Mini-ITX in a 5.25" drive bay

I've had an idea to reduce desk clutter, I fancy putting a Mini-ITX x86 motherboard into one of the spare 5.25" drive bays in my Pegasos case along with a KVM switch so I'd have the best of both worlds in one case.  If I'm successful with this project, I'll probably put an A1-Lite in the same case as I've got 3 spare bays for the boards, and room for 4 3.5" HDD's inside the case.

Anyone done anything similar to this before?  Any pitfalls you can mention, and what hardware would you reccommend? My current PSU is 350W so I reckon that would easy run a Peg and a VIA CPU at the same time.

[whabang]

That's cool!
Never done it, but I know that VIA's Epia boards have issues with power leaks...

[Doobrey]

 I think you`ll have to wait for VIA`s Nano-ITX next year( 120*120mm mobos), as Mini ITX is a 170*170mm motherboard, and a 5.25" drive bay is 147mm wide internally, measured from my case.

Doobrey wrote:
 I think you`ll have to wait for VIA`s Nano-ITX next year( 120*120mm mobos), as Mini ITX is a 170*170mm motherboard, and a 5.25" drive bay is 147mm wide internally, measured from my case.

Hmmm... I'm sure I saw a board that fit into a drive bay on the net somewhere,it was about 6 months ago methinks.

[Doobrey]

@mdma
  I dunno about the size of other makes, I was just assuming you meant one of the VIA boards..
 I had a similar idea the other week, I was thinking about putting a mini-itx board into an external SCSI CD case, until I realised the size  :-(
 So, I`m gonna wait until the Nano-ITX comes out, and build an MP3 player/ Network Storage unit.

[asian1]

Hello
There are biscuit PCs that can fit inside
5.25 Inch bay or even 3.5 Inch bay, but
the CPU is only Pentium III (Advantech).
VIA Eden is also fit inside 5.25" bay.
Advantech
There is also PowerPC modules for 5.25 Inch
drive bay: Briq from TotalImpact.
Totalimpact

asian1 wrote:
Hello
There are biscuit PCs that can fit inside
5.25 Inch bay or even 3.5 Inch bay, but
the CPU is only Pentium III (Advantech).
VIA Eden is also fit inside 5.25" bay.
Advantech
There is also PowerPC modules for 5.25 Inch
drive bay: Briq from TotalImpact.
Totalimpact

Thanks for those details, I'm gonna buy this VIA EPIA M10000

If it don't fit in a 5.25" I'll squash it in the case somehow!

[Doobrey]

mdma wrote:
If it don't fit in a 5.25" I'll squash it in the case somehow!

  Get squashing ..you`ll need to loose 25mm to get it to fit..maybe hacksaw off the PCI slot???;-)
 Have a look at the VIA Epia M page for more details.
  That MiniITX site you mentioned is only 5 miles down the road from me, I emailed them 2 months ago,asking if I could collect an order rather than paying £10 postage and waiting a couple of days, but I got no reply....guess they don`t need any extra business :-?

Doobrey wrote:

mdma wrote:
If it don't fit in a 5.25" I'll squash it in the case somehow!

  Get squashing ..you`ll need to loose 25mm to get it to fit..maybe hacksaw off the PCI slot???;-)
 Have a look at the VIA Epia M page for more details.
  That MiniITX site you mentioned is only 5 miles down the road from me, I emailed them 2 months ago,asking if I could collect an order rather than paying £10 postage and waiting a couple of days, but I got no reply....guess they don`t need any extra business :-?

They're expensive too.  This place is cheapest I've found. http://www.ultim8pc.co.uk/index.asp?section=products&idd=3

[Samuar]

Sounds like a good idea, but the MiniITX would be too large. When the NanoITX boards come out, I would be interested in experimenting. Depends on the price though.

VMWare provides similar services....

Samuar wrote:

VMWare provides similar services....

VMWare for MorphOS or Linux PPC? ;-)