A1200 in a rackmount case

[Cyberus]

I'm having a bit of a trim down of my Amiga stuff, well I'm having a trim down of all my possessions in fact, as I'll be going travelling soon.

What I have been thinking about is selling everything pretty much, but keeping my old A500 for old time's sake and leaving it here in the UK, and have been thinking about putting the A1200 in a sturdy rack mount case. Then I can get the case sent or brought to me when I am living in the Baltics (I'll be ending up settling down to teach in Estonia or Lithuania at the end of Sept after my travels).

So I have been looking on the web at the various rack mount solutions. I know eyetech do an A1200 rack mount case, but I don't really have the money!

I'd like to know if you guys have any thoughts on this. I particularly want to know how easy it would be to fit a zorro/pci board in, as I want to get a decent soundcard eventually. I ask because I just have an A1200 with an 040 accelerator, and having only just got back into the Amiga at the beginning of the year, I'm still trying to catch up with all I've missed in ten years away!

So how are the various zorro/pci solutions in terms of dimensions and orientation? I have seen some 2u rack mounts, that have 1 5.25" exposed bay - perfect for CD-ROM, 1 3.5" exposed bay for the floppy. The A1200 mobo and accelerator should fit nicely, and a friend who works at a factory making bits for cars, planes etc. can cut me a backplate if I give him the dimensions.

But how would I go about squeezing a sound card in there? If the card goes perpendicular to the pci/zorro board, then that ruins that idea.... If the orientation was right, I could use a 1u unit just for the sound card.....

I'm just trying to see if its a feasible idea, any thoughts?

[MrZammler]

Take a look here for a nice rack-mount case, but which obviously doesnt fit you (no pci room), but it's nice and gives you an idea:

http://www.sixgirls.org/lilith/

For the sound card, you could get a delfina which fits inside the A1200 case, and connects to the clockport.

[Brian]

If it's just a soundcard you're after then you don't need to worry about different bussboards.. there are several soundcards that work off the clockport on the A1200. I got a Melody1200Pro but there are others such as the more simple Melody1200 cards (Melody Base or Plus), Prelude1200 and Delfina (1200 or Flipper) for instance... All of these mentioned have AHI support and would most likely fitt nicely in a rack mounted case (most ofd the cards are splitted into mor then one card to fit inside a 1200 so you shouldn't have a hard time finding a place for them). :-)

[lempkee]

if u have a big ATX tower, that can hold your a1200 motherboard, then no prob as the mEDiator is atx oriented, but u must make sure that your a1200 will fit inside it before u start the stuff, then u can atleast use cheap pc stuff in it...like soundblaster 128, and vodoo3 cards etc..

good luck

[greenboy]

I used to have my crammed-to-the max A2000-040 rackmounted - I modified the original case. Then I did some trick stuff for a 17" Illyama monitor and the two of them occupied 12-space rack case.

Maybe your situ is different though; I'd suggest looking at just getting a foam-lined flight case without the rack rails. These can be had in a lot of configs, are made by many companies, and some of them make "soft-hard" cases as well.

[mendark]

Ok ok, a sound pretty good and i'm 100% sure I saw one on Aminet, including the Melody mounted :-)
It was used as a music workstation.

But.. I can't bloody find in on Aminet anymore :-(

Anyone? Hope it helps :-D

Greets,

Mendark

[mendark]

There you go:

http://ftp.plig.org/aminetbin/find?a1200r_

Found it! Have fun! Still looks really impressive after a while.

Sure this help :-)

just my 2 cents,

Mendark

[Cyberus]

Thanks to all of you! Those pics on Aminet have certainly inspired me too!

[amigamad]

@MrZammler

Thanks for the link one thing i noticed was that this rack mount a1200 had an adaptor to use a compact flash card as a standard ide device. This could be used instead of a hard drive.I just found someone in the uk that does the compact flash to ide adaptorand i might get a few to play around with in my a1200. :-D

[Darth_X]

Does anyone here work in the manufacturing industry and could make RACK mount cases for microATX Pegasos motherboards? :-D

I have an A1200 in a tower case already, but if I had a spare A1200 motherboard I'd seriously consider putting it in a rack case.. very cool project! :-D

[Jaruzel]

I'm constantly searching the web for  A1200s in cases other than towers, and theres not much about. Hopefully soon i can add to this however.

Anyone else got links to re-cased-non-towered-amigas ?

-Jar.

[mendark]

@jaruzel

What do you think of this one mate?

http://ftp.plig.org/aminetbin/find?hipsa

I thought this guy got an website too..

Greets,

MendarK

[Darth_X]

@mendark

http://ftp.plig.org/aminetbin/find?hipsa

Now THAT is COOL! :-D




 

[Cyberus]

That really IS impressive. What REALLY makes it though is the zebra effect cushion.http://ftp.plig.org/pub/aminet/pix/misc/Hipsamtab1.jpg :-D

This guy must have a big enough house though, geez. I don't know anyone who could get away with that without their girlfriend/wife/housemate/parents complaining!

Full respect to the guy tho' that really is a project and a half!