easy. The hardest part other than the weeks of paint and lacquer was retaining the drive door lever. That was quite a challenge !
Any way, I decided I wanted to do something similar with the MDD (what these are known as) but as I said, BTX. There are no conversion kits available for this. That said I would not pay £50+ for one any way, as I don't want to fit a GPU or anything given this will just be to stream media and store backups etc.
If you look at the back you can see what I am talking about.
So the aim is to retain pretty much all of that look. Now obviously I needed a donor patient. Something compatible and easy to put in there.
I chose the Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF. I did this for a few reasons. 1. the stock PSU in it should fit in the MDD without too much aggro. 2. The board layout is ideal. Mostly because instead of just one PCIE slot that ITX has (and would hobble me later) it has two, and is a good shape for this mod.
The specs are not remarkable (I5 3470, 8gb RAM etc). But then neither was the price (£50 inc).
The PSU in it looks like this.
However, do note that it won't be alone in there..... One PSU is enough to get the PC running but adding 6 hard drives and gawd knows what else to the mix is a no no, so that particular PSU will be taken apart and the 24 pin completely removed and will just run the hard drives alone. I then ordered this tiny little Delta PSU to run the board and etc.
Or the other way around. I don't know where they are going just yet... I ordered these from OCUK yesterday along with a HDD to get me started (I need to migrate my NAS data off the NAS before I can wipe the drives in it, they are only 1tb x 2.
There is a full silver Bitfenix extension set there (PCIE which I won't use, EPS, 24 pin etc) and I ordered a molex to 5 SATA power too. So that should cover the wiring.
Now I was going to do it something like this.
with the board inside like that. However, I then saw that some guy had done this.
Which was very clever. Mostly because you don't have to destroy the case at all. I noted he used mining risers which was very clever so I ordered two. I used them in my new £4k PC and they worked perfectly for a sound card. I will be using them for maybe a sound card, but more likely some SATA cards to attach more drives to. Either way I will configure both and fit them, then decide what will go into them later.
So how am I going to connect everything? easy. Let's start with the DP.
But what about the NIC (cheers penis
)
I will then wire two 3.5mm jacks in too. I also ordered this just the noo.
And that will basically replace all of the IO that will be missing once I tear out the insides. Like I said, I am going for a total stock look (as it's nice.. You can see where they got the cheese grater design from now !).
I could break out more of the IO but I just don't see the point. Remember, this is not a fully functioning gaming rig I am building but a utilitarian machine. So, don't expect it to look particularly nice in there (no I am not painting the chassis etc etc) and I am not cutting windows into it. I just want it to look exactly as it does now, only cleaner (it looks dusty AF) and original to fit with my flat's interior.
I may fit some front USB to a panel behind the drive door? to put in USB sticks or what not but then again I doubt I will do that either.
There really isn't much more I can do now until stuff starts arriving.
Mods - this is not a hackintosh and I will not be installing any Apple software on it at all. Like I said, Freenas, maybe Windows server? IDK. But certainly not Apple. It is just a case mod is all
Basically my NAS is full and it is over ten years old. It is SMB1, so I continually have to keep telling Windows to see it, and then enabling the drives every time I log on. I have been meaning to get a new NAS, but I wanted something that has more scope.
A single bay Synology is £100+. Dual and god forbid 4-6 bay? a fortune. So, I decided that I had the room for something full size so may as well do that. I bought this a couple of days back for £30.
Apparently it is fully functional.
However I am not into playing with old MACs. It is boring, frustrating, and inevitably a total waste of time because they are like hot toffee dog poo. Very slow.
So my intention was to gut it out and convert it to MATX. I ordered it, wondered why it was so cheap and then it hit me. It is BTX. Fudge.
This isn't out of my realm, as I do believe I was the first person ever to mod a G3 into a PC in 2004. I also painted it florescent colours and called it Radiomactive !
Like I said, that was 16 years ago and it was the fashion. I also did a bloody good job of it, if I do say so myself.
It was time consuming alright, but inevitably quite easy. The hardest part other than the weeks of paint and lacquer was retaining the drive door lever. That was quite a challenge !
Any way, I decided I wanted to do something similar with the MDD (what these are known as) but as I said, BTX. There are no conversion kits available for this. That said I would not pay £50+ for one any way, as I don't want to fit a GPU or anything given this will just be to stream media and store backups etc.
If you look at the back you can see what I am talking about.
So the aim is to retain pretty much all of that look. Now obviously I needed a donor patient. Something compatible and easy to put in there.
I chose the Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF. I did this for a few reasons. 1. the stock PSU in it should fit in the MDD without too much aggro. 2. The board layout is ideal. Mostly because instead of just one PCIE slot that ITX has (and would hobble me later) it has two, and is a good shape for this mod.
The specs are not remarkable (I5 3470, 8gb RAM etc). But then neither was the price (£50 inc).
The PSU in it looks like this.
However, do note that it won't be alone in there..... One PSU is enough to get the PC running but adding 6 hard drives and gawd knows what else to the mix is a no no, so that particular PSU will be taken apart and the 24 pin completely removed and will just run the hard drives alone. I then ordered this tiny little Delta PSU to run the board and etc.
Or the other way around. I don't know where they are going just yet... I ordered these from OCUK yesterday along with a HDD to get me started (I need to migrate my NAS data off the NAS before I can wipe the drives in it, they are only 1tb x 2.
There is a full silver Bitfenix extension set there (PCIE which I won't use, EPS, 24 pin etc) and I ordered a molex to 5 SATA power too. So that should cover the wiring.
Now I was going to do it something like this.
with the board inside like that. However, I then saw that some guy had done this.
Which was very clever. Mostly because you don't have to destroy the case at all. I noted he used mining risers which was very clever so I ordered two. I used them in my new £4k PC and they worked perfectly for a sound card. I will be using them for maybe a sound card, but more likely some SATA cards to attach more drives to. Either way I will configure both and fit them, then decide what will go into them later.
So how am I going to connect everything? easy. Let's start with the DP.
But what about the NIC (cheers penis
)
I will then wire two 3.5mm jacks in too. I also ordered this just the noo.
And that will basically replace all of the IO that will be missing once I tear out the insides. Like I said, I am going for a total stock look (as it's nice.. You can see where they got the cheese grater design from now !).
I could break out more of the IO but I just don't see the point. Remember, this is not a fully functioning gaming rig I am building but a utilitarian machine. So, don't expect it to look particularly nice in there (no I am not painting the chassis etc etc) and I am not cutting windows into it. I just want it to look exactly as it does now, only cleaner (it looks dusty AF) and original to fit with my flat's interior.
I may fit some front USB to a panel behind the drive door? to put in USB sticks or what not but then again I doubt I will do that either.
There really isn't much more I can do now until stuff starts arriving.
Mods - this is not a hackintosh and I will not be installing any Apple software on it at all. Like I said, Freenas, maybe Windows server? IDK. But certainly not Apple. It is just a case mod is all
