So since writing last my main achievement has been to complete the Windows 10 PC, and put it in its little corner, along with building the sliding shelf for the scanner to sit on directly above. This means I now have what I needed the most, a scanner that is much easier to access because the shelf it sits on is much lower down, making it easier to lift the lid all the way up, and on a sliding shelf it can be pulled out when needed and slid away when not in use.
If you ever end up wanting to make a sliding shelf with drawer runners (such as a sliding keyboard shelf) the trick which makes them easiest to set up prior to installation is to attach each rail to right angle brackets and then screw the horizontal end of each pair of brackets onto a cross piece made of wood. You then attach the cross piece to the desk, or in this case, using another set of right angle brackets, to the vertical sides of the cabinet the shelf sits inside. The key that makes it really easy is to fully set up the runners with the brackets onto the cross pieces and get the whole thing working before you finally mount it to the desk or cabinet or whatever. So you can get all the runners and rails properly aligned and running smoothly whilst it is still sitting on your work bench. This is far easier than trying to align everything under the desk, which in fact is near lethal if you have to lie on your back and try to hold everything in place while you put in the screws. In fact I near brained myself more than once trying to do this with a previous shelf because it kept falling out because I needed four hands instead of two. Because of having used this system this time the shelf works much better than the last scanner shelf I made, which although it was easy to install at just above floor level, with the side of the desk on one side and a couple of vertical posts on the other, never did work smoothly because of misalignment.
The stack in an old cabinet (which, in fact, used to be a set of drawers bolted underneath the same side of this very desk, not sitting on the floor as now) that has the computer at the bottom and the scanner on top. Look closely and you can see the R/A brackets that attach to the drawer runners, the cross piece of wood, and the brackets attaching the cross piece to the cabinet. Right at the top is another sliding shelf, in this case carrying the MS multimedia keyboard that is permanently plugged in to this computer. For serious work I have a four way KVM plugged into all of the computers that lets me share my main keyboard and mouse with any one of them. Each computer has its own displays – they don’t share any.
The next step is to set up the “server”. This is another pile of work that only starts with assembling the new chassis. Along the way I have only just realised I need a 2.5″ to 3.5″ drive bay adapter for the SSD because this time around one wasn’t shipped in the package. So temporarily the drive is mounted with one single screw into the side of a 3.5″ bay.
The chassis with the board installed. The board looks tiny inside the mid tower chassis. The bay swung out at right will hold the two HDDs that make up the RAID-1 array. The big bright blue cable is the USB3 backplane bracket adapter that lets me use the onboard USB3 connector for something. However the days are gone when I had one computer with about 12 USB ports on it (I have a 4 port PCIe x1 adapter card as well) because I had only one or two computers and a large number of USB devices. This was the case when my main PC was running Windows because everything had to plug into it: the scanner, the printer, and all the different camera cables and the keyboard, mouse and display USB hub. For various reasons partly because of having boards with more USB ports on them and partly having more computers, six or eight on the back is enough.
So the assembly of the server continues. There are a few more parts to go into the chassis and then it can be powered up and Debian installed. I need that HDD adapter and the extra RAM to finish it, but it will be closer to completion. The shelf it attaches to is a bit of work to adapt as it has to be lowered and new brackets bolted to the side of the desk to hold it in place.
One thing that is annoying about modern SATA cables is the trend for them all to have retaining clips fitted. These only work on the motherboard connectors which have a shroud fitted that the clip locks into, because the HDD has no such shroud. I have found them annoying on MBs because the clip can be hard to release which puts strain on the connector. In the process of taking this board out of the last chassis the strain on the SATA connectors has been too much in my opinion; they aren’t particularly solidly attached to the board and could break off if they get flexed too much. So all the SATA cables in this chassis are going to have the retention clips taken off one end. If the HDD can get by without these clips so can the MB.