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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box.
When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws.
Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that.
Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I use hockey pucks to hold things up - very sturdy and don't slip (as long as the surface isn't ice).
They also work great outdoors in the summer on top of a soda/beer can to keep the bees out. 
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A and B drive cables, getcha some.
WD st-225 perhaps?
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I think it was. It certainly looks familiar - the "half" height one anyway, not the one that takes two bays. LOL
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Yeah they were standard edition in the heyday. Brass colored, squeaky seek,
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I liked the little bleeps and blips. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I actually had and used a ST-506 drive on my Amiga computer. This was I believe the first commercially available 5MB drive. Was a full height drive too, so took up a lot of space.
I remember too, was using it without a chassis, just plugged in with power and ribbon cable snaked out of the case. Sat beside the Amiga 2000 on the desk.
modified 23-Feb-22 13:03pm.
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I dropped ST-225 and head 0 got damaged. I had to install inverters in both head select signals on the drive so the unusable head was now #3. BIOS didn't like the idea of head #0 being bad. I also wrote a driver for modified drive parameter block telling the DOS that the disk only had 3 heads. 15MB total instead of 20MB but it worked.
Later I 'upgraded' my XT to 486. The PC did not have regular chassis, it was a frame built from random aluminum rails. Mounting holes for new motherboard lined up with holes on XT motherboard so I installed 486 straight on top of XT on standoffs.
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That's is hard core. 
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I once took apart my box and re-arranged the parts inside my table drawer... It gave me more space and a pinch of satisfaction when realized didn't blew up nothing...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I did similar, but chose a closet. More space to vent heat. A mini-PC with "passive" cooling. It didn't cool enough.
Still, I like your idea. I'm gonna try that with my next one.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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For the last 23 months my laptop stand has been half a 12pack of pop.
The other half went into the fridge and was drank a long time ago; but the conclusion from trying something different was "meh, I'd rather drink other stuff" and so the remainder has sat unwanted ever since.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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And here's me, looking at my stack of vintage OpenVMS systems.
My AlphaServer DS10L is a "blade" server, but I ran the floppy cable and an EISA (?) cable out the back and into an old PC case which contains only the floppy drive, a DVD drive, another HDD, and a power supply to feed them. But it's not actually as big a hack as one might suspect... the AlphaServer and the PC were both made by Compaq, so it's kosher.
https://www.codeproject.com/Uploads/Membership/Uploads/2587207/Computers.png[^]
https://www.codeproject.com/Uploads/Membership/Uploads/2587207/BADGERback.jpg[^]
Because it's a "blade" server, a DS10L has only two drive bays, mine has two HDDs in it.
DEC used SCSI for peripherals, but Compaq used EISA  .
The other week someone asked about what we do with old EISA HDDs; this is what I did with mine.
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I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time at that keyboard and monitor or there's a decent yoga mat just off camera.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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Sadly, no. The VT220 went "pop" a few years ago. 
I still have the keyboard and hopes of getting another VT of some sort.
These days I use Putty to access these systems when I use them (which is rare).
modified 23-Feb-22 15:06pm.
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I still have a microvax II chassis and a VT terminal in my basement. Haven't been powered up for over ten years.
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I rarely power any of these up. But I do have to at least once a year to apply new licenses.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: looking at my stack of vintage
and here I thought you were going to expound on your stash of naughty mags. 
modified 23-Feb-22 10:44am.
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Uh, hmmm... I have only one of those. I have the issue of Playboy from my birth month. 
It contains Ursula Andress.
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Holding everything inside with cotton string
At the time I couldn't afford a mobile chassis for my work computer (literally a PC I take to work) so I asked in my school for any chassis that they had for recycling.
They gave me an old one that was not ATX compatible so I put some rubber feet on the back of the motherboard to avoid shorts, strapped it to the chassis using cotton string, put a smaller heatsink on the CPU (the chassis was thin), strapped the fan to the heatsink with more cotton string, drilled holes in four old CDs to mount the four laptop HDDs (using screws) and strapped that set with some more cotton string to the chassis.
Then, because this computer would suffer some vibrations from the travels, I strapped everything with even more cotton string forming a sort of web over the motherboard to prevent anything from moving.
To finalize the build, I wanted to add a "No cats allowed" sticker but couldn't get it to stick. The chassis was slippery 
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Two words: Oscar ton[^].
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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That is a little awkward to turn into a computer chassis . And looks oversized. I bet they would charge me an extra ticket to carry that on a public transport .
If instead you are referring to trashing the computer, it was brand new. I just could not afford a mobile chassis. The cheapest one at the time was a few thousand euros.
Looking at your signature, if your are just reacting to my cat sticker, it was just a joke because of all the string inside the chassis . I love cats .
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You just reminded me that the HDDs in my MicroVAX are kinda/sorta/vaguely held in place with cable ties, because it didn't include the proper brackets.
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I prefer the cotton string because it does not propagate vibrations as much as cable ties if the HDD is hanging in the air. The down side is that it deteriorates a lot faster.
Vibrations were the reason I used four laptop HDDs in RAID instead of a single desktop HDD.
Obviously, the situation I described was temporary and after some time I bought a proper chassis.
But, if it works in your case and the HDDs are not shutting down/parking heads/becoming corrupted you can let it be.
Anyway, I would recommend that you buy the brackets if you can and, if they are made of metal, they will help dissipate the heat from the HDDs. The HDDs will be healthier and live longer.
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