I've got 4 boxes under my desk and it would be nice to be able to roll them out for repairs, etc. I'm thinking about a piece of plywood with those sliders for furniture underneath. The wheels on the manufactured ones for boxex are moved too easily and one wheel broke. The floor is tile so the pads can slide but I'm not sure if the boxes should be anchored to the plywood or how ...
But mostly I'm wondering if you inventive people can come up with or already have a bette idea.
How 'bout kneepads or a very short repair person?
How bout just get you fat ass up off your recliner chair, bend over and pull the boxes out with those things you have called arms? Bubba
"Bubba >" On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:08:34 -0800, "AKA gray
Thanks Bubba, You must know my wife.
Plywood base on casters. You can buy casters at Home Depot, or a million places online.
You can buy casters that you can lock so they won't move without unlocking them
Here's just a sample
there is virtually no effort in sliding a box out from under a desk. the effort is in dealing with cables, which is not improved by having the box on a slide or whatever. for whatever reason you have to access them so much, you're better off having them on shelf or rack 30" off the floor. also, if they need that much attention, you would also be better off replacing them with machines of reasonable quality.
bill
Got room for a vertical cabinet - two levels? If so, I would be inclined to put them in one with wheels (not casters). The wheel assemblies made for moving appliances are lower and go over tile pretty easily. Leave back open or put on fiberboard back, similar to what entertainment units have. Or junk them all and get a system that has equal capacity :o)
Not wanting the CPU to fall off and crash the drive while I might be moving it, I made a plywood box with a two inch lip all around. Then I used those cheap metal nail on furniture glides.
The cpu is as far off the floor and dust as it can be. When I need to insert a disc or CD it is as high as it can be under there.
Will post or email a pic if you like.
Colbyt
"Larry Bud" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I tried some of the plastic ones and they slid pretty much on a tile floor. I guess the metal might be more solid ... well, they would still slide, wouldn't they?
Yes, the cables are the problem. I'm hoping to have room for the 4-way KVM box and some kind of a cable tie post or shelf too. The computers are new. My problem is that I want to play around with RAID and do a bunch of benchmarks for different routers and NICs and switches.
"bill allemann" wrote in message news:91wBf.21169$F snipped-for-privacy@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net...
I built a box to go on top of a folding table, like the kind at OfficeMax. It holds a lot of weight. Anyway, the box is open in the front and has the front of some external hard drives facing out. I put a power strip inside the box to avoid a bunch of cables. It seems to be working pretty well except that the firewire connections sucked and I had to go to USB. I've thought that a computer desk with a removeable top (in sections) would be cool so that all of the cables could be stored under the desktop.
I don't want to put a back on anything if I don't have to because of access to the cables. I'm not worried about the wheels not going over the tile. I'm worried that they slide too easily.
This is more than you wanted to know, sorry. : -)
I'd really like to see a pic. Can you post it here?
"Colbyt" wrote in message news:zdxBf.753938$xm3.627071@attbi_s21...
"Dr. Hardcrab" wrote in message news:Y1oBf.30329$jd5.26470@trnddc02...
Maybe I could get her one of those miner hard hats with a light on it.
This is a non binary group.
I posted the pics here:
This is nothing fancy. Just something I knocked together out of scrap 3/4" plywood.
Build a box with a bottom, turn it upside down so that the bottom becomes the shelf on which the CPU sits. Add another box without a bottom or top around the perimeter. Be sure not to block any cards near the bottom of your CPU box. Add glides to the bottom and you are ready to go.
Once I determined the measurements the whole project took a 30 minutes.
Colbyt
Is there anything in the lower box? What is the advantage of the lower box instead of the upper box being directly on the casters? Don't you worry about the box moving while the hard drives are spinning ... crash?
"Colbyt" wrote in message news:nqzBf.722636$x96.255285@attbi_s72...
The lower box is hollow. If I had wanted to spend more time on it than I did, I would have made a single box with the shelf supported in the middle. Or just low enough to keep the CPU from getting knocked off. Like I said earlier this was a 30 minute knock together out of scrap material. I planned to do it better and greater later. Someday I will. ::)))
I do not have any casters. I have furniture glides. If you look closely at the close up you can see them at the corners. It doesn't happen often but I have actually bumped the box a time or two with my knee. Never had a problem.
Colbyt
If you have and need that many boxes (ie, they are making money for you), it may be time to consider going to rack mounts. Otherwise, I'd just make a plywood tray with a little lip on it, and casters on the bottom. Modern hard drives aren't near as fussy as the old days- minor bumps won't even make them skip a beat.
aem sends....
(snip)
Sorry, your previous posts didn't make it clear if you were doing consulting work, or had just built a LAN to teach yourself hardware. (I did that a few years ago.) I also saw in a different post where you said these are all new machines. (being poor and cheap, I used trailing-edge machines from auctions.)
Rack mount only works well if the machines are designed for rack mount. (19" in one dimension or the other, and some way to put mounting ears on them.) Otherwise, the rack is just a metal cabinet with fixed or slide-mounted shelves the machines sit on. The commercial racks we used had 'sleds' on casters for the tall bottom bay where the then-huge UPS boxes could slide into. You mentioned a KVM setup. Do you have floor space, either in your office or in the basement right below, to set up a work table where you can walk all the way around the machines? I've found, in various labs and test-bed setups at work, that that makes the most painless way to do things. Not having to hunch over the machines or drag them around to open the case or move cables, is a lot easier on the back. (Getting up off the floor is for people my size and age.) A tall table or workbench with a power strip is a wonderful thing, and if you get a long KVM cable set (or a KVM that supports Cat5), the console can be quite a ways away if needed. Back when there was still a market for rebuilding used PCs, I kept one machine sitting with the lid off, just for testing cards and stuff.
aem sends...
"Colbyt" wrote in message news:RUTBf.756053$xm3.293758@attbi_s21...
Thanks for the ideas and help. I decided to just use a piece of plywood with some of those furniture slides and be really careful when I pull it out. And put up a 4' power strip up on the wall. I also used plastic ties to attach some of the cables to that little tap used to lock your case. I'm a happy camper until the first time I have to take them out ... : -)
"ameijers" wrote in message news:KeUCf.306433$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Thanks for the business advice (mild sarcasm) ... but why use casters when those furniture sliders work so well? I hadn't thought of a rack mount. Do they allow for easy access to experiment with cards and drives, etc., ie opening the boxes?
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