Hardware For Sale/Trade

Folks,

I have an old fuel somewhere that's perfectly working. Unfortunately the case is completely trashed, the door's borken, the sides have huge bumps etc. The fuel itself runs like a charm.

I do not feel like transplanting the contents in yet another fuel case, I just don't like them so much, I was wondering if someone knew of a peecee case that looks nice and that would work just fine to host a Fuel motherboard, a v12, few pci cards and few other goodies.

Let me know, thanks a million,
Mia

You should talk to 'loonvf', he's working on something similar.

Hi all,

Indeed this is my new project.
I am waiting for the motherboard to arrive and after that I will order the memory and SCSI cable.
CPU I already have and PSU comes from a PC.

But only once the hardware is running, I will get a case for the machine.
And I still do not have a V10 gfx card so I assume it can run headless.

Maby G5 case? Looks nice

loonvf wrote: CPU I already have and PSU comes from a PC.

Caution. This won't work without modifications. The Fuel does use an ATX PSU with EPS12V connector but the pinout is non-standard, see: http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10849&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=29

I would like to get the mainboard if you sell it on parts

This is indeed great!

Let me know if you happen to find something that works. I guess I could run my fuel headless as well, but having a v12 output wouldn't be a bad thing either!

Headless would be a good start anyway, let me know if you find anything that could host the goodies.


Mia

If I read schleusel's comments correctly then I understand that a ATX powersupply con not be used

Please correct me if I am wrong!

No, what the thread was saying is that the PSU is a simple ATX+12v model, but the cable to the mainboard has a different pinout (and different color code, so it's a bit harder). What we need is someone to trace the connector and post it (along with the SGI color-code)- changing the connector is relatively simple, or you can get a box of crimp butt connectors and crimp on the old SGI cable (but you still need to know the pinout).

If someone will donate the Fuel, I'd be happy do do it , otherwise it's a 5-minute exercise with a voltmeter.

I have a fuel, I can take a look at this.


Mia

Hi mia,

It would be great if you can do that measurement and have it documented with some pictures & photo's if possible.

Keep us informed please.

Sure, why not.

I couldn't find the time to do this today (yet another crazy day at work) but it's something that I will look into in the next few days. I do also happen to have a camera, so that should be no problem. This project is certainly interesting in several ways, one of them is that I've always wanted to put more than 2 drives in my Fuel, therefore a better case would be preferable.

I know somebody that did this with a Sun Blade, the result may not be what you were hoping for:

http://unixconsult.org/frankenstein/


Mia

pablodiablo wrote: Maby G5 case? Looks nice

lol! Well you can always get your hands on one of those silver SUN Mircosystems cases

One of these perhaps:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... &rd=1&rd=1

This is indeed a very good idea, an G5 case would be a fine thing as well.


Mia

I'm still working on this, I'll update this week.


Mia

Hi mia,

Keep up the good work.
I expect the motherboard to arrive this week so it would be very cool if the PSU connections are measured by then

All the best,

loonvf wrote: Hi mia,

Keep up the good work.
I expect the motherboard to arrive this week so it would be very cool if the PSU connections are measured by then

All the best,

Will do, I think I might be going back to SGI for non obvious reasons, so I have to do this anyway. I left the scene for over a year (way too much work) but I'm back.


Mia

I've looked at it real fast and it's doable, but it's not going to be easy.

PDU is no problem, it *seems* non standard pinout, but I would imagine it's relatively easy to modify an existing one to make it a fuel pdu, more on that later. I don't expect any difficulty there, the dimensions looked standard.

Motherboard is non standard size, mostly because of the cpu module, I believe it would be possible to locate in a standard case with a few extra holes, I yet have to find the right case, but I'm confident this will work. Cooling is another problem.

Picture (not from me) of the cpu module there: http://www.schrotthal.de/sgi/fuel/FUEL_6.html

Video (v10 or v12) might be tricky, I still have to crack it open to take a better look at it (didn't have the time today) that's still the major unknown, but I expect a happy outcome.

All in all, it sounds doable, I don't expect the final product to be smaller than a regular Fuel. I intend to take the whole fuel apart so I can start measuring stuff and try to find a proper case. The airflow will have to be redone entirely (using fans or liquid cooling). Using a G5 case is very unlikely to work.

I'm still looking into all that, more to come this week, it's not going to be easy. Let me know if you have some good ideas for casing, G5 wouldn't work (too small). I've considered rackmount, but it's not cool for a desktop. Also liquid cooling would be preferred to try to reduce possible noise.


Mia

I took everything out, from motherboard to video card and power supply to measure things. From what I see, it seems doable.


Mia

The mobo is 14'5 by 16 that's huge.