The Frankenstein


The pictures here are thumbnails. Click on the picture to see the medium size image, or the "large" link below for the full size image:


I have a way of buying parts on eBay and then discovering they are a little more complicated to put together than I expected... This is a dual processor system out of an old NEC server. The board was $10, though I paid almost that much again in shipping. The processors are a matched set of P/III 500's. They had passive heat sinks, but I put a couple of small fans on them to help keep cool. The big problem is that, even though the board is sort of an ATX form factor, it is a little more than 12 inches high, meaning I can't find a case to fit it in! So, not wanting to let it sit around gathering dust, I decided to lay it out on a board, just to see if it would work.

As it turns out, it runs quite well. The whole system is running Fedora Core Linux (Red Hat), which I have been very happy with. With the disk drives hooked to the UltraWide SCSI port, it is fairly fast. I'm running NIS and the automounter off the main file server (Rivendell), I've got enough room to expand.


STAGE TWO: The next stage was to mount the board vertically, and then attach everything to the board so parts weren't just slipping around on top of the board.

Note the cardboard at the top as a baffle so the fan isn't blowing in my face. This is an important link to the past. THE CARDBOARD COMPUTER LIVES AGAIN! (long story...)


STAGE THREE: Note that I have extended the "backbone" board such that it now extends a little further than the CPU daughterboard. This will allow me to completely encase the system at some point. On the flip side, it also gives me more room for the power supplies (second supply for the SCSI enclosure, to take some of the strain off the first supply), and for the cables, which have been routed through a small slot just in front of the MB mount.

Oh, and yes, the cardboard is getting more extensive on the front. I'm debating leaving it open on the side. Sort of the ultimate transparent case.


STAGE FOUR: Well, in an effort to look a little more like a real computer, I've used the front cover from the old HP server the drive bay came out of. The one shortfall is that the cover is about a half inch short on the CPU side, so that might present a challenge getting a side cover to match up. Oh, and I noticed when I added a front that is really square, that the backbone isn't quite straight, which gives Frankenstein's monster a little bit of an inebriated look...

I'm also running Fedora Core4 now.


STAGE FIVE: (sort of) This is actually "Son of Frankenstein". This is a P4 system, currently running on 3 9Gig SCSI drives -- actually the twin of the enclosure on the original Frankenstein (which is still up and running). Biggest advancements are first, going to a slightly overclocked P4 (2.666GHz), 768Meg PC2700 memory, and an NVIDIA GeForce 2 video card. Still pretty old stuff, but probably the biggest jump in CPU power that I've had in a LONG time. I have a feeling that Frankenstein may graduate to either an Oracle DB server or something similar. (I can't bare the thought of retiring the old dual-PII file server, unless it actually bites the dust, which it did actually threaten to do once recently.)