Fileserver v1

2024-Jan-24 /fileserver-v1

The year is 2003, the internet is still new and exciting and conversations have moved out in the open to these wonderful things called forums. Discussions were centered around the sharing of ideas and updates of personal projects in close tandem with the proliferation of digital photography.

In one of the far corners of this young internet was a community of computer case modifiers — case modders — and among those distinguished individuals, there were legends. Cold Dog, corg8d, CrimsonSky, detn8r, G-gnome, linear, LP, macroman, Mashie, PS-RagE, and ZapWizard were among them. Some of them pooled around bit-tech, others at hardforum. A few were at pheatonforums and that is where the build log for this was originally shared.

Modeled after a 1980’s desk lamp, it was striking as it was unconventional:

It was constructed out of smoked black acrylic panels joined together with a few hundred hex-head fasteners. The top cube was eight inches and housed the motherboard, one desktop hard drive along with provision for another, and a vacuum fluorescent display. It sat inset of a partial cube measuring five inches that contained the power supply, switches, and power indicator.

That power indicator was a sanded-down 10mm green LED and it was placed on top of a PCB mount tactile switch, serving as a button as well. Back then, it was fashionable to insert 3mm LEDs inside Molex connectors. This computer also signaled the beginning of the end of optical drives by not having any.

The VFD display was connected internally to the parallel port, which was desoldered from the VIA EPIA 800 motherboard. Mounted on the underside of the motherboard was a Belkin 802.11b wireless router, effectively making this fileserver the center of the home network:

These two photos are all that remain of this case mod and no other custom cases were built in the years since. There is hope that this will be rebuilt someday.