SmashedSqwurl

The Crashproof File Server

Category

PC in a ?

Status

Ready for Battle

Deets

My father and I wanted to build our first mod, so I tried to think of something nobody had done before. While browsing eBay, I found a flight data recorder- aka black box- from a C-130 cargo plane. A light bulb came on and we went to work. Putting the necessary holes in the box was difficult because half of it is made of 3/16” steel (and was filled with asbestos (!)), so we put the cutting torch to work. The other half was made of 1/8” aluminum, so we used a pneumatic nibbler. We made custom mounting brackets for the 500 GB Seagate hard drive and the VIA Mini-ITX motherboard out of aluminum angle. The hard drive went in the steel half, which originally held the recorder’s actual storage medium, while the motherboard went into the aluminum half, which used to hold the recorder’s electronics. To save space and reduce heat, it uses a 120W Pico-PSU for power. Two low-RPM fans keep the air circulating. I also added two LEDs to the front for power and HD activity and a DPDT momentary switch for both power and reset. In order to extend the “crashproof” theme, I used a minimal Slackware 12.0 installation for the OS. With only an 800 MHz VIA C3 CPU and 128 MB of DDR, this is no speed demon. However, it does a very good job of storing my files and is always a good conversation piece.

See a full description of the process and high-res photos at my website.