It's always nice to have a few spare hours to while away in the shed and so that's what I did, tidying up a few things (including Project Garage Intelligence itself) and managing to both lose my tools and slice my finger open in the process. With so much fun on board, who doesn't love them some tinker time?
JOB NUMBER 1 - GET RID OF THESE DEAD DRIVES
Since the laptop drives proved to be deader than my cryptocurrency predictions from back in the day (Bytecoin anyone?) they've just been sitting on my desk waiting for bin day. However not before I relinquish them of their rare earth magnets because while the disks themselves are now nothing more than paperweights, magnets can be useful!
And so I set about unscrewing the things and found out in no time flat that I don't have a screw head small enough for the world's smallest laptop screws and so I took to the first one with a combination of bashing, prying and trying to obliterate the screws with an even bigger drill bit. This was mildly effective in rendering it completely useless (namely in bits) but also resulted in bits of hard drive all over the workshop, a snapped drill bit (the drives turned out to be tougher than I gave them credit for) and me gashing my finger open when things did go snap.
Of course we're out of Band-Aids upstairs aren't we? Also I did manage to find a tiny screwdriver set right after I binned the first completely blown up drive, which is always the way. However while I got most of the screws out of the second, the rest of it would not budge and so I gave up in the end. Two drives that now couldn't be put back together by any amount of king's horses and men and one measly magnet in the end. Still, at least I've now got rid of the things.
JOB NUMBER 2 - FINE TUNE JAN
Since the 'we need space here' great purge of 26', Jan AI is the only AI still installed on Garage Intelligence. Therefore while nursing a bleeding finger, I decided to see if there was a way of fine tuning it or using a lighter model to work on the ancient hardware. One suggestion was to give Tiny Aya a go:
The trouble on both fronts here was a supreme lack of space. I did find an option deep in Jan somewhere of using some kind of Cuda 11 support which I didn't see before (and might help it in welcoming my K2000 on board) but it was a big download - as was the 6GB I'd need for Tiny Aya. Which reminded me that I was supposed to swap things over before when I discovered I'd run out of real estate for pretty much anything anymore.
JOB NUMBER 3 - SWAP DRIVES, DESIGN SOMETHING FOR THE HDD INCLUSION
Tinkering soon became designing time as I decided that yes I could just plug the old HDD drive in and just leave it wherever it fit but since I had the time, why not knock up something for the drive to go into and while I was at it, do something with the Power button that's just lying about looking sad and all. After all a tidy system is something something more effective? No idea. But let's not make it anymore messy than it already is.
Of course right when I needed it, just like my tiny screwdrivers from Job 1, my digital calipers went missing. I mean why wouldn't they? Eventually I found them on my son's desk (thanks Jack!) and got to work trying to work out what I was working with!
And so I sketched out a rough plan:
And then made myself busy on Tinkercad, soon discovering that my rough plan was good in principal and terrible in practicality as I didn't take into account things I couldn't get in the way of including plug ports and the fan guard.
What I've designed is a single 3d print that lies on the PSU and holds the new HDD in place so it's off the desk. Then there's a provision for the power button to the side so that I have all of these things bundled in together, rather than haphazardly all over the place. Breaking it down as it was designed:
This part cradles the HDD on top of the PSU, holding it in three corners and keeping the forth open so it doesn't get in the way of the cords near that corner.
Then there's tabs underneath it measured to the PSU's dimensions, which are slightly less wider than the HDD. While I wanted these tabs closer to the middle, I didn't want them getting in the way of the fan guard on one side. We'll find out when it prints if I came anywhere close to it!
Finally a provision was made for the start button. How strong it will be remains to be seen but the arcade button comes with a plastic lock ring to hold it in place and as long as no one thumps it out of sheer frustration (always a possibility!) it should do okay. Besides, this is a prototype and it can always been fine tuned later (especially since I haven't made a provision for the other two drives yet.)
It's currently on the Ender 3 V2 3d printer as we speak, so hopefully provided it doesn't turn into spaghetti, we'll have a slightly more tidy system by the end of tonight - watch this space!
VERSION 1.0
About halfway through the 3D print the base of the print lost traction and most of the second hand spewed out of the hot end as useless filament spaghetti. In saying that though there was enough left salvageable for a test fit and it looks like we're 98% of the way there!
The bottom tabs fit the power supply perfectly. The button holder is fine strength wise and the locking nut can be easily tightened without any issue so that's worked really well there. It's just the top tabs that need about 1-1.5mm of material to work with so that the HDD sits nice and flat up there. But hey, a very successful test print really!
VERSION 1.1
10 or so hours of 3d printing overnight has produced this sea of construct and tree supports:
And in less than five minutes while trying to take the supports off, I managed to snap the thing in half. Worse when I put the pieces back together again, not only did I miss that the start button hole was too close to the rest of it and that's why the HDD wasn't sitting flush the first time around but I also managed to snap the new hole mount in the process.
So we have bits of version 1 and 1.1 placed together in same kind of semblance of order even if I still haven't managed to solve the fitment issues the 2nd time around.
Not willing to go back and spend another 10 hours producing yet another one that will prove to be equally as brittle (yeah we need more than 2mm here for strength purposes) I'm happy as I can be for now that at least we have the drive up and running and the extra 440GB of space to play with.
I'll work out how to tidy up the other two drives at a later date because while Sunday is Tinker Day, it's now Tuesday and I'm tired of looking at this broken design already.
Time to do some other stuff then!
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