Slap Two AT cases together

po0k

I have two AT Cases at home (well 3 really, but its a funny desktop one with non-standard mobo), about 4/5 hdds, 3 CDRoms and 3 Floppy drives. I also have about 96MB of EDO ram, mostly 8Mb sticks.
Also have 1x P75, 1x P100 (runs perfectly @120 with nothing but a heatsink), 1x P120 (might get it upto 150 with some cooling) and 1x P200
I have 2 ISA soundcards both with IDE interfaces, so I'll have enough channels for the drives.
I need to weld the two cases together primarily for power and drive mountings.
What I'd really want to know though ius whether a dual Pentium mobo was ever made.
What about Pentium Pros?
My long term goal is to get CS (any version) running on a machine made from the parts I've colelcted.
I also want to slap together a sinmple Linux Firewall/MP3 jukebox too.
I have no Monitors for these though.
I'll post on the for sale boards.
If anyone has any tips for building a custom case, either from parts of existing cases and from scratch, i 'd like to hear them
Hope this gives you something to think about modding Logic1

logic1

LOL lovely...

/me gets dug in

Well what you should actually do is take some small shots of the two cases and throw em up here so we can all take a look.

Recently came across an article about a guy modding an AT case and fitting it out with ATX parts. Turned out beautifully. (can't find the link. It was called the stone or the rock )

It wasn't however two cases welded together. This could be very interesting. There is definately dual pentium mobos floating about out there. AFAIK very few games etc... will utilise dual processor technology though. Only certain progs like 3d-modelling progs, autocad, adobe etc really use dual processors. I'm sure alot of server software can use those aswell.

I think I probably have some EDO RAM in my tool box. I'll take a look and if I've anything useful I can send it on.

As far as the actual construction goes I think it's pretty cool to get stuck in. Plan things out well then start cutting My dad recommends using an angle grinder as opposed to a hacksaw or jigsaw but then again he's crazy

But yeah basically if you plan it out and make sure you can cut the two parts to fit I'd go for it. Be very interesting to get a few pics up and keep us informed. I'd be extremly interested in how this one turns out.

Best of luck!

.logic.

po0k

Hehe.
I was going to install either some flavour of Linux on it or NT 4.0 (maybe Win2KPro?) to take advantage of any dual processing.
I first have to collect a few bits together.
I could start the case builing now I suppose.
they're two Midi cases I think.
2 5.25" bays in front with 2 3.5" bays too.
I'll 'tubularise' the cables inside.
I have a few fans and heatsinks lying around.
I also need to construct some proper cooling for my GeForce256 SDR. It runs awefully hot non-overclocked. Hotter then my Coppermine P3 800.
Have you ever taken the heatsink or black casing off a Slot1 P3?
I was thinking of replacing the heatsink with something a bit bigger, or even just the fan.
Taking the black casing off is supoosed to reduce the heat by abour 5degrees. It covers the back of the chip and traps the heat in.
The fan and heatsinkon my Creative GeForce is pitiful

logic1

Nope never had anything to do with Intel But I hear the stock HSF that comes with them are quite good. Intels don't really heat up that much anyway. Most I've ever seen hover in around the 40 mark which is fine. That coppermine should be very clockable. I've heard of them reaching 1015+.

.logic.

po0k

I was thinking of getting it up to 950+ maybe.
My ram will be upto it if I put it down to CAS3 (there's about a 1fps difference) .
Was that 1Ghz with or with out extra cooling???
My GeForce is the hottest thing in the case at the moment,I recon it raises the ambient temps by about 20 degrees. Seriously.
the heatsink is facing towards the floor of the case. theres nothing on the hotspot of the chip on the 'topside' of the board(relatively speaking its the top side).
if I could fine a place that sells thermal Epoxy resin or Arctic Silver II in Ireland i'd slap a few heatsinks an fans on it and overclock it.The ram especially could goa bit fasteri think, there's also another mounting for a large fan and a 3-pin sensing connector too!!

i still don't have any go-fasteh stripes on the sides though.
might just paint it totally red, or in Warhammer40K Eldar Saim-hann Red and Black Chevrons style. Yeah. Savage.

beaver

Shag all that overclocking shyte. It's been done and unless you need more speed or think it'd be particularly fun, there are cooler things to do with hardware

Are the two cases the same size?

Here's my idea...

This would work well if the cases were exactly the same.

The goal is to produce a robust (practically bullet-proof actually) and portable computer.

Basically, you'd take a side of each of the cases so that they fit together side by side. You'd have to mod the inside of the case(s) and devise some kind of padding/protection system to go around all the components. The specifics would really depend on the cases and hardware, but the idea would be that you could actually drop the case onto the floor and it would keep running happily. You could even consider spring mounting the drives.

Strip off those crappy plastic front plates and put together something decent with nice switches. Get some of that heavy-duty metal plating that's used for gangways and platforms with the criss-cross design on it and get some of that onto the corners of the box. Fit a handle to the top of it.

Perhaps I'm (temporarily?) insane, but I think that would be cool.

-Ross

SantaHoe

That'd be pretty funky...
Have a nicely lit panel at the front with switches that're hooked up to every jumper on the mobo, HD's, cards and whatever.
So you can reset the CMOS at the press of a button, or alternate your IDE devices between master/slave/cable-select via a 3-way switch.
Ok, maybe not entirely usefull, but very cool... in a nerdy sort of way

PhilipMarlowe

Hmmmm.... checker plate steel and portable used in almost the same paragraph.... I s'pose it would be aluminium anyway....

Gerry

I just got some artic silver thermal epoxy. I could give you a lend of it if you are around the dublin area, otherwise I think only ocuk have it.

po0k

Wopuld Maplins have it?

The cases are roughly the same size.
the good one (the one holding the mobo is about an inch higher then the other, but they're both the same depth.
Waht i need are fans and heatsinks.
I've overclocked the P200 (non-mmx) to 225 using a 75Mhz FSB and 3x multiplyer.
I have an intake fan at the bottom of the frontsdie sucking cold air in and the fan on the PSU has been reversed to blow the hot air out.
It's a 200Watt PSU, 4 connectors.
I really only need the second case atached as a conversation piece and to power/hold the other drives and any extra fans.
I want to chop up some heatsinks and plaster them onto the chips of my VooDoo1, onto both sides fo the chips and ram on my GeForce (with a bigger Fan), and also onto the back of my P3.
I've nearly gotten the black casing off it (uit's a P3 Coppermine). Suppposed to cool it a bit more.
The fan/heatsink on my Creative GeForce really is utterly pathetic. It's also started grinding now too, so I really want to replace it before overclocking it.

Also, about the case, I was thinking of a more wood effect, ie. strip the metal casing, put it in a nice wooden finish and varnich it. Or maybe not.

Oh yeah. Plate steel and portable. An early prototype Titanium G4 rippoff? Not likely, though the idea of hooking it up witha car battery does appeal to meh. Still wpouldn't be very protable.

po0k

I've built it. Plugged every drive and expansion card into it, Win98SE running fine.
PS/2 mouse and keyboards, no serial ports, no parrallel ports
10MBit Reltek 8029
4mb Voodoo1 (normally @ 50MHz, gonna get it up to 60 with some cooling)
1Mb S3 Virge 64+ (or something)
SB16 full length with IDE connector hooked up to 4x Creative CDRom
1st IDE => 1.3Gb Maxtor (master) and 8x Mitsumi CDROM (slave)
2nd IDE => 1Gb Maxtor (master) and 1gb Quantum (slave)

Processor running at 225, 75Mhz fsb
512KB pipeline burst cache (built on to the VX boards isn't it?)
48MB EDO
200Watt PSU

Still have to hinge the cases together though.
The other drives are in the second chassis (believe meh, that's akll it is)
Might cut a holt in the side of each case for the IDE cables...
Maybe not.

Gerry

nice work. As for your other suggestions, yes, the creative hsf sucks. I have detailed how to attach a new one in a few posts now. I'm dubios about putting a heatsink on the back of the p3, although this guy here has done so. I think a lot of benefit will come from just removing the case. Get some pc case screws, put them into the holes on the case of the p3, and press the case down on a flat surface. This should remove the clips.

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|____________=========_______________|
| _ __ |
|______| |___________________| |_______|
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heres a very crude diagram.

po0k

Looks like vBulletin has dashed your attempts at ACSII art.....
Same thing happened to me with my cool cross-over cable diagram a while back.
I've taken a few photos here and there detailing the case.
I'm thinking about channelling the air (there's a mad gale-force being created by the fan in the front) over the VooDoo (whichj I'll also overclock once I remember or am told the command for it in autoexec.bat). It has a free PCI slot to its right and a free ISA slot (or two) to its left. might chop up an old heatsink, or tie on another 'active' one with a bit of thermal paste. Tere are a few lads up in the village near me who assemble PCs. They should have a bit of thermal gunk

I'll search for the posts.

As for the P3 I've allready tried prising the case off. I think I'#ve loosened the heat spreader and the heatsink. i don't want that.
I'll give the screw-in hoe idea a shot though too

My good PC (the aformentioned P3) is b0rked atm.
That fooker of a SBLive!. I installed it using the direct driver method (not the setup scripty thingy that auto.inf's when disc is inserted) and the MaxPayne Demo and a few other Dx8 games seem to think that my video card has no ram. I kid you not.
So i'm just going to low-level format again and install from scratch.
i really want to get the PC up and running with a near-as-possible (like an assymptote) to perfection. And then i'll install Win2k

po0k

I have a big 80-90mm fan blowing into the case at the foot. Like a tornado. Runs faster then when it was in the really old case I got it from.
I also have a nice looking fan/copper-ish (its golden brown anyways) heatsink on the cpu. Its running at 225. Is there any need for the intake fan?
I also intend to mount heatsinks and a fan on my voodoo1
the face of the chip is facing the floor of my case. I was considering inverting my case and swap the direction of the PSU and case fans. This i understand would pump warm air up past my stuff, thereby going against the laws of thermodynamics and heating my stuff. balls.
why could PCi cards face the same way as ISA? Why?
its counter logical.

JohnBoy

I have a machine at home (ok the girlfriends) which I converted from at into atx

Before
Digital DecPC serverXL (a mid tower box)
486 66
8MB ram
1GB SCSI HD
1x Cartridge loading CDROM

now
Original Case
300W atx psu (came from my pc before I got an enermax 430)
Abit BP6
2x 400 celerons@400 (for now)
15GB IBM 7200rpm
Geforce 2MX
256MB crucial PC133 Cas2 (at £40 how could you resist)
SBPCI 128
3com 3c900 combo
17" Digital trinitron

The hardest part of the project was probabley the fitting of the mobo. I ended up getting a friend of mine to cut a rectangle with an angle grinder where the atx IO panel goes, and drilled holes for my new mobo standoffs

Due to lack of tools the mobo standoffs are just glued in, but belive me they're goin nowhere without a vise grip.

The powersupply also had to have it's cable extended due to the way the case sections off the top 1/5 but when I was doing it I made it long enough that it's completely out of the way cable tied to the sides of the case.

the other challenge was the front panel. the power and hd leds and the reset switch all came on one connector, but I managed to take that apart and now they all work.

AT power supplies have a non-momentary switch that actually turns on and off the psu itself but atx ones are controlled by the mobo.(which is controlled by a momentary, normally open switch) but if you want to retain the original switch (for looks if nowt else) then there is generally a pin that can be removed from the switch to stop it from latching.
I took one apart just last week and it didn't spring all over the shop, which was nice, and it works great.

anyway enuf babbling.

John

JustHalf

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        |       ___             ___        |
        |______|   |___________|   |_______|
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There ya go!

po0k

The two cases i actually have at the moment will only be housing an AT mobo.
If I can get a full tower/server case I'd go into converting it from AT to ATX, but as of yet I have no such case
Nice idea though!
Does anyone know if those 400MHz Celerons are locked or not? My cousin has one, a Slot1. It's in a Gateway machine. BX mobo chipset I think. Windows reports it as a BX in System manager anyways.
I think Intel only locked the Celerons from 500 upwards...am i right?

I've heard of ppl getting 400Celerons upto 500+, but I can't sxay whether this was with FSB adjustments or not. Are they Slot1 or FC-PGMA?

Where abouts is Dell's factory located in Limerick? I reckon i could find some usefull 'materials' in one of the skips

LONG MAY THE MODDING CONTINUE!

JohnBoy

I think Blade had an old AT tower case, I bought a dual pentium mobo off of him and at the time he was trying to get me to take the case. In hindsight I nearly should've taken it. they were made from sterner stuff back in the day.

AFAIK the celerys were all locked from about 300 on, but I could be wrong.

my ones are socket based.

dell are in raheen and castletroy, but security ain't bad, I dout thay'd let you into there skips, but if they do lemme know cos I live in castletroy

JustHalf

Celeron 400 is multiplier locked.

po0k

Johnboy wrote this two posts ago:

I bought a dual pentium mobo off of him

So they did make dual P1 mobos..... jeez, I'd like to get one of them.
I really have to go hunting around galway soon for old parts.
I could make a few Linux boxes for the (inevitable I hope) Galway Wireless WAN, and sell em cheap to get everyone up with some sort of firewall/security.
I have damn all parts at the moment though

JustHalf, the cellies run at 66FSB, so a 87FSB (if mobo/dumb-ass Gateway BIOS lets it) would give it a slighty better performance.
The cousin recently bought a 256Mb Apacer CAS3 PC133 ram. he had only 64MB (CAS3 prolly) PC66 before.

I believe those Clerons are very good clockers, due to teh cache being at teh same clock-speed as the chip itself, hance less inconsistencies when overclocked.
The lad could also get a few fans, though his cas is rather small.

Gerry

Syxpak, you first asked whether celerons were locked, when this was answered you then talked about fsb overclocking. Fsb overclocking is the only way to overclock any celeron or pentium 3, any overclocked celeron you have heard about has a raised fsb. The celeron 400 is very awkward, since 100 fsb would run the chip at 600, and 99% of them won't make that. If it was a 300 or 366, you could just fool the gateway board into thinking it was a 100mhz chip by taping up some pins on the slot one connector ( its called the B21 trick, details on tomshardware ) Otherwise you are stuck at 83mhz fsb, with 41mhz pci speed, and thats about the most you can hope for from a gateway board. The only way to adjust the fsb is to get softfsb, and see if the clock generator is supported.

po0k

Yeah, i had that SoftFSB for my own board.
*ahem*
Didn't work.
had to do a whole cold power cycle.
I wasn't thinking straight in my last post either.
Sorry.
Pitty about the celeron.
I'm not even sure if the gateway will let hime change the FSB.
They're kinda pícks that way [under breath](no **** sherlock)[/under breath].
SoftFSB might work for hi though.
i'll tell him.
Thanks Gerry.
And JustHalf.
And JohnBoy.

TacT

It was my second machine and my first attempt at ocing a cpu, god bless socket370, nm

Anyone got a nice link or care to explain to me how I might cut the bridges on my 1ghz pIII to raise the core voltage and then feel the need for some speed pls, better still, show me where these bridges are

Funnily enough, I was able to oc it to 1050mhz with a 140fsb and 7.5 multiplier, then I upgraded my ram and it won't allow it anymore I oc'd from the bios, jumperless config for my i815 chipset, when I tried after the upgrade it won't post but I can get into my bios nps

po0k

What type of Ram? SPD EPROM on them maybe. Stores timing info. *Could* cock stuff up.

Afaik the brides are located directly under the actual chip itself, on the otherside of the PCB.
Gerry, Could I bridge them on my Slot1 P3 when i get around to taking the cover off?

Does the Slot1 celleron have the bridges too???
I know the alst one is a bit pointless cos of the gateway BIOS.
Might there be a setup-type jumper somewhere to allow Gateway 'engineers' to fiddle suff??
If you bridged the Link and cleared the CMOS would the Gateway BIOS ask you to spcify the chip speed?

JohnBoy

I doubt clearing the cmos will work, those mobos read the multiplier from the chip.

I wouldn't give up on softfsb straight away tho, there is some sort of expansion pack that covers more clockgens, so that may help

saik

the celeron a is my favorite chip EVER

this is a 400 MHz celeronA
meaning 66FSB x 6.0 mulitplier

celerons are historically magic, with one particular batch of the original 300a's running at an amazing 701MHz - if rubbed the right way. as a general rule, they will not clock higher than 600Mhz.

on intel boards, the multiplier is locked, but on various via boards, i have found this "lock" open, and have been able to put the settings to whatever the hell i liked. (100Mhz FSB x 5 multiplier)

but time has passed and there are more options that there used to be for dual celly's. originally it was abit bp6? (not sure) that allowed them to operate in smp, giving a 25% boost in q3 and the likes.
nowadays you can get hold of a ddr motherboard. with a via chipset, no less. this will overcome the celeron's main weakpoint (the incredibly **** 66mhz FSB induced memory bandwidth).
i want to see someone with money and time put together a case based on this set up g'waaaaaaaan! no-one has figured out how to bridge the celeron afaik, but the via chipset will proboably do that for ya (this is purely theoretical, dont blame me if it doesnt)

i want to see
via ddr p3 socket 370 board
2 cellys of any variety
and some benchmarks

po0k

I'm going to paint the cases (both the aforementoion hybrid monster seven headed one and a squat Desktop Linux box - P120 @ 133, 32Megs ram, 850Meg hdd, 10Mbit NIC) pretty similar to this.
THe finish will be the most important.
I have a good work area and am willing to put a bit of elbow grease into the rubbing solution at the end.
I still need to borrow a welder to join the two chassis.
If anyone wants to bring one along to the GalwayLan I'd bring my case... hehe. Kidding. But seriously...

If it works on these I'll do the same for my Good one.
Might even go as far as painting the drives too.

TacT

i got a big aul Moretec AT case earlier on tonight, so first thing to do is clean it, the thing has cobwebs, i plan on getting piccies anyway, my first mod

i have to cut out the back of an atx case with a jigsaw and same goes for the at, I'm converting it, Renton has told me it isn't possible, but I've seen the goods and it is perfectly possible, you'll see

Gl with that syx, gwan

someone tell me how to cut them bridges and up my voltage, rent, you know how to do that right?

po0k

Just cut the hole for the ATX I\O panel and make sure the slots for expansion cards match up nice and snuggilly

I have my mind on something like that allright, prehaps if I get off my ass and down to Dell i could end up witha dual Cellie 500 or something... and a few hundred fans

Mod on my comrades, mod on indeed

Gerry

Just a small point, the celeron II will NOT do smp, so your options for a dual ddr celeron system are rather limited. I'm not sure if the iwill dvd -266r will take celerons. So you are stuck with celerons at 533 or under, and its pointless getting anything over a 400, since you will be stuck between 550 - 600 because of the limitations of the .25 mendocino architecture (unless you push them a little with some good water and peltiers, or maybe some phase change cooling) , and you want to have a nice high fsb. Not much point in having a dual machine running under 100 fsb.

I'd personally recommend getting some cheap 100 fsb p3's say 700's or 750's, as new as possible. The newer the chip, the better chance that it is cc0 or cd0 stepping which will more than likely go over a gig.

Clock these up, and you have a nice system because of the high fsb. (I have tested a dual p3 600e system at 167 fsb on an abit vp6 board, and it is sweet )

po0k

I would be looking for machines being thrown out, eg: the fabled skip behind Dell, where they're only to happy to lewt you take stuff, possibly at a small fee, cos they have to get rid of the stuff anyways.

I'd take anything i was given and fiddle with it, though I see your point about the stepping etc.

Are you coming to the galway LAN?
I'd like to talk to you about the L1 bridges etc. I don't have a clue on this subject TBH. In relation to any CPU too, mind.