[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[Peter Corlett]

On 24 Apr 2007, at 18:34, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
[...]
> The problem you describe above is because you picked the wrong case.
> Because ATX doesn't design the "interface" between drive bays and
> motherboard, you have to pick a case which doesn't have overlap, and a
> motherboard whose layout matches your usage.

Well, mooli.org.uk is in a rather deep rackmount ATX case of 1999  
vintage. There is a lot of wasted space in there. The main problem is  
that the hotswap disk carriers that occupy the front 5.25" bays is  
very deep and foul the relatively ancient 2001-vintage ATX  
motherboard in there.

The "fileserver" is the cheapest new PC I could find in London. It  
was a German machine based on a micro-ATX board and case. It came  
with a 40GB PATA drive and I attached a couple of external USB drives  
to it. Since the 40GB drive was a SPOF, I eventually cracked it open  
and shoved in a pair of "spare" 160GB SATA disks which is about

In both cases, I didn't actually *choose* the case, merely ended up  
with whatever it came with. My real computers were specced entirely  
by myself and seem to pretty much all fit. The PCs are generally of  
fairly shoddy build even so, whereas the Mac and Sun kit is nice and  
solid.