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Hardware

Tool Box PC 191

Posted by michael from the handyman's-special dept.
Mr. Red Baron writes "A resident geek at Ars Technica has turned his toolbox into a nice little computer. Looks more portable than most LAN party designs I've seen." His webpage has a few more pictures.
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Tool Box PC More

Tool Box PC

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  • When I was a kid... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by mikeage ( 119105 )
    "Resident Geeks" didn't have web pages on AOL!

  • Hmm one thing missing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ZaneMcAuley ( 266747 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @05:51PM (#3300789) Homepage Journal
    The yearly nude pinup calender for that complete workshop feel :D
  • I must say that this is the best LAN party mod I have seen in a long long time.
    Well done.

    -- now, if I could only do that with a Sun E10K

    • Hmmm, looks OK but guy has missed a killer feature.

      If tools (screwdriver, pliers, multimeter) were left inside, that box could have been made self-repareable!

  • My only question is, he does point out (as the pictures show), that it's rather unbalanced (crowded)... I wonder how heavy the whole unit is... is it a pain to carry, or is it easy?
  • How about a beowulf cluster of these?

  • Best "case mod" ever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @05:55PM (#3300817)
    I've seen a lot of "case mods", but this has to be by-far the most practical of them all. It's portable, it has a handle, and the insides are very easily accessible. Find a toolbox that has a bit more protection for ruggedness (rubber corners maybe?) and maybe a little deeper to provide room for cables, mouse, and a small keyboard and you have the perfect LAN party box :)
    • If you wanted to go all out portable machine, you could mount a small (5" or so) lcd in the top (you'd have to move a fan) and have a full computer in a box. Get a foldable pda keyboard and a small mouse. Stuff 'em in the box for travel and plug into the front usb ports - it's the perfect traveling computer repairman box. That gives me an idea...
    • I actually like the "aluminum briefcase" mods that I have seen. Much more stylish than a plastic toolbox. Don't get me wrong, it is still cool, but not the coolest.

      (BTW, mine is pretty cool too. [enteract.com])

  • Looks like a quality mod, I'm wondering how the heat buildup in that works ... its not nearly as cool if you have to keep the lid open all the time ...

  • Yeah, well.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Phosphor3k ( 542747 )
    I have a Tachometer mounted in my PC.

    Here is a Picture. [umbc.edu]

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by zaffir ( 546764 )
    Looks like a very clean, well thought out mod. It looks like it would work as your normal computer, instead of just a toy box.
  • From the first page referenced [infopop.net]:

    The machine has a Biostar M7VKQ motherboard with integrated sound, video and LAN, and a Duron 750 is the CPU

    Date posted?

    posted December 31, 1969 06:00 PM [infopop.net]


    Damn, there goes that 640k is enough thing if they had Durons back then...

  • Nice indeed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tuoppi ( 415801 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @06:02PM (#3300851)
    Those toolboxes are rather cheap to buy. Pity they don't offer too much EMI protection as metal cases do. Those computers are rather noisy thingies what comes to radio frequencies..

    Anyway, that case seems rather well built and easy to carry around. Optimum would be that everything including game controllers and flat screen display would fit into box.

    This is much nicer solution than the urethane foam mess which was admired here a little time ago. (Hey, you can cast your computer in concrete and it still might work - it is not too smart though.)
    • Strangely enough, concrete conducts electricity too well, from what I've heard. Not from anyone doing case mods, of course. Just people who have worked with car batteries and electrical equipment.
  • A local computer shop gave me a spare backplane for all the ports when I came in looking for one. Sweet!

    That is the mark of a cool local computer store, just the type I like. :) I don't use CEX or Maplin unless I've got no choice.

    And one other thing... Is that a bottle of hand cream by his monitor? Heh.

    Ali

  • Pretty Slick (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuietRiot ( 16908 ) <cyrus.80d@org> on Sunday April 07, 2002 @06:04PM (#3300862) Homepage Journal
    This would make a pretty nice addition to my collection of toolboxen. I have a couple different tool sets configured for working on a different variety of things (boxes I take to my friends' houses when they have this kind of trouble or that...). Sometimes I end up taking along multiple boxes because I just don't feel like switching things around (and it's good to have more tools at your disposal anyway - you never know!) But someone with a computer problem - just throw this baby in the trunk and go!

    Ok, well don't 'throw' it. If (not 'if' but 'when') I build one of these, I'll be sure to add some shock protection to the mobo and CD drive. A keyboard holder inside the unit would be pretty nice too. Carry it all in one go. Fit an inexpensive flatscreen inside the cover case you've no CRT to hook up to and you're good to go.

    Dual 12V battery pack with inverter could go in there too...

    • Re:Pretty Slick (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Quiet Riot writes:
      Dual 12V battery pack with inverter could go in there too.
      I've been wondering if you really need an inverter. From my inspection of power supplies, the typical design seems to rectify the mains voltage, then "chops" it through a small isolation step-down transformer, and rectifies it to about 25 volts. Then I think this DC voltage is used to drive the voltage regulators for your 5, 12, and 3.3 volts, etc. My guess is that maybe you could disconnect the mains circuitry and the isolation transformer, and apply battery power directly to 25 volt supply node.

      All PC power supplies are pretty much the same; I wonder if there is a schematic posted anywhere on the net. There has to be more efficient way of doing this than stepping up a battery voltage through an inverter, and then immeadiatlely stepping it down again. Driving the voltage regulators directly from a DC supply would be much more efficient, and of course much cooler with regard to temperature.

      • Congratulations! You have just built your self a ... (rather crapy) laptop!

        Sorry couldn't resist.

        • Congratulations! You have just built your self a ... (rather crapy) laptop!

          Sorry couldn't resist.

          True. Very true (you made me smile). But the best part about something like this is that I can use PCI/AGP cards! It's portable - and with a little flat screen built into the top lid, keyboard resting inside....

          Well it wouldn't exactly be a laptop - but you sure could put it on a table - and you could get REAL video, real sound, do video capture, throw a DAQ card in there, etc. - WIHTOUT paying the PCIMCIA/CardBus tax.....
      • Wow! You are so correct! One could construct this such that either a normal powersupply (one you connect to the wall) OR a battery based power source (wired into the original supply as you state) could power the thing. You could also quite easily build a regulator circut and employ the use of some switchers and or linear devices (free samples at National Semiconductor [national.com]) to provide all your voltages from 12 or 24V. Not bad.... Just put as many battery packs in there as you can fit/cary and wire them in parallel! Construct a charger circuit that tops off the batteries whenever you're plugged into the wall! ... bingo!

        Yes you are very correct. 12vDC->120vAC then back again, all within the same box - bad. 12vDC -> directly to the board, with some regulators to produce your +-5v, etc. - good.
      • I've been wondering if you really need an inverter. From my inspection of power supplies, the typical design seems to rectify the mains voltage, then "chops" it through a small isolation step-down transformer, and rectifies it to about 25 volts. Then I think this DC voltage is used to drive the voltage regulators for your 5, 12, and 3.3 volts, etc. My guess is that maybe you could disconnect the mains circuitry and the isolation transformer, and apply battery power directly to 25 volt supply node.

        That wouldn't work. A typical switching power supply works by rectifying the AC input directly (hence the large 200-400V capacitors), then using an oscillator to generate a high-frequency (usually square-wave) high-voltage AC. This then goes to a multi-tap transformer that steps the voltage down to a few different levels at different taps.

        The voltage regulation is handled by both the low and high-voltage sides; the switching duty-cycle is modified based on the output voltage. All of this results in much more efficiency than 60 Hz line frequency, which is why a switching supply can be so small compared to a standard transformer-based supply (think laptop power supplies). Working with sine-wave low-frequency AC results in lots of unnecessary heat dissipation etc.

        Some cheaper PC supplies also use a 7905 to regulate the -5V side, and a 7912 for the -12V, as it's cheaper -- but you can only draw about an amp from these regulators, though these two voltages are rarely needed (-12V is needed for standard serial ports I believe).

        So, you couldn't just stick a DC 12V supply somewhere in the mix. You might could get away with building a DC regulator for the 5V and 3.3V supplies, but you wouldn't be able to regulate the 12V side very well (you lose at least 0.7V as a result of regulation).

        Believe it or not, it is many many times more efficient to use a DC-AC inverter (usually also based on a MOSFET switching supply) feeding a PC power supply than it is to try and regulate DC, which involves dissipating excess as heat. While on the surface it sounds wasteful, you'd get much more battery time with the inverter, plus you're assured to have all of the correct voltage taps needed by the system.

        I experimented with this quite a bit personally, and the DC-AC-DC process is much more efficient. Think about how a UPS works...
    • Dual 12V battery pack with inverter could go in there too..

      And there you have a nice, 40 pound laptop. I have a Compaq 'Portable' 286 that met your specs except for the batteries. Be sure that you use lead-acid. You wouldn't want to be too practical ;)
      • Well.... What's your typical toolbox weigh? I've got a few that weigh at least that. I never called the thing a laptop - and this'd be much more powerful than your 286, and this could run on batteries (well - maybe for a few minutes anyway). I had one of those Compaq's too. Had to plug it into the wall - and it was next to useless as a computer (what? - 20Meg HD? - 286 won't run most of the free unix derivatives....) ==Really cool plasma display though, eh?==:)

        So 'practicality' is dependant on this intended use. As something you can throw in your briefcase or backpack - no. As a more-or-less complete machine, that's servicable, low profile, has a built in handle, you can throw real hardware into (debugging the flaky network card that's in your machine in the cage at the colo...), and easily upgradeable - then well... you decide.

        I think it'd make a great field machine. I work in greenhouse reasearch. Sometimes having a real computer as portable as this could be a real benefit. - the ability to throw an A/D card into something like this in the field to log thermocouple measurements, or for example when you need more than 2 serial ports on a single machine. Our lab has handfuls of old serial port cards - no PCMCIA serial cards and dongles laying around though.... I think this is pretty neat - at least for industrial work, computer repair/network diagnosis, hobby computer technician, or even just the handyman that can use computers to solve problems.... Great idea on the part of this ArsMan....Nicely done.
  • its cool but i dont like tool boxes as much.
    so i put mine in a brief case.
    its for lan parties yes but as a dedicated cs-server and stats box.
  • I've done it with a briefcase....pictures to come as soon as I find my digital camera.
  • Every time I go to a site like this, I am bombarded with hundreds of giant images taking up all my bandwidth and RAM.

    Have they never heard of thumbnails?
  • I believe I've seen this before... [slashdot.org]

    Next thing you know, we're gonna hear about Cobalt suing this guy...
  • Where could i get one of those cases? They look very handy!

  • old hat (Score:3, Informative)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asv AT ivoss DOT com> on Sunday April 07, 2002 @06:23PM (#3300931) Homepage Journal
    My Osbourne One [pattosoft.com.au] did this a long time ago.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • He should find (or build) some adequately sized speakers and attach them to the box. That would be really something :)
    Anyway, nice idea. Might try to build one myself ...
    • That might not be a good idea - normal speakers have rather large magnets (do flat-panel speakers have a large magnetic field?) and I KNOW that magnet+hard drive=BAD. But, if you can find speakers with shielded magnets that aren't too bulky...

  • This guy's a true geek. (Score:4, Funny)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @06:29PM (#3300959) Homepage
    Anyone else notice the bottle of lotion next to the monitor in the 5th picture? Is it any wonder he had time to make this thing? :)

    Very cool idea/design. Me thinks I want to make one myself just for fun.
  • Just one computer in a tool box? Check out this. [lanl.gov]
  • Never again will I need to hunt for tools to work on my computer, now I can store them with the computer itself (and yet not have them lying around in a big pile).
  • slashdot sinks to new low! now slashdotting personal websites!
  • He says elsewhere that he hooked the system up to his wife's monitor.

    Now get your dirty minds out of the gutter.

  • It's a nice case, but where is the shielding? This thing looks like an unshielded plastic box. PCs need shielding--without them, they interfere strongly with amateur radio, emergency services, and medical devices.

    (Note that you can get something similar in the lunchbox format (e.g., here [lunchboxcomputers.com] and many other places).

  • I'm just going to glue boards to the wall and shove the powersupply halfway through the sheetrock. The hardrives will hang from the chandelier in the dining room. And I'll make the monitor watertight and mount it inside the fishtank.
    • Hmmm, interesting....

      Bear in mind, you won't be able to use IDE drives. Maximum useful length for those cables is 2 or 3 feet. SCSI could probably handle it. Go firewire and you could keep it on the other end of town.

      Other than that, I don't see too many problems with it. You'd probably want to power the drives with a local PSU slaved to the one by the mobo. Wireless keyboard and mouse, obviously. I dunno if you'd need any amplification on the monitor signal, though.

      Last thing: why would you hang the drives from the chandelier? If you use enough of them,you can use them to make a chandelier! I for one have always wondered how a free floating hard drive would move.

  • Yes it's a nice job, and I'd love to have one myself. But I came over all sad and reminiscing when I looked at the pics. It's just that I can remember the days when a cool hardware hack was to build a computer from scratch. Nowdays it seems that if you just repackage some commerical product people will gush all over you.

    Is this where it's headed - "ooh look .. shiny computer .. wow!!"
    • He pretty much built the computer from scratch as much as you can without having a billion dollar CPU factory...

      What more do you want?

      Tim
      • why, in my day we didn't have fancy-schmancy CPU's, we built our own from schematics that we thought up ourselves! And we didn't have "cables" either! we had to mine iron ore from rocks and create our own!


        and we didn't have any of those damn "drives" either to read those fancy compact discs, neither! we made our own punchcards from the daily newspaper!


        and don't get me started on cooling! we did have no fans to cool our system for us, no sir! we had to have our family members take turns blowing in the case to keep things cool. and that was on a good day!

  • I only looked at the pictures, but did the author say how much the finished product weight? :)

  • I've seen advertisements for that thing late at night. You know, the ones with that guy from "Home Improvement". You can use it to bring the power of the internet to your business. How cool is that?
  • So...suppose you take the box to a LAN party... Would interference cause trouble with other computers or are we talking strictly radio interference. Also, would it cause cell phone / portable phone interference, or do those operate at a different enough frequency? It seems to me that interference isn't an issue anymore with the advent of so many new cases: aluminum, wood, homemade, etc... Not an issue, unless the FCC decides to crack down! It'll be like the end of that Christian Slater movie.. No, not
    • Young Guns II
    , that other one!!
    • pump up the volume... i really liked that one.
    • One thing to remember at a lan party is everyone's computers are generally shielded, so one unshielded box I don't think would cause a problem...

      My buddy got tired of pulling his case apart and just started running around with the thing open the the world -- including at gaming parties. Never seemed to be a problem with other computers or anything else (he always sits in my computer room with me).

      I've been dying to stick a handle on my SO's SBC (~12"x12"x4" case), but I like this toolbox idea way better! Wonder if I could dig out my old Barbie wardrobe carrying case and cram a system into it... even better, do like the LLNL folks and build me a BarbieWulf Cluster :-D

  • Answers to a few "questions" (Score:5, Informative)

    by ProphetM ( 571854 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @07:20PM (#3301113)
    Thanks all; I'm glad so many of you like the box. And for those who think it's ugly: be glad I didn't use the yellow version of the toolbox. As I said on the page, it's meant for my daughter. If it was meant to be more high-performance I would have chosen a different mobo with more appropriate specs. Even now it would would do great for LAN parties if I dropped in a decent vid card.

    About balance: yes, it is a little heavier on one side than the other, but not overly so. It's easy to carry from either direction, because the PSU is still fairly central.

    About the size of the box: I would have loved to get a toolbox big enough for peripherals, but I just couldn't find one. I looked all over town and this was the best I could do. Virtually every toolbox I found was too narrow to hold a motherboard. There were plenty wider and taller, but most toolboxes were less than 8" deep, front to back.

    As for why the page is hosted on AOL; I've explained it before when I catch flak at Ars about my AOL-ness, but I won't go into it all. Suffice it to say that my main connection is cable. I pay $0 for the AOL, so why not use it?

    Yes, I am a lowly user of Win98. It does what I want it to do. My wife is OK with it, too. Sorry if it bugs you. ;)

    As for the Jergens... take a look at the pic. Wolf mousepad, turtles and wolves on top of the monitor. What does it add up to? I'll tell you: it's my wife's desk in the living room. It was much easier to plug it all in there since her machine was already down with a bad mobo.

    Frankly, anyone who could recognize that bottle as Jergens specifically, must have some of their own...

    Congrats to you all: you even managed to /. AOL for a little while!

  • One problem here (Score:5, Funny)

    by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Sunday April 07, 2002 @07:28PM (#3301138) Journal
    There's just one problem here...

    what's he gonna put all his tools??
  • from the creator's webpage [aol.com]:
    A local computer shop gave me a spare backplane for all the ports when I came in looking for one.

    The creator could at least have mentioned the name (or a link?) of the generous store... That's the problem with kids nowadays; damn ungrateful rats!
    • He did. Later [aol.com] in the article, he mentions "Once again, Computer Surplus Outlet came to the rescue. I went down there and walked out with several old pieces of mounting hardware, for free. W00T!"
      • he *introduced* that store a few paragraphs above your quote. from this I gather that this is a different location; why would he mention a 'local retail store' then later introduce a 'web store's warehouse and retail store is located only a couple miles from where I work'? ...you could be right, though. it's just a slip of mind on the creator's part either way.
    • I did not link to said retailer because I was not able to find a web site for them the last time I looked. They are called Computer Builders Warehouse. The Computer Surplus Outlet I mentioned later is a different place.

      Computer Builders Warehouse is a franchised name, and the only two web sites I found today (http://www.computerfranchise.com/ and http://cbwnet.com) are apparently part of the parent store, and are not run by the independent local Las Vegas franchise.
  • ... that 'visible butt crack' will become a stereotype for lan-geeks?

    Heh I can't wait to start trying on overalls to compliment my new toolbox PC!
  • Carry it on a plane past security.

    Nice job.
  • Why not use a laptop? He said it's not for LAN parties, so why would it not be more efficient to just use a laptop?

    I really like it, it just doesn't seem all that practical.

    • The problem with laptops is they cost twice as much and half as much upgrade-ability. I wish I could just go to a computer show, pick up a laptop case, a CPU, memory, hard drive, and LCD and put together my own laptop, but that's not really possible. There aren't standard parts like desktop PCs.
    • like the old saying goes: if you have to ask, you wouldn't understand the answer.
  • I guess without playing around with it, I can't be sure, but I have to wonder if the hard drives are going to overheat. From what I can see, he's got the bottom of the power supply (HOT!) right next to the hard drives (HOT!). Not a good combination.

    Perhaps the hard drives could have gone under the CDROM -- or does that throw the weight off too much? Maybe the hard drives above the power supply instead of below.

    Just a thought...

    • Re:Hot hard drives? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ProphetM ( 571854 )
      The hard drive beneath the PSU should be fine. The front intake fan is blowing in right in that area. Part of that air goes directly into the venting on the front of the PSU, and the PSU fan should then be sucking all of that straight out the back. There is no venting on the underside of the PSU, so there is the bottom of the PSU as well as the top of the drive cage in between the PSU and the hard drive.

      The case temp as read by the motherboard has hovered at 22C ever since I set it up. None of the exhust streams are very warm, and nowhere on the outside is warm to the touch.
  • Yup. Pretty cool. Nicely done. And a lot cheaper than these [dolch.com]computers with handles. Though I still lust for one of their ruggedized laptops. Can't justify the price.

  • I've seen weider cases... (Score:3, Funny)

    by cheekymonkey_68 ( 156096 ) <amcd.webguru@uk@net> on Monday April 08, 2002 @03:57AM (#3302184)
    If you're on the subject of weird pc cases, then check out the toilet pc [envador.com], its got to be seen to be believed.

    This guy bought a childs 'training toilet and turned it into one weird looking Pc.

    Personally, I think it would be inconvenient to make one yourself.

    After all that trouble to make a customised case, it would only take one drunken guy to 'christen' the pc case....

  • I have been building shoebox computers for years for our machine tools. They are small, compact, rugged, although a bit more expensive than a standard computer (case+motherboard ~ $500 - $550).

    Something like this at Axiom [axiomtek.com] or Lanner [lanner-usa.com]

    Add a little handle and they would be just great as a luggable computer for LAN parties

  • Not as cool as mine... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday April 08, 2002 @09:35AM (#3302862)
    Although his workmanship may have been a little better in creating the box, mine is much cooler looking! [enteract.com] And it is running Linux. Heh.

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