1 Nov
2005
1 Nov
'05
3:20 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Hmmm, the Compaq Deskpro was built at a time when Compaq seemed to care
about quality. The PSU fan isn't one of those 4" screamers, but a slower
4.5" very quiet model. The expansion card backplane is plugged into the
motherboard and pulls out from the chassis for easy card servicing. There
are air intake holes at the bottom rear of the machine so that the airflow
first passes over the motherboard and actually makes some sort of sense and
keeps the floppy drive and CD pretty clean. No annoying little cheap fan
on the CPU heatsink either.
Maybe I can't do MUCH better than that.
Probably not. If the Soekris boards don't have enough juice, the
mini-ITX Eden boards would be the next step up. Some of the mini-ITX
cases use wall-wart PSUs, so it's conceivable that your disk would be
the only moving part.
Are 5.25" IDE drives any more reliable than the
3.5" models? I've got a
few old Quantum units--the largest is about 8 GB, but I'm using a 3.5"
Maxtor in the box right now.
The failure rate on the Quantum "Bigfoot" series was spectacular, and
they're slow as dirt. A fast (5400rpm) 2.5" IDE disk will draw very
little power, generate a tiny amount of heat, and perform reasonably
well. Conversion kits to attach to a 40-pin ribbon & power run about
$12-15.
Doc