Over the years I have evolved from a person who thought cell phones were something that only tied people to the annoyances of the rest of the world into a person who clearly understands their merits. Granted, a lot has changed in the cell phone industry over the last ten years, which helped me along a little.

One of the things I have sought after for several years is the ability to write, keep in touch, and be entertained while on the go – anywhere. To that end, I have purchased things like a laptop, a Nintendo DS Lite, a Netbook, a PSP, and various adapters and phones to cobble together a fulfilling mobile life, all with varying degrees of success. Each device had its downsides and at the end of the day, to make a long story short, nothing I had really worked for me when it came to meeting the following needs,

• Video/Music playback.
• Note taking (text).
• Communications (phone or email)
• Internet access.

I had a phone. I had a gaming device for video playback and the occasional game. And I had a laptop for internet access and doing things like writing and what not. But, none of this was really as mobile as I had hoped it would be. The laptop (and even the netbook) was too clunky to take on a walk. The phone was, well, just a phone. And, the gaming devices just weren’t designed to be media play back devices, as both had keys that would skip ahead or backward through the video or song at the slightest touch – truly annoying! I wasn’t able to really go out and be creative, like I used to when I was kid with my note books and pen. Neither was I able to amuse myself in those idle moments while out and about. Truly, it was a sad state of affairs for a poor techie like myself and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Prior to 2009, I didn’t really have any experience with text messaging on a phone. I had sent a few back in 2002 on an old Nokia black and white phone, but it was such a pain in the ass to type on it, I couldn’t imagine why a person would want to use text messaging. Then, in 2008 Virgin Mobile was nice enough to send my wife a free upgrade to her recalled Samsung phone, so she gave me her LG Rumor that she didn’t like, but she had upgraded to. It was purdy blue… Anyhow, I quickly found that text messaging on a full qwerty phone was awesome! My wife and I could communicate quickly, effectively, and without a lot of gibber jabber that would previously eat away at those precious day time minutes; if we needed milk, “hey. we need milk. love you” was only seconds away and didn’t require ten minutes of frustration to type! Yup, it was the beginning of a whole new world for me. That is, until I sat on the Rumor and broke the screen (I left it on the bed and it got under the blankets, so when I went to get something on the other side of the bed, wouldn’t you know, right where I put my knee was where the phone was).

Now, the LG Rumor couldn’t play movies or make decent sized text files, but it was capable of playing music and it truly was a “quick messaging phone”. However, after accidently breaking it and being at a point in time when I really needed to have a phone, I hastily replaced it with what seemed like a good idea at the time, a free Motorola KRZR K1 on a one year contract from Virgin. I could have just purchased another Rumor for $89.99 and stayed on my pay as ye go plan, but I was feeling particularly cheep that day and they only had ugly green Rumors in stock (hmm… I wonder why). Well, suffice to say that as nice looking, sturdy, and useful as the KRZR K1 is, it is not a quick messaging phone. Not at all. So, here I was again in 2010 with a pocket full of devices that just were not meeting my “needs”.

And along comes a spider: I changed contracts at work, giving me a discount for that other network provider in Canada, Rogers.

So, there I was with a one year contract with Virgin Mobile, yet a discount for Rogers and a phone I did not enjoy using. What to do… what to do… Everyone and their brother seemed to love their iphones, with their apps and games and video playback, but I just didn’t dig the whole touch screen thing. When I tried it out on a co-worker’s ipod touch, I firmly decided it was not for me. Then, a friend of mine showed me his Blackberry 8520 that he had through Rogers. It seemed like a neat little device, it could play videos, make text files, stream hockey games, make phone calls, and it had a qwerty keyboard. I spent a couple months pondering my choices, from Android, Apple, Windows Mobile, and Palm phones to the Blackberry and then one day I saw that Rogers was offering the soon to be discontinued Sony Xperia X1 for only $9.99 on a three year contract.

By the time that I had found the Xperia X1, I had decided that the Blackberry 8520 had the best features (initial cost being one of those features) and layout of any of the phones that I looked, but I wasn’t keen on its tiny keyboard and wasn’t sure that I would like it. Also, I wasn’t aware that the Blackberry had so many apps as well as a development kit for making one’s own apps. So, I went to the mall and I tried out the X1. It felt a bit heavy, but like many of the reviews I read about it, it also felt sturdy and was a breeze to type on. I went home and thought about it for a few more days and then decided to get the Sony Xperia X1.

After defending Windows Mobile 6.5 to various folks who likely knew better than me at the time, it took me all of three, maybe four hours of using Xperia X1 to realize that indeed, Windows Mobile 6.5 sucks on a phone sized device. I am sure it would work well on a tablet the size of the ipad, but on the X1 I found it difficult to use with my fingers, even having to go so far as to use the stylus just to hit the X to close a program, as the screen was recessed into the chassis just enough to make using it less than desirable.  Overall, I found the experience clunky, slow, and frustrating, especially when trying use phone features like dialing the phone and sending text messages. Heck, when I slid the LG Rumor open it knew that I wanted to send a text message, but no such luck with the Xperia X1. Fortunately, I could return it and the next day that is exactly what I did do. I exchanged it for the Blackberry Curve 8520 and I have not been disappointed since!

The Curve can do so very many things and it is amazingly easy to use. Consequently, I figured that I should share my experiences with it. Here are some of the things I have thus far determined the 8520 can do,

• Desktop software that converts Xvid movies to be played on the device.
• Can hold up to a 16GB micro SD card. I have an 8GB card that was only $21.99 on www.tigerdirect.ca plus shipping.
• Play music, video, pictures, and record video, pictures, and voice notes.
• Browse the web effectively.
• Write MS Office compatible notes.
• Write small notes.
• Be used as a flashlight while on a blank notes screen.
• Text message quickly.
• Handle phone calls.
• Take up very little pocket space and feel comfortable in the hand.

To be quite honest, the Blackberry Curve 8520 is exactly the mobile “computer” that I have always wanted. I can only hope that RIM doesn’t make too many changes to their already awesome OS and hardware designs in order to compete in the “touch screen world” – a world of which I do not understand; call me old fashioned, but I quite like using a real keyboard! Flat surface typing, finger prints on the screen, and screen real-estate taken up by a keyboard… yeah, they ain’t for everyone ya know!

Note: This comment is in reply to the blog post by law professor Michael Geist regarding “Support for C-32 Digital Lock Changes Mounts”. The issue at hand is how circumventing a “technological measure” will be illegal and therefore trumps all other “rights” bestowed to Canadians within the bill. My comment was too long to put into his comment field.

Trust me, please, when I say that any media that is sold today that does not have a "technical measure" protecting it will tomorrow have a "technical measure", effectively voiding all rights given to the consumer, if this bill is passed in its current form. Of course industry is happy with the bill - if it is passed, the industry will control everything from distribution to device compatibility.

I don't know what else to say any more, because it is obvious that those in government who need to understand why this is so important just "don't get it". My MP still has not replied to two letters I wrote about the issue in 2008. I did my best to put the issue into real life terms and explain where both business and consumers will be hurt by the "technical measure" issue.

I also put forward that millions of Canadians simply will not know how to nor have the resources to defend themselves from legal action taken by corporations who are accusing them of copyright infringement; The corporations don't even need to have a valid case to effectively scare thousands of dollars of settlement money out of folks who really should be innocent until proven guilty! Most people have downloaded something in the past, making most of us "guilty" under the new legislation. Sadly, most people don't realize that if they broke a law before there was a law to break, the new law is not actionable retroactively. So, in 2005 you downloaded a movie and in 2012 you get a letter suing you for that download. Sadly, most people won't know they are innocent and will settle out of court, because they don't know how or simply can't afford to defend themselves. The industry will take these sorts of sleazy actions and you're naive if you think otherwise.

The media industry will do a lot of things if we let them.

Consider this for a moment: Apart from iTunes there really isn't a comprehensive digital content distribution system that does not involve the archaic rotational media, be it BlueRay, CD or DVD, despite the fact that solid state storage and Internet bandwidth is what consumers want their media on and how they want it delivered to them. It would stand to reason that companies like Wal-Mart would like to have their floor space back, by replacing rows upon rows DVD/CD/BlueRay media with a secure wireless kiosk that would allow consumers to purchase media in digital format as they browse the other items available for sale in the store. Wal-Mart could then stock more items that are going generate more revenue per square foot than the out dated rotational media.

That's just one instance where the media industry is hurting both the consumers as well as businesses. If the media industry actually cared and if they were an entity capable of innovation, they would have changed by now. However, they don't care and this legislation does nothing but grind to a halt the gears of progress and competition, especially in the mobile devices market where functionality and entertainment are quickly merging (Research in Motion, I am looking at you and my Blackberry! Andriod and iPhone though as well, of course). If we allow “digital locks” to become unbreakable, so many devices will simply have their media access removed over night and that does not make any sense at all, now does it?

We need a content delivery system that is able to cater to the device and quality that the consumer demands, because that is the heterogeneous reality that we are living in. However, this legislation delivers the exact opposite, resulting in the stifling of innovation to maintain the monopoly of a handful of content delivering corporations (collectively referred to as the media industry), due entirely to how circumventing a “technological measure” will be illegal and therefore trumps all other “rights” bestowed to Canadians within the bill. There are two ways to rectify the issue,

1. Remove the clause regarding circumventing "technical measures", so that consumers can continue to shift their store purchased media into formats that function on the devices they would like to use the media upon. Keep in mind that this requires the consumer’s time, hardware, know-how, and electricity to achieve.

or

2. Force the industry to actually deliver content to 100% of all devices in the quality that the consumer would like, at a price that is fair to the consumer. This system would be designed, built, and maintained by the industry with non-taxpayers money I might add. 

Not doing one of those two things will simply leave consumers as well as device manufacturers at the mercy media industry, who neither innovates nor follows consumer and technological trends.

As for the issue of illegal file sharing, again doing one of the above suggestions will help to cure that problem. On the whole, people are willing to pay a far price for media, but they also want to obtain that media following the path of least resistance. Currently, it is a fairly sizable pain in the ass to convert a DVD to a format that is playable on an iPod, for instance. Consequently, most lay folk would simply rather download that content illegally, because it’s already ready to be played on their device. That’s not a failing of human morals, it’s a failing of the media industry to meet the needs of their customers. Period.

Of the many things that I have used both Windows and Linux for over the years, I have to say that most surprisingly interesting project has been the network file server. It seems like a simple enough concept, having one computer on the network or at least in the home that has all of your personal crap, such as pictures, documents, and videos, but when you get down to considering what factors are important to you and then actually putting it together, building a “media server” (as they are called these days) can be pretty complicated.

What is a file server and why do I care?

Well, think of it this way: It’s a hell of a lot easier to eat a bag of potato chips from the bag than it is to put ten bowls of chips around your house and try to enjoy them while watching the hockey game, without bringing the bowls to the couch. Having a file server, especially one that is connected to a wireless network, is handy because it allows you to store a copy of all of your information in a single spot, so that no matter what device you’re using you’ll be able to access the information, without having to copy all that data on to every device you own.

What kind of file servers are there?

Technically, a floppy disk can be considered a file server if you leave it in a convenient place. However, traditionally a server is a device that is “on” and able to accessed by other devices by using some medium of communication, like a cable or a radio signal, at all times throughout the day. External hard drives and USB sticks, much like the old floppy disks and other “storage media”, are a great way to share files with many different computers, especially from the perspective that they don’t use any power when they are not actively in use, but they have a few draw backs that justify the “always on” definition of a file server. With storage media, only one device can access the data at a time, a significant draw back for a family who owns a digital camera and has a large archive of pictures for instance. Also, almost all storage media requires a person to physically handle or plug in the media, which apart from being a bit of a pain in the ass, can also lead to wear and tear and accidental damage. And this is where the “always on” file server stands out as the superior way to share your data: once you set it up, you never need to touch the hardware again.

The best example of what a typical file server consists of is the follow: a computer with a large amount of hard drive space that has a directory (folder) that you can remotely access to add or delete files. That’s it. It’s that simple. Once configured, this computer doesn’t even need a screen, mouse, or keyboard, because you’ll never actually need to touch it – kind of like how the whole Internet exists on computers that you never touch (actually, it’s exactly like that). Depending on how you’d like to use the file server you can connect to it and use your files by wifi, Bluetooth, usb, Ethernet, the Internet, or even HAM radio if you had a lot of time on your hands. It all just depends on what your life is like, where you’ll be, and what you’ll be doing.

As far as actual types of hardware go, I’ll list a few different file server designs:

• “Cloud Computing”, which is Internet hosted storage, such as your Windows Live Skydrive. This lets you put your files in some magical location on the Internet, so you can download them from any where in the world. In reality, your files are stored on a redundant array of hard drives in a large data center somewhere.
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) Appliance. These are often low power ARM processor based systems (which can’t run Windows, like Intel/AMD/Via processors) that aren’t much more than a hard drive or two attached to the least expensive data handling computer as possible. Most of these devices are only accessible once they are attached to your home network and you’re able to use you computer’s web browser to connect to the NAS. It’s a neat idea that seems to work quite well and there certainly a lot of them available on the market these days. The Asus EEE-NAS for instance even has a full x86 Intel Atom processor and acts as a 4 port wireless router, making it an exceptionally powerful file server.
• Dedicated File Server. Well, way back when in the 1990s we had computers that did very little other than sit under a desk collecting dust, while everyone in the office accessed and stored their files on it over the network. Regardless of the complexity or cost of the machine, every other file server that isn’t what I described above is just another computer sitting somewhere doing nothing but waiting for people to use its hard drives over the network. In my attic I have a Dell Poweredge dual Pentium II 400MHz cpu server that is (despite being made with hot swappable SCSI drives and redundant power supplies) simply a well put together computer like any other computer one could buy. The difference between the Poweredge and, let’s say, an E-Machine desktop is that that Poweredge is designed to run 24/7/365 without failing where as the E-Machine is not (and I’ll leave it at that). Other than that, there’s no difference at all between a file server and a home computer, as they both store and access data in essentially the same way, from a practical perspective. Even an Android Smart Phone set up on a wifi network to share the files stored on it qualifies as “just another computer”, despite its high level of awesome!

So what about this Netbook thing?

It occurred to me that one of the crummy parts of trying to organize and share our pictures, videos and misc files in our home is that some times we aren’t home and usually when that is the case, we’re not able to access the Internet either. In those cases, even if we have my wife’s MSI Wind netbook with us or one of my Dell Inspiron 1501 notebooks, we’re invariably going to be missing something that is back home on my main desktop computer, (as that’s what we use as our main storage device or “file server”) which does us very little good when we’d like to share some cute pictures of the kids with the in laws. To solve this issue, I considered several things, such as

1. Using a portable hard drive to make a redundant copy of everything from the desktop and taking it with me.
2. Making redundant copies of at least all the pictures and home video on each computer (which is what I did).
3. Spending 20 years uploading all of our personal stuff to my Windows Live Skydrive over my terrible internet service. 

And then, all of a sudden the other day the obvious solution smacked me in the face from no where while I was window shopping at www.tigerdirect.ca – all I need to do is get myself a netbook and a 500GB Hitachi 2.5” SATA drive to put into it! Such a bloody simple concept, but as you will see it’s also exceptionally versatile.

Now that I’ve gone through what a file server is, why it is handy, and what some of the limitations are, I think I’ll just finish up the article with a pros and cons list for using a netbook as a file server as well as some words on operating systems.

Pros:

• The #1 best thing about using a netbook as a personal file server: Where you go, it goes!
• Low power, especially when idle.
• Built in LCD, keyboard, and mouse so you can take it with you and just use it without having to plug it into another device. It’s simply… a computer!
• Gigabit Ethernet connection + 1.6GHz Intel x86 CPU = stupid over powered for streaming even HD content (my Dell PowerEdge server has less processing power, but was designed to host entire web domains).
• Even under load, netbooks are pretty quiet. My PowerEdge on the other hand can be heard from the attic all the way out side (which is why I don’t use it).
• Built in uninterruptable power supply (for as much as five or six hours no less!).
• Only around $90 to buy a 500GB 7200 RPM Hitachi internal SATA drive with a 16MB cache, which is much more than enough for my family’s archives. Most often, upgrading a netbook hard drive is as simple as removing a couple screws, sliding out the old one and inserting the new one.
• A refurbished Intel Atom 270 based netbook can be had for around $250 dollars.
• Exceptional portability and usability – it’s a netbook!
• USB connections for a video capture card and external hard drive to use as a simple network TV show recorder (perhaps only standard definition).
• Easy enough to set up the power management features (including making the unit stay awake when the lid is closed) in Windows XP Home.
• VNC Server and VNC Client are both free, easy to set up, and allows the netbook to be managed from another computer on the network, not in some fancy new web interface, but by actually using the the netbook’s desktop remotely. This means that organizing files is as simple as using Windows file sharing.

Cons:

• Can an Atom based netbook stay on and remain reliable for years on end? Though they aren’t really designed to do so, this isn’t the 1980s and computer hardware is much more reliable now than it ever has been, because the manufacturing techniques are far more refined.
• Storage capacity is limited to the 2.5” hard drive design, which currently maxes out at 750GB.
• Installing the OS on a replacement hard drive can be a pain for a novice, but there are lots of guides out there on how to make and use bootable usb sticks. A usb connected DVD drive is also a simple solution.
• The battery may have a reduced life span if the AC power is plugged in all the time.
• Heat may be an issue with the lid closed, but leaving the netbook on its side or upside down may well resolve that.
• You could take it somewhere and lose it.
• Your netbook could come with Windows 7 Starter Edition.

I like Windows 7, a lot, but the Starter Edition is pure, unadulterated uselessness. To see how it would go, I put my Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade 64bit DVD onto a USB flash drive and tried it out on my wife’s MSI Wind 1.66GHz Intel Atom netbook and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked great even with Windows Aero on (which was on by default upon the first boot). I used it for an hour or two with Open Office, 700MB Xvid DVD back up movies (my kids eat DVDs!), Internet Explorer 8, Opera 9, and Purbole Place and other than lagging a little bit in Purbole Place and the really annoyingly short shift key on the right side of the keyboard, I had a great experience with the computer. That was until my wife kindly told me to give her her 30GB of hard drive space and her netbook back – I guess some people are happy with Windows XP still! Ah well, saved me having to buy an OEM copy of Windows 7 so I can’t complain I suppose. In any event, given the massive amount of limitation in Windows 7 Starter Edition and the shear lack of need for using such a crippled OS on a netbook, I can’t recommend using it as home server (in fact, you simply cannot use it as a network print server for instance). Look for a netbook that comes with XP or Windows 7 Home Premium. Failing that, buy an OEM copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 32Bit as it is well worth the $109 ish dollars.

As far as file server operating systems go, I have used various Linux distributions, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home and Pro, and Window 7 Home Premium and my final take on what one is best for the job is Windows XP Home, followed closely by Windows 2000 Professional. Various aspects of the Group Policy system that is implemented in a standard installation of Windows XP Professional have quite simply made it a pain my ass to use in a home network environment, such that the ease and openness of Windows XP Home file and printer sharing are preferred. Windows 2000 Professional is pretty simple too, with the only complicated part being that users have to provide a username and passwords the first time they access the shared files. Of course, Windows 2000 Professional is no longer a supported product and therefore more likely to be a security risk if connected to the internet, but I have to say that it has been one of the easiest operating systems to make a file server with, ever. Windows 7 Home Premium is quite literally idiot proof to use as a file server, whether you choose to use the new Home Group feature or the standard Windows File and Print Sharing shared folders method.

Linux… Linux… Linux… 10 years ago I would have told you something different, but today I’ll just put it this way: Windows “just works” and any distribution of Linux out there “can work, but not quite as well in some cases, and only if you know what you’re doing”. Sure, Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a solid operating system and it is more than capable of being a stable file server OS, but the heart of the matter of what makes Windows superior to Linux (sadly, still…) is power management. It’s so easy to set up hard drive and other hardware rules in Windows 2000/XP/7 and for the absolute vast majority of hardware out there, the drivers respond exactly as one would expect. Sadly, the reason is that the hardware is designed with the Windows driver API in mind and a lot of smart people are employed around the world to ensure that the hardware works properly in Windows. I very much appreciate the Open Source community and all they have (indirectly) done for me over the years. I admire projects like Slackware, KDE, Open Office, and FreeBSD, which have obviously influenced the design of both Windows 7 and Apples’ OSX. However, at the end of the day using any version of Windows from 98 on (yes, even ME and Vista) is much less a pain in my ass that I can’t honestly suggest to someone that they should use Linux or FreeBSD instead. Sure, I could slap together a Slackware file server in no time flat, but most people on Earth couldn’t do it and heaven help them if something went wrong. Sure, using SMB sharing in Ubtunu is idiot proof, but when happens when you take the netbook to the trailer and realize that you’re missing a codec to play your home movies or a program to edit them in the quiet of the night or it pisses you off that there still isn’t a solid photo slide show application for Linux or that you neglected to install and activate the drivers for the wireless card and so on? Yup, the sad truth is that as awesome as Linux is, Windows is still better. It’s not fair, it sucks, but it is the truth.

So there you go, a person on the internet said it was a good idea to buy a netbook and a as large of an internal 2.5” hard drive as you can upgrade to and use it as portable personal file server, otherwise known as  Network Attached Storage or “NAS”. If Asus thinks using the Intel Atom in their EEE-NAS / wifi router media server is a good idea, I don’t see why using an Atom netbook with a big hard drive would be any less of a good idea. When I can afford to, this is what I will be doing!

Note: Regardless of what you happen to use as a file server, it’s always an exceptionally brilliant and wonderful idea to keep a redundant copy of your data on some kind of stand alone storage media, be they blue ray disks, DVDs, CDs, usb drives, zip disks, or external hard drives. That said, if your back up is sitting right beside your server and your house happens to burn down, fat lot of good that redundancy would do you – keep a back up of, at the very least, your family photos either online or on a usb stick in your purse, car, safety deposit box, etc. because those memories are irreplaceable.

The first “massively multiplayer online game” that I played was an all text browser based called Utopia, way back in 1999. It’s still around today, operated by Swirve Games, in pretty much the same shape that it was when it launched – a testiment to how fun it can be to create a kingdom of twenty five provinces with their own forum and conspire to beat the tar out of other unsuspecting kingdoms! A friend of mine was heavily into an MMO called Underlight, which I did try for a short time before firing up what I once thought was a stupid waste of time, Everquest. Shortly after EQ, I went to Star Wars: Galaxies, which was exactly the game I always wanted to play and I played it for many years. In fact, I liked SWG so much that I poo-pooed the concept of playing World of Warcraft when it was released! However, a lot changed in SWG by the time Blizzard released their Burning Crusade expansion for WoW and I had had my fill of bugs and sweeping game changes, so I decided to give WoW a try. Yup, World of Warcraft was blissful bug free experience for me that was both new and entertaining. Since that time, I have played both SWG and WoW on and off, as life permits, as they offer such drastically different game play options.

At one time I was a member and a leader of one of the first SWG guilds on the Intrepid server. Consequently, I have hosted forums and created web sites in the past related to our ever evolving guild over the years. However, as of September 1999 I stopped playing SWG, not because it was a bad game, but because my heart just wasn’t into it any more. Raph Koster and the whole Sony Online Entertainment team that designed SWG really did an amazing job creating a game that has so many different systems to muck about with that to really do the game justice, a person must put forth a considerable effort and a perhaps unhealthy amount of time to play the game. By no means did I “beat the game”, but I had accomplished so many goals and helped to make a thriving top 10 guild on our new server, Starsider, that it felt like a good time to say good bye. So many hours I spent posting in the SOE forums and so many conversations with others in the community… If ever you play the game, type /note filename.txt and make your own note pads with a feature that I request and that was subsequently acknowledged and added to the game!

Anyhow, I’ve been quietly enjoying World of Warcraft for a number of years, taking screenshot after screenshot, and never really sharing my experiences with others beyond the moments in which they happen.  As such, I thought I’d make a section in my Windows Live Space to post some thoughts and screenshots.

 Tatwi on Tatooine, Star Wars: Galaxies. Lucas Arts, Sony Online Entertainment 2003-2009.

A recollection of a project that I worked on in 2006-2007.

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Once upon a time I was lucky enough to work for a very nice man who owned a small computer store for fifteen years, in a small town in the country side. Denis had been a database programmer, but he decided to “retire” and open his store, so that he could sell and service computers in his community. The 90s were a boon time, where spare parts and broken or traded in computers piled up so high that one had to slip sideways through the rubble to find the back door of the shop. Well, something had to be done, so Denis decided that the old pig pens in his barn at home would be a nifty spot to store old computer stuff. And that’s exactly what he did for over ten years!

By the time 2006 had rolled around and Denis had decided to close the store, he had a few offers to buy out his computer junk heap. Before he finally got rid of it all, he asked me if I’d like anything from it, so I came over one rainy afternoon and rummaged through mounds of misc computer stuff. I brought home some hard drives to take apart (they amazing magnets!) and a couple motherboard and add on cards, cables, and one of the latest additions to the barn heap, an AT Server Tower circa 1991! 

For whatever reason, I didn’t take a picture of the tower before I modified it, but to the left is a picture where only the lights on the lower right and the stickers are new. I suppose most of the drives are also new, as the original specs were a floppy drive, a CROM drive, and an uber 486 DX66 with a 240MB hard drive and 16MB RAM (going from memory here). It was used for years with DOS by a local financial company and I am sure they paid a fortune for this computer, even though the tower and it’s massive power supply were total over kill – what they had was desktop hardware in a server case. Ah well, they didn’t originally buy it from Denis or myself, so nothing to feel guilty about. Yup, when I saw that tower and it’s wheels, my imagination began rolling!

After much consideration, I thought that the best use of the space in this tower (which weighs a ton even when empty) would be to rebuild it so that it can house a full ATX and a micro ATX computer. That’s right, two full computers in one tower!

Well, allow me to begin by stating that I am envious of those whom own Dremmel Tools. My tin nips, power drill, and manual rivit tool, along with the bench vice, vice grips, and grinding wheel were put to the test to make what once was for a small AT motherboard into something much more… busy. As you can see in the picture of my basement work bench (also known as a life raft in the spring time), I had some old motherboards and hard drives to use for measurements to help me ensure that pieces would fit and what computers would look like when installed.

Having a look at the original back panel, it was obvious to me that it cutting the top half out, where the power supply had been, and simply installing the entire rear chassis of another ATX case would be the simplest solution to adding in one of the computers. Given that this project was about functionality rather than fashion, I wasn’t concerned about having a back that was flush and smooth. Also, I don’t access to a machine shop or anything but the most rudimentary machining tools (I fold metal in a 6” bench vice with a hammer for instance), so even though I have a lot of computer sides that I could use as blank material, it’s not really practical for me to make things like that. Fortunately for me, I have also amassed a small computer parts grave yard which yeilded me a decent ATX case to disassemble, as well as an AT/ATX plastic peg style mounting surface to use. I skillfully drilled out the rivets on the ATX tower until I was left with just the back panel and the motherboad mounting surface attached to eachother. This piece also took care of the power supply and fan mount, though I did enlarge the fan hole to fit an 80mm fan. After correcting a mistaken calculation that lead to cutting too wide of a hole in the back of the tower, but sacrificing a 12” aluminum ruler, the ATX tower parts were firmly seated in the case.

It was at this stage in the project where I began to think how cool it would be to take my Dell Dimension 4600 Pentium 4 computer and max out all of its storage capacity by putting it in this power, so I could then use it as a family media server. The Dell motherboard was very well designed, with 4 DIMM slots, 4 IDE devices, and two SATA devices. When I added in the Promise ATA133 controller and the SCSI controllers that also I had on hand, it became a compelling idea to have all of these drives whiring away. So I put aside using this tower with two computers and made it hold just one, but with an extra set of six drive bays taken from another tower and bolted to the bottom of the AT server tower. I left the project at this standstill for several months, as I was preoccupied by other “hobby time” things. When I finally took some time to look at the concept more objectively, it became quite obvious that there were two fatal flaws in this “hard drive farm” concept, as well as handful of other concerns.

1. I didn’t have a whole bunch of functioning hard drives sitting around.
2. Even at the time, it was more cost effective to buy one or two terabyte drives than to buy a whole bunch of smaller capacity drives.
3. Power consumption and noise.
4. I don’t have a need for a lot of hard drive space.

That said, my initial goal of putting two computers into the tower, rather than making use of every possible feature on the Dell 4600 board, seemed to be the more practical thing to do. So, that’s what I did one day in 2007.

I gathered up my computer parts and headed back to my work bench with some problems to solve. The tower was certainly large enough to house all the parts for the second computer, but I needed to be able to mount the motherboard and power supply in a logical manner, as well as provide some visual indication that there was a second computer in the tower. I was lucky that way back in the 486 days they needed to slow computers down by using the “Turbo” button (when turbo was on, the computer worked at 100% speed and when off it worked a lower speed), because that gave me two “tap touch” on buttons already built into the front panel. One called Turbo and one called Reset! Back then, the computer was turned on with a giant flip up switch, something like a light switch, while the reset button worked much like our modern power buttons do, by simply tapping them once. Physically, all I had to do for the power switches was plug them into the motherboards – handy dandy! The power and hard drive activity lights for the second computer, however, required some actual work on my part.

Preparing the front Panel

For something that was built in the early 1990s, this front panel is pretty stylish, particularly when the door that covers the drive bay is attached and closed. It’s made from a modest density plastic that is only a little bit brittle, so I was able to drill and file out two holes for the USB ports and two more holes power and activity lights very easily with a power drill and a handful of little metal files. I found that my small cylindrical metal file worked the best for shaping both holes, but I had to be careful when creating the flat lines of the USB ports. They aren’t prefect, but they get the job done. The USB ports themselves originally came with a PCI add in card and I had them laying around.

The lights are plain LEDs that I took from a different case that are held inside small translucent plastic globes (also from a different case) by some clear silicone. They are held in place by more stinky, sticky clear silicone on the back of the case. I am sure that a plastic epoxy would have worked better, but they aren’t exactly a high traffic area and the silicone worked well enough. Yes, that is an Iomega 100MB Zip Drive!

All things considered, the plastic on the front panel has held up very well over the years and there is a lot room left in it for future modifications. One thing I am looking to do is to completely disassemble the computer so that I can prime and paint all of its surfaces in a matte black finish. As you will see soon enough, I already slapped on some matte black Tremclad paint to the rear panel, which helped to tie in all of its bumps and ridges.

Making Space for a Monster!

Back in the 1990s we had more steel. We must have, because oh my God is the metal on this case ever thick, dense, and hard as stone! I suppose it would not have been so hard to work with if I had a Dremmel tool and if I had not lost my angle grinder (strange thing to just up an lose, but I did…). In any event, I had to make way for a power supply mounting hole as well as some kind of access to the rear panel and expansions slots of the second computer. I will warn you now, what you are about to see is not for the faint of heart – this was a “make it work” rather than a “make it sexy” project!

To measure out the holes I needed for the power supply, I did the easiest thing possible: I took a long dead power supply apart and used its rear panel as a template. That proved to be much, much easier to do than it was to layout where and the PCI expansion slots were going to go! In fact, it was so hard to estimate where I needed to drill and cut that part that I actually took a break from the back panel and I added the motherboard mounting platform first.

I was fortunate enough to have lots of spare metal on the motherboard platform and I was able to bend and rivet into place using only a handful of brackets. The brackets themselves were simply pieces of computer case that I bent into the shapes that I needed. Drilling out the holes required holding the two pieces of metal together with a pair of vice grips, which I found was easier than measuring and drilling each hole at a time, one in the bracket and one in the chassis.

Once I had the motherboard chassis in place, I stuck in a micro ATX socket 370 board that I had kicking around and some old network cards so that I could measure thing. Well, as it turned out the location where I was putting the second computer was actually where the original AT motherboard was mounted and even though there was an open spot for slots, it simply wasn’t shaped the right way. I spent a long time considering my options and none of them seemed within the bounds of reason, given my toolset. After much consideration, I decided it would be best to bend the end parts of each PCI card bracket 100% vertical. This allowed me to then drill three holes that I could use nuts and bolts with to hold the cards in place. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but actually worked out quite smoothly.

Having the extra parts around, I also thought it would be a nifty idea to add in some internal 3.5” bays, so I mounted them upfront as you can see in this picture of the final product. If you have a look behind those drive bays you will notice that the rear side is blocked by the original mounting surface for the AT motherboard. This proved to be such a huge pain the ass when installing hard drives that I cut away a large portion of that area. I had to be careful though, as the original mounting surface is also an integral part of the structure of the case and removing it would mean replacing it with something else. 

There, it was all ready for me to install my computers. I stood back and was happy that I had actually done something I thought about doing, despite the difficulties I encountered. Then, I headed up stairs and put the following together.

Turbo (Top): 

Okia 700w Power Supply with push/pull fans, Asus P5K-VM Motherboard, Pentium Dual-Core E2160, 2GB RAM, EVGA Geforce 8600GT, WD 160GB Hard Drive, Windows XP Home.

Reset (Bottom):

No-name “Greybox” Power Supply, Asrock Socket 775 Motherboard, Pentium 4 530, 512MB RAM, Hitachi 160GB Hard Drive, Windows 2000 Professional.

Turbo, which turned on by pressing the turbo button on the front of the tower, was my main computer upon which I played games, etc. Reset was my Windows 2000 file sever. Originally I had set up a Slackware Linux 10.2 file server, but I got tired of Slackware (after using it since 1998) and I gave Kubuntu a try. Though it wasn’t hard to set up, I found that the implimentation of VNC and the hard drive power savings were not up to par in Linux and it made the “headless” file server a real pain in my ass. In the end, I still believe to this day (March 1st, 2010), that Windows 2000 is the easier file/media server to set up and use. So, I formatted Reset and dusted off my much beloved and under used copy of Win2k and set it back in action.

After several hours of usage, I found that the Hitachi drive really vibrated the crap out the case, whose side were a little more loose than before I removed a mounting point to accommodate the second power supply. I also found that the cheap power supply combined with the space heater of a processor made Reset’s CPU fan run noticeably louder than it did when it was in its own case. After a couple weeks, I found that I was having overheating issues when playing games on Turbo, even when Reset was simply idling. It was summer time, but it wasn’t overly hot in the house, so I was at a loss. It turned out that my family and I weren’t really using the files (my handful of DVDs and CDs that converted to mp3 and xvid format, as well as our digital pictures) on Reset often enough to justify having it being on all day and it just didn’t seem like we were getting much value for the dollar/sound/heat out of it. So, I decided that I may as well sell the extra motherboard, RAM, and CPU to someone who could make better use of them. And, that’s what I did. In fact, I even sold the E2160 CPU when I upgraded to a Q8200 a couple years later (last fall)!

I learned a lot throughout this project, especially that one does not call sticking a Netburst CPU and a cheap power supply in the same case as another computer a “good idea”. Interesting, but definately not good. At the moment, I am still using Turbo in this gigantic tower all by itself, but I have some plans for the future that involve a complete overhaul to this chassis as well as some much needed beautification. All I need to begin this project is another ATX case to stick my current parts in, as you see, something happened to all my other cases… Then, I’ll take the time to really do justice to this wonderful piece of computer history. I’m thinking that I’d like to,

1. Move the full ATX mounting tray to the bottom of the case.
2. Make the whole back of the tower a thin wire mesh.
3. Mount a 140mm fan in the middle, bottom of the case with a vent that allows it to draw air from the front, blowing it over the CPU/GPU area and out the mesh at the rear of the case.
4. Mount the power supply in ATX style above the CPU and mount the hard drives above the power supply. This puts their clicking and whirring further away from my ears.
5. Rubberize the interior panels to reduce noise and vibration.
6. Perhaps… just maybe… mount a Nano ATX Intel Atom based media server / PVR headless computer on the top, with an external power adapter.

Well, time will tell what will come of these ideas, but my pocket book tells me quite clearly that the Nano ATX computer “ain’t happen’n” any time soon!