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Hardware

Creative Uses for 5.25" Drive Bays? 164

Posted by Cliff from the anything-but-another-drive dept.
ZeLonewolf asks: "Like I'm sure many slashdot readers, my computer has a number of free 5.25" drive bays free. After the requisite burner, DVD drive, maybe a tape drive, there's invariably a few slots free. Do any slashdot readers have any creative suggestions for filling the gap?"
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Creative Uses for 5.25" Drive Bays? More

Creative Uses for 5.25" Drive Bays?

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  • A Creative Audigy 2 Platinum with all the connectors in a 5.25" slot.

  • sound card oscilloscope (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How about a plate for the probes [sourceforge.net] of your sound card oscilloscope [sourceforge.net] ?
  • You can put cool little metalic flip switches in to control system fans and light and stuff like that. It would make the space both cool looking and practical.
    • And what is practical about this? You'd be better served with thermal switches <i>inside</i> the box. This ExtremePC rubbish must stop! I actually saw HYDRAULIC controls on a PC the other day in that damnable magazine. Computers aren't cars!
      • The next thing will be computer-driveby shootings...
        Better keep a close eye on your extremepc, if it starts waving gangsigns at you on every reboot, there's a reason to be afraid!
  • One can never have enough fans in a case. 'Nuff said.
    • You might actually destroy the airflow in the case if the only exhaust fan is in the power supply. Then the cool air will go from the intake directly to the exhaust fan and the hot air will stay in the case. Better add an intake fan near the bottom of the case front.

      • Re:Airflow! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Tower ( 37395 )
        With tower cases, things usually end up as a two-zone airflow solution...
        1) Lower zone (motherboard, maybe a drive or two): Intake on front, exhaust over CPU through power supply.

        2) Upper zone (front 5-bays and rear drive mounts):
        Intake on one or more 5-bays (possibly a drive cooler for additional space), exhaust with 2 80mm fans on the back.

        With a quiet PS and quiet fans, your hard drives and CPU fan could be the bulk of the noise. My large case currently has the setup above (3 intake, three exhaust fa
    • My God - has nobody modded this rascal up yet? The very top 5.25" bay in my 'gamer' box is a twin engine ducted fan assembly with both fans blowing air out the front. System temperature dropped easily 10 degrees C and went from moderately instable to rock solid stable (ok so I may have had insufficient cooling on the system before that ...)

      Top slot - exhaust fan - and a good one at that.
      Next slot - 48x automatic cup holder.

      Other good uses - get some 3.5" to 5.25" adapters and put your hard drives in the

  • Two ideas (Score:4, Informative)

    by BlueLightning ( 442320 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @03:22AM (#5604740) Homepage Journal
    1. LCD Panel from CrystalFontz [crystalfontz.com], Matrix Orbital [matrixorbital.com], or make your own [beyondlogic.org].
    2. I/O panel such as a FrontX [frontx.com]. These are great.
    • although they have commercially available 5.25" equalizers [compgeeks.com],
      lots [ipixmedia.com]
      of [ipixmedia.com]
      old [inkfrog.com]
      automotive [ipixmedia.com]
      equalizers [ebay.com]
      will work great in a 5.25" space.

      most car equalizers are 5.75", so you have to be a little creative with cutting off that extra half inch to squeeze it into an old cdrom case. but for a cheap/free secondhand EQ (and that 1X cdrom that you were never going to re-use), its definitely worth the effort, visually and audibly.
  • May I suggest a cupholder?
    • That's what the CD-ROM drive is there for though. It even slides back out of the way when you don't need it.

  • see that drive bay? (Score:3, Funny)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @03:28AM (#5604762) Homepage Journal
    you put your weed in there.
  • Damn, relooked at the article and it talks about 5.25" slots, not sluts. Oh well.

    As for how you can use them, while not removing the plastic covering themselves, I stick extra harddrives there. Never can have too many of those (damn IDE!!).

  • Cigarette lighter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dahan ( 130247 ) <khym@azeotrope.org> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @03:49AM (#5604832)
    Every computer needs a lighter [frozencpu.com]!

  • Filling a 5.25" slot? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @03:51AM (#5604844) Journal
    I'd suggest cement - that gap is way to big for normal fillers.

    The "Standard Mix" :
    4 parts sand
    2 parts gravel
    1 part cement.

    Mix with water until it's a smooth paste, and trowel it on in. 'Float' your trowel over the surface a few times to get a smooth finish.
    Leave it a few days to cure and you're ready to go.
  • I reccomend one of these fine products: http://www.onzin.nl/fufme/index.shtml.htm [onzin.nl]

  • I suggest to leave some of them free for the air flow, either with or without fans. Expecially near burners and other stuff that tends to get hot.

    If you want to have them look cool you can always paint (or paste, or... whell, get creative here) some geeky stuff on the plastic covers.

    • Wouldn't that kinda ruin the airflow that is created with all the fans ?

      The air wouldn't flow as intended if you leave holes where not intended...

    • I suggest a hard drive cooler. If you mount your HD in it, it will bring in outside air, and it'll flow near the other 5.25" devices.

  • Removable hard disk caddies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by james b ( 31361 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @04:27AM (#5604956) Homepage
    I've filled a couple of slots with 'mobile rack' (why do they call them that?) removable IDE caddies.

    They're basically a plastic caddy into which you put a hard disk, and a 5.25" size bay with a flip-down cover on the front. You wire your IDE ribbons to the connector on the back of the bay, which stays fixed in the PC, and you can swap the drives in and out to your heart's content (erh.. when the computer is switched off...)
    I use them for carrying stuff to friends' houses, and also recently when I had to run windows for a while I just swapped in a new hard disk rather than messing with my partitions.

    /james
    • Yah I have a few of these. I had to pick the same model and brand so that the caddies are interchangeable. The idea is so I can run multiple O/Ses which are independent (tho not concurrent), and also make it easy to transfer lots of data from PC to PC.

      While PCs are cheap, ATA HDDs are much cheaper so it's actually a useful approach for a computer lab - Win NT4.0 HDD, Win2K HDD, FreeBSD HDD, Linux HDD etc. And each user can have their own personal HDD+caddy.

      I figure some serial ATA drives will support hots
    • Removable disk mounts like that are critical for backups and upgrades. In addition to the "easily install/run other operating systems" that somebody else wrote about, the rapid drop in disk drive costs and increase in sizes over the last couple of years have made extra hard disks one of the most cost-effective backup media available, and they're pretty much the only thing that won't go obsolete or incompatible quickly, unlike many of the writable DVD formats, which seem to be the only near competition.

  • After my DVD-ROM and CD-RW, I have my hard drive mounted in one (yes, you can get the brackets still), with fans on the face blowing over it. (Got that from Fry's.) The last 5.25" slot has a panel with four potentiometers controlling the fans. (Got that from pcmods.com [pcmods.com], whom I recommend.) Wanna watch a movie in the same room? Dial down the fans and you can hear a pin drop!

    Also, pcmods.com has LCD displays (always cool!), port boxes (convenient; has front-mounted sound, joystick, USB, Firewire, and mou

  • The one, the only... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @04:45AM (#5605027)
    ... fufme.

    Click here [fu-fme.com] for the Icky Badness, or hit http://www.fu-fme.com.
  • Real geeks have a 5.25" floppy drive in there just in case. Also, you need an 8" floppy drive on your desk.
    • That's funny because just the other day i actually installed a 5.25" floppy in my Athlon XP 1700 w/ 512 Ram. Just so I could play games made in 1984 (Sierra * Quest games, running under Linux with emulation). I felt like there was something morally wrong with what I was doing though. :)
      • I felt like there was something morally wrong with what I was doing though.

        Emulating a Microsoft OS or using a Microsoft OS, both can lead to bad Karma ;-)

  • Disc Bay Disc Holder. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Fritzed ( 634646 )
    Well I like the idea of keeping some of your most commonly used CDs handy in those extra bays with one of these [yahoo.com] CD holders.

    -> Fritz
  • 60 W PiMPO! [yahoo.com]

    Includes a subwoofer. Oh yeah... /sarcasm
    • Subwoofer in your Case = Screwdriver in your Hand.
      Nuff said.

      Of course, we geek love to screw with a lot of things, but really, do you think the HD will appreciate that pump-up-the-volume-Metallica-rocks-your-rib-cage-l ive-show ?

  • Yep - all been done before with the almighty Acorn RiscPC [worldofwibble.com] Rocketship [dion.ne.jp]. This machine was put together to demonstrate the expandability of their case, and the computer as a whole. The case design really was brilliant - I've not really seen anything quite like it since.

    I'm not aware of anyone porting the drivers to Linux or Windows however.

  • Party Fun (Score:4, Funny)

    by Terminus0 ( 266721 ) <slashdot@anarky[ ]c.com ['sti' in gap]> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:34AM (#5605509) Homepage
    Ever since I saw a mod long ago when a man fit a dismantled Furby into his case, I have wanted to do something similar.
    With a bit of hacking and some knowledge of electronics and device communication, I think one might be able to design one hell of a fun gimmick.
    Tear apart the Furby, leaving it's eyes and mouth and whatever sensors it needs, stuff em into a flat face plate for the 5.25. Add in a seperate mic and digital camera.
    If you have the programming capabilities, hook the Furby's 'on' switch into a screensaver, as well as giving network access to the camera and microphone, maybe even the Furby's speaker.
    When your computer goes idle, your Furby will turn on and start talking to the people walking by, people who will hopefully start talking back, all of which you can watch, interact with, and/or record from another computer on the network. Every once in a while have the Furby say "Satan" in a deep voice just to get a rise out of em...
    It could work...
  • Make some nice drawers that fit. Perhaps you can have your CDs and such in there.

  • JukeCD (Score:4, Informative)

    by Card ( 30431 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @07:00AM (#5605619) Homepage
    I saw this modification [patenttinet.com] on a Finnish case mod site. The idea is to create a flashy way to carry up to 30 cd-r's in a dedicated storage bay. Unfortunately the text behind this link is in Finnish, but you can get the idea by looking at the pictures. You need just an old, non-working CDROM drive for this mod.

    It might be a good idea to check the final picture at the bottom of the page first to see what the author's goal is.

  • Use it as a condom dispenser. With all the time this crowd spends at the computer, it'll hold a lifetime supply!
  • i think quantum started making these again recently...

  • Pudding! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @09:08AM (#5606107) Journal
    Delicious pudding. Mmm...

    --Dan
  • The Vantec Nexus fan controller [safeshopper.com] or similar products are a great idea. (Sorry for linking to an online store, but it was the only site I could find with good pics and info)
    This thing is pretty nifty, 4 knobs linked to Pulse Width Modulation controllers to let you dial up or down the RPM, and thus noise and airflow, of your case/CPU fans. Great for turning down the noise overnight, and turning up the cooling when gaming or overclocking. My plan is to buy a few Vantec Tornado 92mm fans and hook them up to th
  • Try looking at accessories on Pricewatch.com or any number of computer tech sites.
    I know that I have all my 5.25" slots filled, and I would fill any extra pretty quickly. My current flavor includes:
    DVD, CD-RW, HD-Fan, Temp Control/w LCD Panel, front USB ports w Firewire. (I'm not going to link the exact products because there are so many to choose from).
    Just walk into any real computer store and look for different accessories they have for those bays.

    The best advice I can give is find a need for somet

  • frontx! (Score:3, Informative)

    by aderusha ( 32235 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @09:29AM (#5606218) Homepage
    howabout any ports you want [frontx.com]? frontx lets you "roll your own" front panel ports with a reconfigurable system for adding usb, 1394, key/mouse, audio, and just about whatever else into the front of your pc by way of a 5.25" drive bay face plate.

  • another PC? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 )
    --didn't we have a story here about a complete PC that would fit in one of those size bays? That would seem a good thing to add. Like jello,there's always room for more! A "spare" PC could be used for any number of purposes, perhaps for your router or any other dedicated purpose you might not want to do constantly with the main mobo, etc.

    Think a mini home rack system, or microrack.

    One I was working on with my junk,one that is still sitting uncompleted of course with my other unfinished projects, would be
    • One I was working on with my junk,one that is still sitting uncompleted of course with my other unfinished projects, would be some way to have a vcr in there, the slot appears just large enough to accept a VHS cartridge.

      Unfortunately, this will never work. VCRs don't work like audio tapes: They actually pull out 8-9 inches of tape to wrap around a spinning (3600rpm) drum containing the video heads, the transport mechanism would add 3 to 4 inches to the depth/width required, exceeding the width of the d

      • --thanks for the tip! Looking at the innards of the vcr I had to start with, I saw that it wouldn't all fit in the bay, I was more interested if just the front slot loading could be accomplished. The biggest difficulty is that VHS tapes in VCRs all appear to load sideways, the width is too great, whereas if they loaded on-end it looks possible, as long as you have the room to the side of the bay area for the rest of the mechanism. The 8mm and DV tapes I have never used, so wasn't aware of how small they re
  • Try the Senfu Super Box [ocworkbench.com]. I have one, and I think it's very useful. I keep a screwdriver in there, spare floppy, jumpers, pen for labelling CDs etc.
  • this? [slashdot.org]

  • Non-creative but useful solutions: (Score:3, Informative)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @11:01AM (#5606981)
    • Extra intake fan port. Unless you have a case that has a panel that would cover the 5.25 portion, you can purchase fan kits that can help with air flow if you have a case problem.
    • Cooled HD drive bay. Similar to the above, but right behind the fans is a mount for a standard 3.5" drive, if you're doing any sort of video editing or massive drive utilization, you can stick this in there and keep the drive itself nice and cool.
    • Sound card "breakout" box. At least on my Windows drive, my SB Extigy Platinum has a nice 5.25" box that I can connect various sound equipment as well as more USB/firewire devices at the front of the computer instead of the back, also had the IR recievers for the remote. There's also third party breakout boxes that are not quite as sophisticated, but at least offer various audio utilites including standard stereo in's and out's, graphics equalizers, etc., typically installed by adding a back panel where a PCI would normally go, routing the normal sound card inputs to this, and then a ribbon cable to the box.
    • Extra USB/Firewire connect points. You can never go wrong with adding more of these; I believe I've seen commercial solutions that fit nicely into the 5.25" bay, but if you're willing to get a bit dirty by cutting the plastic facing to add these ports, it's doable.
    • System monitor. Little panels with a 20x4 (maybe 40x4?) LCD display that can be used to track temperatures, voltages, and possible access some /dev type readings so that even with the screensaver on/monitor off, you can quickly glance at the LCD and figure out the state of the machine.
    • Another DVD-Rom/CD-Rom drive. The original poster sounds like he already has one DVD-R and a CD-RW, but if you're a gamer, a lot of newer games require the CD in the drive to play. Easy enough if you're only playing one game, but what if you want to bounce back and forth between two or more games? You can keep both game CDs in separate drives, and thus you don't have to worry about disk flipping while playing.
    • Another CD-R(W) drive. Plan weekly backups to this drive (w/o erasing the original data), just making sure that you flip in a new unformatted CDR into the drive on a normal schedule, and this way, as long as you only use that drive for that purpose, you won't miss a backup because you swapped disks on your main burner.

  • USB Ports (Score:3, Informative)

    by cdmz1 ( 97535 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @11:15AM (#5607094)
    I installed a USB hub that lives in the 5.25" bay. Makes it much easier than reaching around back....not to mention that my PCI USB 2.0 card has a header on the PCB allowing me to hook up an extension seamlessly....it is a fantastic use of a bay.

  • I realised early last year that I really didn't need a huge tower for my main PC, so instead of trying to find things to put in it, I looked into smaller systems. I personally came across a Shuttle XPC and found it met my needs, but before then looked at quite a few mini tower systems. Makes it much easier to move around to LAN parties and such. I have several machines on a network, so if I really need more something, I can make it accessable over the network. But so far, that hasn't been an issue.

  • Audio cassette player (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @11:39AM (#5607324) Homepage Journal
    Who says cassettes are dead??

    A tape transport ripped from a car radio could easily fit into a 5in drive bay, the audio in/out spliced into the soundcard.

    Advanced project: implement an interface to the Play/Reverse/Stop/Rew/FF via Parallel, serial or USB port and its corresponding MCI driver or IOCTL block device.

    • Who says cassettes are dead??
      A tape transport ripped from a car radio could easily fit into a 5in drive bay, the audio in/out spliced into the soundcard.

      You can even use them for data transfer! I can't be the only one here old enough to remember the Kansas City Standard, am I?

      Sick idea: a USB driven servo-controlled tape mechanism spitting data out an audio port to a sound card input at 300 bps!
  • www.cyberguys.com has lots of cool things for your computer.

    Best is probably a port bay, bring USB, media, etc ports out to the front panel. (item #202 0710)

  • Pets (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @11:58AM (#5607497) Homepage Journal
    With two open drive bays and some careful plexiglass work, it's the perfect place for a Siamese fighting fish (betta). Add some lighting; I'm sure fellow geeks would appreciate the "betta tester."

    Since it'll be nice and warm, you could instead use it as a terrarium...and keep a small tarantula in there. You will have 100% guaranteed that no one will ever feel tempted to mess with your computer again, especially if they are female.

    Another idea, that preserves ventilation: use two sheets of plexiglass and make an ant farm. Be sure to back light with red LED's or cold cathode.

    How about a Q job? Any international spy...uhm, geek, could use a computer with hidden access to a handgun, or perhaps an emergency Mountain Dew. The right key combination send a command to the drive bay doors, and the top one swivels up, the bottom swivels down.... Voice recognition, "HAL, open the pod bay doors!" I once wrote an application that used a voice recognition SDK, I had several commands programmed in there and ST:TNG computer acknowledgement sounds, so I could walk into the room and: "Computer," "Current time!" . Despite all that, I'm not as geeky as one might think.

    If my extra bays weren't being used for cooling, I'd probably just install a Cardbus/CompactFlash/Firewire/video access panel, but you asked for something creative....
  • Please see this link [slashdot.org] I posted a while ago. Enjoy.
  • May I suggest a smaller box, perhaps?
  • just put a couple intel or amd chips along the bottom, power'em up and put in your favorite easy bake oven treats.
  • Get a small chunk of wood. Screw it into an open slot. Screw a wall-mount bottle opener on it.

    Having a place right next to you to pop your beer open is one of the small pleasures in life.
  • A second CD-Rom make cool coffee holder :)

    Rus
  • To ensure a high level of computer security you are directed to cover all unsecured openings with duct tape to prevent the spread of viruses.

    Please note: the use of the term duct tape refers to any brand of grey 40 MPH (64.4 KPH) tape and is not intended to infer support or recomendation of any specific brand, nor to dilute any brand or trademark. Trademarks are the property of their specific owners.

    The revolution is now being blogged

  • Hand lotion dispensor?

    With all the references to pr0n made everytime there is an article on mass-storage... I know at least a few slashdotters would get a use for this.
  • How about adding a 6-channel baybus [bigfootcomputers.com]? Even if you don't have fans to connect to it, there is something I find funny about having analog switches on the front of a computer. The only real problem is that the LED's are far too bright. Of course, if you have nothing connected to it, you can turn them on or off at will. When your friends and family ask what the lights and switches are for, tell them they are blinkenlig
  • How to fill a 5.25in slot? Well, let me think here for a minute...umm..NOT with my penis!
  • Y'know, like the joke can of peanuts that shoots 10-foot long spring-loaded worms when you open it?

    There ought to be some way to make a fake drive that shoots spring-loaded worms at curious children/co-workers/spouses/cleaning staff etc.

  • If you've got the extra space, put the 5 1/2" cooling fans in the drives, and mount a harddrive behind it. Keep them drives cool and they'll last longer....
  • Get one of these! [fu-fme.com]
  • Creative Uses 5.25" Drive Bays?

    Sound Blaster Audigy [soundblaster.com]
  • A 5.25" floppy disk drive?
  • Put tropical fish in a glass enclosure inside the drive bays then run your coolant through the fish tank to keep it warm.

    Just be careful when feeding the fish .....

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