Creative Engineering

break19

break19

Also known as "redneckin it up!"

My media server has 2 hard drives in it: 80G with the OS, and 500G for /usr/home/media

Both hard drives are old, PATA interface (the box is a athlonxp 2k+). I "engineered" anti-vibration mounts for the case:

1x old bicycle inner-tube.

For each drive, cut out pieces of the tubing. put 2 between the drive and the mounting bracket, and use some small washers..

Basically like this: screw washer rubber case_frame rubber hard_drive

Since it's an older system, the motherboard doesnt support PWM fans, so I have the fans rigged up in a similar fashion to a cheap thermostat. PSU fan spins all the time, but the rest of the fans (cpu fan included) turn on/off when the temp hits ~50C. Most of the time they don't run at all.

I have the thermostat's probe attached to the CPU heat sink.

What kind of "redneck engineering" did y'all do to your stuff?

break19
 
break19 said:
What kind of "redneck engineering" did y'all do to your stuff?
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How about fixing a laserprinter's paperload sensor with a piece of plastic coffeespoon? And charging 135,- euro for it :e
 
You mean you switched to SSDs by replacing them instead of buying the overpriced "genuine" HP ones? That's like laser printer RAM: HP: $800. Kingston/PNY/anybody else: $29.
 
Not exactly. There was six empty slots with blank inserts in them. We wanted to use SSD disks there, but hp refused to sell us empty cases for disks and their own rebranded disks was so overpriced, that almost touched their low performance from bottom. So I had to do a magic and "convert" those blanks to "genuine" hp 2.5 inch hot plug cases with little creativity and small milling tool. Only two on picture above are original, left and top one, others are my hand made art :D
 
SirDice said:
How about fixing a laserprinter's paperload sensor with a piece of plastic coffeespoon? And charging 135,- euro for it :e
Click to expand...
That is not Redneck Engineering, that is the $BIG_IRON cheap service contract. :e
 
I know a hyper-smart guy. Went to the best university, worked at the greatest computer science research lab, founded some of the most interesting companies around. Then worked for the best industrial research lab of a huge company, and from there became director of operations for the most radical web search company. Volunteered at the Internet Archive in his spare time.

His "redneck engineering" trick was quite amazing: when he had to build a large disk array, he put the disks into hanging file folders (one disk per folder), and hung them in a milk crate. Worked excellently. Creative, disruptive, different.
 
Reminds me of a guy who kept getting his computer's motherboard stolen out of his office as engineering needed it to test something. So he bolted it to the side of his desk in a way that couldn't easily be removed.
 
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