New bits for "old" computers [3]

So since writing last my main achievement has been to complete the Windows 10 PC, and put it in its little corner, along with building the sliding shelf for the scanner to sit on directly above. This means I now have what I needed the most, a scanner that is much easier to access because the shelf it sits on is much lower down, making it easier to lift the lid all the way up, and on a sliding shelf it can be pulled out when needed and slid away when not in use.

If you ever end up wanting to make a sliding shelf with drawer runners (such as a sliding keyboard shelf) the trick which makes them easiest to set up prior to installation is to attach each rail to right angle brackets and then screw the horizontal end of each pair of brackets onto a cross piece made of wood. You then attach the cross piece to the desk, or in this case, using another set of right angle brackets, to the vertical sides of the cabinet the shelf sits inside. The key that makes it really easy is to fully set up the runners with the brackets onto the cross pieces and get the whole thing working before you finally mount it to the desk or cabinet or whatever. So you can get all the runners and rails properly aligned and running smoothly whilst it is still sitting on your work bench. This is far easier than trying to align everything under the desk, which in fact is near lethal if you have to lie on your back and try to hold everything in place while you put in the screws. In fact I near brained myself more than once trying to do this with a previous shelf because it kept falling out because I needed four hands instead of two. Because of having used this system this time the shelf works much better than the last scanner shelf I made, which although it was easy to install at just above floor level, with the side of the desk on one side and a couple of vertical posts on the other, never did work smoothly because of misalignment.

The stack in an old cabinet (which, in fact, used to be a set of drawers bolted underneath the same side of this very desk, not sitting on the floor as now) that has the computer at the bottom and the scanner on top. Look closely and you can see the R/A brackets that attach to the drawer runners, the cross piece of wood, and the brackets attaching the cross piece to the cabinet. Right at the top is another sliding shelf, in this case carrying the MS multimedia keyboard that is permanently plugged in to this computer. For serious work I have a four way KVM plugged into all of the computers that lets me share my main keyboard and mouse with any one of them. Each computer has its own displays - they don't share any.

The next step is to set up the "server". This is another pile of work that only starts with assembling the new chassis. Along the way I have only just realised I need a 2.5" to 3.5" drive bay adapter for the SSD because this time around one wasn't shipped in the package. So temporarily the drive is mounted with one single screw into the side of a 3.5" bay. 

The chassis with the board installed. The board looks tiny inside the mid tower chassis. The bay swung out at right will hold the two HDDs that make up the RAID-1 array. The big bright blue cable is the USB3 backplane bracket adapter that lets me use the onboard USB3 connector for something. However the days are gone when I had one computer with about 12 USB ports on it (I have a 4 port PCIe x1 adapter card as well) because I had only one or two computers and a large number of USB devices. This was the case when my main PC was running Windows because everything had to plug into it: the scanner, the printer, and all the different camera cables and the keyboard, mouse and display USB hub. For various reasons partly because of having boards with more USB ports on them and partly having more computers, six or eight on the back is enough.

So the assembly of the server continues. There are a few more parts to go into the chassis and then it can be powered up and Debian installed. I need that HDD adapter and the extra RAM to finish it, but it will be closer to completion. The shelf it attaches to is a bit of work to adapt as it has to be lowered and new brackets bolted to the side of the desk to hold it in place.

One thing that is annoying about modern SATA cables is the trend for them all to have retaining clips fitted. These only work on the motherboard connectors which have a shroud fitted that the clip locks into, because the HDD has no such shroud. I have found them annoying on MBs because the clip can be hard to release which puts strain on the connector. In the process of taking this board out of the last chassis the strain on the SATA connectors has been too much in my opinion; they aren't particularly solidly attached to the board and could break off if they get flexed too much. So all the SATA cables in this chassis are going to have the retention clips taken off one end. If the HDD can get by without these clips so can the MB.

New bits for "old" computers [2]

The next step in redoing things with computers 3 and 4 has been to strip out the Inwin mini tower chassis and put the mini ITX board (GA-E350) into it for the Windows computer. When I switched the disks over, with the same type of board as the Antec chassis, Windows didn't notice any hardware change. It seems it can only detect a different type of board, not a different serial number of the same board. 

The next job was to transfer Windows itself from the 2.5" laptop HDD which is what the Antec chassis takes, to a regular 3.5" desktop disk. After trying various solutions, the best one I have encountered is Clonezilla, which is a full bootable image tool based on Debian. Simply download the ISO image, flash it to a pen drive, and boot the computer from it. No real tweaking was needed, it was simply configured to clone all of the partitions on the source disk, to the target disk.

Once again on rebooting, this time on the 3.5" disk, Windows 10 came up as expected, with no activation issues, and everything of course right there just as it was before. The irony being this Windows 10 PC is back in the same mini tower chassis albeit with a much lower power motherboard than was the case before, and the last time it was in this chassis was as Windows 10 Enterprise with a volume license key, instead of being the home retail edition as it now is with a license key I have purchased. 

So the next step is to reassemble that chassis and then move it to its new location under the desk on the right hand side, ready to go as the occasionally used Windows 10 computer in the household. The server is the next job. Right now all I have is a bare chassis, which has the fittings attached to the base, but it needs to be cleaned inside and out before I start installing stuff into it. It will have 1 TB of disk in RAID-1 for data, a 128 GB SSD for OS and swap, and 16 GB of RAM which will let it run Qgis VMs well for mapping testing.

New bits for "old" computers

As of today the new SSD for the bedroom PC (NUC) and the one for the "server" have arrived. The NUC has now got the SSD installed and Xubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) installed on it and the video clips now being downloaded over the wireless from the mediapc. The difference in sound level is quite notable as at night with the thing idling the HDD whine was very obvious, it also shows up that the NUC must have a very quiet cooling fan fitted. 

The "server" project was mentioned previously. Since writing that, I have decided to rebuild it into a full size Inwin desktop tower using my stock of these ex HCS which I obtained as their older desktops were retired. The shelf it sits on under the desk therefore needs to be lowered to accommodate the additional height but the main advantage of this chassis is more HDD bays internally and better access to them should a disk need to be replaced. This chassis will have a 128 GB SSD installed as the new boot disk and I am still considering the addition of another 8 GB of RAM to make it more useful if I can afford the cost. The shelf instead of having three brackets bolting it onto the desk below, will have two much more substantial brackets bolted to the side of the desk above it.

The existing Inwin mini tower the "server" components are installed in will then become the chassis for the Windows PC which will be removed from the Antec ISK110 case. This will fit under the other side of the desk in the space where the printer currently sits, side on. A shelf is going to be put above the computer which will slide out on drawer rails and this will be for the scanner which will make it much easier to use because of the limited access under the desk with the keyboard tray for that computer above it. The shelf will be one of the 600x400 melamine shelves I currently have, which will have to have about 40 mm trimmed off one side.

The Antec ISK110 chassis could then be used with the other mini-ITX board I currently have as a small Linux server. I am currently looking at what sort of things I could use it for, possibly a small comms server for school productions is an option with the free edition of 3CX running on Debian. I would have to get hold of a few spare phones for this.

The printer is getting moved and it will sit on top of the office drawer unit which at the moment sits at the end of the desk. An extension top will be bolted onto the top of these drawers being another 600x400 melamine shelf using what are called "Tee Nuts" which is a nut that can be made captive by hammering it into the hole, whereby it has shoulders with pointed tips that penetrate the wood and lock it into place. A regular bolt is then bolted through from the other side. This is much more preferable than using regular screws. The shelf apart from the printer will also carry the fan or heater which sits on this side of the desk and drinking glasses.

The use of other storage in the living room is still being considered, in particular the pigeonholes in the big cupboard, having moved that from the left side to the right side of the desk. I need to figure out the best use of this space and whether to keep some of the computer related stuff out in the sleepout. I feel sure the space in this cabinet can be better utilised, at present I have yet to store everything in it but don't want to pile stuff in and then discover it fills up too quickly.

The future of my collections of photos is one of the reasons for making the scanner more accessible. I am seriously looking at getting rid of the photos to the NZRLS archives and in order to make it easier for them I would be scanning them first, as they are currently underway with a project to scan their entire collection. This would let me keep a copy of the photos electronically for any future use I have for them, while freeing up the several boxes they currently sit in. Although the space of those boxes is not great, it does help to reduce the overall clutter in the house.

Another storage issue is having got rid of the filing cabinet, I still have files, so storing these will have to be solved in future. I have had a look at various plastic boxes that have rails fitted for files, as well as a smaller filing cabinet (than the one I got rid of). At the moment all the files are piled up out in the sleepout and finding an ideal way to store them is another goal for reducing clutter as I can't see a better way of storing the contents.