Rack Mountable PC Chassisessess...

[Magnus Danielson]

>>>>> "SC" == Sean Costello <costello at seanet.com> writes:

 SC> Hi all:

Hi Sean!

 SC> Since there has been a lot of talk about generic rack-mounting housing:

 SC> Does anybody know if anyone makes PC boxes that are rack-mountable?  As
 SC> my DIY interests are getting more digital, it would be nice to have a PC
 SC> that I could put in my rack and take on the road with me.  A laptop is
 SC> too expensive, and probably can't use the specific soundcards (Turtle
 SC> Beach with 56002 DSP) that I need.

There is noumerous ways of getting rackmountable. Some of these are:

1) Use a rack-chassi to house standard motherboards.

2) Use Compact-PCI solutions, you can get Pentium MMX in a single
eurocard size (100x160 mm).

3) PC-104 PCs can be fitted into a box neatly. PCs like these have
been doing shuttle missions and running the eminent operating system
Linux ;)

4) There exist more or less obscure PC configurations like VME buss etc.

One of the first is among the more interesting onces... but if you
also need to use a standard ISA and/or PCI card this will make you
lean more over to the first solution. These boxes can be found at a
large range of prices. One can also make such a box quite easy by
finding a suitable basic box and make custom adaption for form-factor
cards. This later solution takes just some minor metal work and may
very well work well enougth for you. I would hide the actual contact
area behind a lid or something, taking the more vital signals up to a
panel, this also allows you to add isolation transformers to audio
signals, a treatment that becomes more necessary in gigs than at home...
The lack of balanced signals from PC and WS audio gear is most anoying.

 SC> Any and all input is, of course, welcome.  Links, pointers, advice,
 SC> abuse.  Sorry about the rather generic nature of the question.  Let me
 SC> reassure everyone that the computer would be used for synth-DIY stuff -
 SC> I want to start messing with the various Linux/NeXTSTEP music
 SC> applications out there, and try to get these damn sounds out of my brain
 SC> and into the world. 

This sounds most assuring.

I haven't collected any links on this, but my colleagues at work
should have collected a fair deal of them since we have just been
looking at such things, it is most convenient at times.

Cheers,
Magnus