How to increase the mobility of home desktop or “do not part with your loved ones”

Greetings to all Habrazhiteley!

I want to share the story of creating one "crafts." Perhaps my experience is useful to people who have to travel occasionally "without comfort" and who at the same time do not want to part with their favorite home desktop.

It was possible for me, "at the dawn of my youth," to fly for work on one-two-month business trips to one hot African country. The frequency of such trips - once or twice a year. The work was closely connected with the use of a computer, and the place of work was a cabin on a steamer, which was anchored a few miles from the coast during this period (scheduled inter-cruise maintenance). The company-employer supplied laptops for such trips, which, although they were only slightly more productive than ordinary bricks, were generally able to cope with their task (this was mainly work with spreadsheets). But I wanted something for the soul in long African free time evenings - at least to watch a movie before going to bed or to run to a shooter. And in my case, the soul additionally required to work with website building under a bunch of apache + php + mysql, learn Maya, write a couple of program programs ... And a lot more of this required, to which the equipment entrusted to me was not adapted at all. Yes, and work issues would be solved faster and more pleasant ...
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Before the second similar trip, I seriously thought about how to improve the quality of computer life on the ship. The idea of ​​purchasing a laptop was not considered, since then (by the way, it was somewhere in 2004) it was financially stressful for me. Yes, and changing the desktop to a laptop for the sake of one trip per year was inexpedient for obvious reasons - a desktop with the same characteristics is cheaper, easier to upgrade and more convenient (IMHO) for home use.

It was decided to take a home desktop with you! To understand the scale of the problem, I will describe the route: two hours by bus, nine hours by plane, another bus to the pier, transfer to some transport boat, about an hour of bumping on the open deck, then climb the narrow ladder aboard the target steamer towering over deck of a transport worker to a height of about 5 meters. With it, among other things - a bag with clothes and household accessories for a month cut off from civilization of life. It is clear that it is unrealistic to carry a system monitor and a monitor on myself (and I also had a CRT monitor!). Everything should fit in a maximum of two bags, and all the fine electronics need to be carried into the plane as carry-on baggage, since airport cargo personnel are not particularly careful, and the failure of any component on the path would HERE signify the collapse of the whole operation.

The monitor, of course, clearly had to be exchanged for a liquid crystal, the benefit of such an upgrade was long overdue and planned. The 17-inch monitor, wrapped in thin foam rubber and hidden in a makeshift cardboard box, perfectly fitted into a bag that fits in size. The entire stuffing of the system unit, except for the power supply and CD-ROM drive, fit into the box from the motherboard (board, processor + cooler, memory, video card and my dear HDD, carefully checked and sealed by customs authorities in connection with the export of intellectual property: )). This box went to the bag to the monitor. The power supply unit, CD-ROM and removable monitor stand are recognized not to be “thin electronics” - they were wrapped in different towels, sweaters and packed in a second bag, intended for check-in.

As a result, in the bag with the code name "hand luggage" fit all the above, plus a slim keyboard, mouse, passport ... and the place is over.

The key problem that this post is dedicated to is how to collect all this at the destination point so that the month works and does not break. This task has undergone several metamorphoses:

Idea 1: to assemble on the knee (aka “ nail to the wall ”, etc.) should work, but it will be extremely unreliable in conditions of sea rolling, terribly inconvenient in a limited space and generally illiterate. The idea is dropped immediately.

Idea 2: buy a small sistemnik. Nothing suitable that would not exceed (or slightly exceed) the size of the box from the motherboard in the access zone was detected (especially considering the discrete video card).

Idea 3: to adapt the notorious box from the motherboard as a kind of frame for the motherboard and video card by cutting through various technological holes in it. In this case, the power supply and CD-ROM dangle separately. After a long and thoughtful look at the box, it became clear that the option is almost no different from paragraph 1 - does not fit.

Idea 4 - Do It Yourself. At this stage, the idea that the framework for the electronic filling needs to be developed independently, taking into account all the nuances described, has finally matured. After some experimentation, a design was born, which surprisingly well proved itself in subsequent combat tests. It has sufficient rigidity, ease, and relative ease of assembly / disassembly. At the same time, even to some extent, the ventilation scheme of the entire system as a whole has been preserved.







The basis of the design is a textolite rectangle exactly the size of the motherboard (ATX 12 "x 9" (30.5 cm x 23 cm)). The board is attached to it through special adapters, which are used to fasten the boards in many ordinary systems managers - in fact, this is a screw with an extended hex head, which has a thread under the screw that secures the board itself (roll in bulk in almost all computer stores). The rest of the frame is assembled from segments of a plastic corner with a side of 20 mm (purchased at the nearest hardware store) and pieces of thin (1.5 mm) transparent Plexiglas. Everything is fastened together by short screws with a wide head and nuts. I think from the photo you can easily understand the whole uncomplicated essence of the design. A separate segment of the corner is used for mounting expansion cards. The hard drive is bolted to one of the transparent walls, where holes are made for ventilation of its electronics. The power supply and CD-ROM are also attached to the frame with standard screws. Power / restart buttons and LED indicators are mounted in a short section of the corner.

Assembly / disassembly took no more than 10 minutes with experience. In a disassembled state, everything fits in the same box from the motherboard (PCB and plexiglass - under the board; the corners embedded into each other also do not take up much space, plus a bag with fasteners).

Of the drawbacks of the design, it is possible to note the complete absence of shielding, but in the case of an iron steamer, the walls of the cabin acted as screens, and there was no other electronics within it. Also in relatively free access remained some parts of the board, which is not very good from the point of view of its security, but there were no unpleasant incidents.

Here is another photo taken in the “battle conditions”:



As a result, the passion for knowledge is satisfied, months away from home were not in vain. After the next upgrade, this design became the case for the second home computer (from old components) and still serves faithfully. There was even an attempt to install a montrous modern video card with a thickness of two slots in this case - on the whole, successfully, but for the convenience of connecting additional video card power, you need to slightly increase the height of the structure, plus the tail of the card stands for dimensions.

Upd. Due to the large number of comments about the advantages of laptops and other ready-made mobile solutions, I want to emphasize once again: 2004, laptops are not as accessible as they are now, I was yesterday’s “poor student”, and I was not at all happy with the idea for one move in the year to invest in a laptop with parameters close to the already existing desktop. Obviously, the laptop, with their current availability, will be the best solution for those who have to travel a lot. The variant described in the article may be more likely for those who need to temporarily work away from home, and the conditions for transporting bulky cargo are limited.