DIY Equipment Racks

While thinking about racks to use for mounting my PDP-11/44 components, as well as other equipment from test equipment to audio and synth equipment, something just occured to me: why bother with hunting down steel racks when some 2x4s and lag bolts may suffice just as well? I was thinking that one can just run 2x4s from the basement floor up to the heavy wooden rafters, attach them to the rafters, and then add horizontal supports at the bottom to space the vertical 2x4s apart properly. Any thoughts on this? I guess the museum-type equipment purists won't like the idea, but it would be a cheap and functional solution for many of us. :-) Has anyone else here tried this? Lastly, has anyone on this list tried retrofitting non-rack-mount equipment into racks? E.g., welding (or "JB Weld"ing) rack-mount tabs onto systems like PCs and Kaypros, as well as making rack-mountable shelves to hold the Macintoshes, etc.? Just trying to think of ways to save space. Stacking system on top of system, helter skelter, as systems are added, tends to result in rather annoying, space hogging, piles of systems after a while, making some systems difficult to get to at times. -- Copyright (C) 2002 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.