Buldg7
Solid State Member
- Messages
- 6
- Location
- United States
Let me start by saying that I have had a ton of old tech dumped on me by friends and family, in fact at one point I got 9 DOS whiteboxes, a 2005 powermac, 3 ancient field laptops, an 8-port KVM switch, a 4-port KVM switch, 5 CRTs, a 20" flatpanel, etc. all at one time. So if any of you are wondering why I use out-dated hardware or where I get it, that's it.
On to the actual project haha. I salvaged one of the nicer whitebox cases, and have been trying to figure out what to do with it for a while now. I finally decided to use it to house a small cluster computer, using the hardware from 2 Lenovo ThinkCentre 6417-12U computers. I do know that these aren't capable of much, but they aren't meant to be my main computer. One other thing though, is that the case will also be leasing out space to another graphics card for my main pc (the powermac). So far I have mounted the 2 HDDs, the 2 optical drives, the 2 psu's, and one of the motherboards. I have also routed the front I/O which will require some new holes in the front panel. The I/O on the boards will be extended to the PCI holes in the case with some custom brackets. Also housed in this will be a small router to connect the two computers. I got this idea from these Tinkernut videos :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R0UgIgcb5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHmFRlETTcQ
Obviously the programming will be different, as these computers currently and probably always will have linux on them. That's a part that I'll need some help with, as I'm no programmer.
Along with the custom brackets and holes, I'm also going to be using most of the original functionality of the front panel by re-routing led connections and buttons so that both of the PCs will be able to be monitored and controlled from the front.
What do you guys think of this project, and if you have any tips, advice, help, be sure to let me know!
I also took some pictures of the mess as of this post
On to the actual project haha. I salvaged one of the nicer whitebox cases, and have been trying to figure out what to do with it for a while now. I finally decided to use it to house a small cluster computer, using the hardware from 2 Lenovo ThinkCentre 6417-12U computers. I do know that these aren't capable of much, but they aren't meant to be my main computer. One other thing though, is that the case will also be leasing out space to another graphics card for my main pc (the powermac). So far I have mounted the 2 HDDs, the 2 optical drives, the 2 psu's, and one of the motherboards. I have also routed the front I/O which will require some new holes in the front panel. The I/O on the boards will be extended to the PCI holes in the case with some custom brackets. Also housed in this will be a small router to connect the two computers. I got this idea from these Tinkernut videos :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R0UgIgcb5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHmFRlETTcQ
Obviously the programming will be different, as these computers currently and probably always will have linux on them. That's a part that I'll need some help with, as I'm no programmer.
Along with the custom brackets and holes, I'm also going to be using most of the original functionality of the front panel by re-routing led connections and buttons so that both of the PCs will be able to be monitored and controlled from the front.
What do you guys think of this project, and if you have any tips, advice, help, be sure to let me know!
I also took some pictures of the mess as of this post