Recasing an A1200 - A Novel Approach ?

[Jaruzel]

Hey,

Rummaging thru the junk in my garage I've 'discovered' an old  Sun Sparc 20 workstation.

It probably works but I'm more interested in the case, it's big, certainly big enough to house an A1200 motherboard, and has a slimline CD drive already mounted.

Before I embark on this probably foolish attempt to recase my A1200 ;-) , I'd be interested in any comments others may have ? Has anyone else tried to put an amiga board into something that WASN'T an AT tower or 3rd party amiga tower?

Oh, some pics of a sparc 20 for those who don't know what one is...

Sparc 20 Pictures

-Jar.

[patrik]

A very long time ago my A1200 setup could be described like this: the A1200 in the middle and lots of stuff on it, beneath it, behind it, besides it.. you get the picture .

With this much stuff outside my A1200 I didnt really fancy unexpansive boxes like the A1200 so when I found a 'Alfaskop Deskside m338' servertower manufactured my 'Nokia Data' I knew I had found the perfect match!

It wasnt the a regular AT-tower or something like that, everything in it except the drivebays and powerconnectors for harddrive and diskdrive were custom. It housed a really big-ass motherboard so space was no problem and with that tower I could fit all the stuff I had everywhere around my A1200 in one box - imagine!

The holes premade for the big-ass motherboard ofcourse didnt match the holes in the A1200 motherboard so I had the local metalshop make a sheet of metal which I fastened in the holes for the big-ass motherboard with the A1200 motherboard seated on it in turn.

I also extended the connectors from the A1200 to the back of the box and made use of the powersupply in the box.

This tower has now served as the home for my A1200 for more than 5 years.. though nowadays I wish it were a bit lighter .

Before you go about and put the A1200 motherboard in another house, make sure it fits. The A1200 motherboard with an accelerator on it is _HUGE_.. or atleast long. Even in my big non-AT tower there are only about 5 cm free now with the A1200 motherboard mounted and it is as I said a couple of times now a really big tower.


/Patrik

[bloodline]

You would be better off putting a Mini-ITX mobo in the Sparc, it's a much better fit.

[PaSha]

Speaking of rehousing A1200s, does anyone remember the url to the page of a finnish guy who housed his A1200 in a VCR case? I'm thinking of doing something like that myself...

-Paul

[MrZammler]

Nooooooo! Dont vandalize a Sparc like that!

[Jaruzel]

It's only a Sparc20 and practically worthless.

However I DO also have a Sun Ultra 80 (4x800Mhz, 1gb mem, 4x6gb drives) gathering dust coz no-one wants to buy it. Maybe I should attack that with a hacksaw instead... ?

-Jar.

[Stom]

patrik wrote:
.............Before you go about and put the A1200 motherboard in another house, make sure it fits. The A1200 motherboard with an accelerator on it is _HUGE_.. or atleast long. Even in my big non-AT tower there are only about 5 cm free now with the A1200 motherboard mounted and it is as I said a couple of times now a really big tower.


/Patrik

Yeah, The A1200 motherboard with accelorator is about 44cm (I think). My recent tower reconversion (2nd tower coinversion) has now got less than about 5mm at the top of the case to get the accelorator card out! (I litrally have less than a mm to get the card out in working space!)

My Amigas Case.

Hopefully I will be able to upload images of the A1200 in the machine to the mediator site soon.

You sure about the Ultra 80, they were never available with 800MHz processors, 450MHz I think is the max.

[MrZammler]

However I DO also have a Sun Ultra 80 (4x800Mhz, 1gb mem, 4x6gb drives) gathering dust coz no-one wants to buy it. Maybe I should attack that with a hacksaw instead... ?

Oh well, I might as well save the poor thing from your hands... PM me with a price you'd like for it. (Although I dont think I can afford the beast, out of curiosity more) ;-)

[Jaruzel]

@thegman

Doh, yeah 450Mhz.  Major typo on my part ;-) I got as far as installing Solaris on it and got bored...

-Jar.

[patrik]

So bored Jaruzel? You arent by any chance so bored that you feel like selling it to me for a reasonable fee?

/Patrik

[adavidm]

I don't know, surely Mini-ITX is just tooo tiny for a Sparc 20 case. The Sparc Classics and IPX's I have lying around, now they look the perfect size.

/me goes to find hacksaw :-)

PS Anyone for an E4000 amiga conversion??