The Big Desk Move - Pt6: Rack TFT

I'll admit, this is rather superfluous and had I not had the bits still lying around form last time, I wouldn't have put this back together as the 1U KVM drawer in the server rack below rather makes this redundant.

The comms rack has a nice big window in the door on the front and conveniently I have a spare TFT from when this was previously done. The last time was when the rack itself was on stilts over my three 24" screens  and desk. It ended up attached to my PC for misc windows which would otherwise be hidden (skype/gtalk/etc) and had a nice cascade effect for the matrix screen saver, but was otherwise pretty useless.

The screen is an old 15" Sony I got from a friend some years back and have found a few uses for over the years.

With the door off and the screen placed where I wanted it some metal brackets were roughly bent to fit the shape and then rolled at the ends to fit into the grooves on the door. The mounting screws for the VESA/similar mounts allowed the two pieces to be fixed and create an effective spring retention system.

The PSU is not in the screen itself (thanks Sony) so its wedged under the power bar int he bottom of the rack next to the old PIX501.

With the door back on the cables were attached so that they wont bind and can still be removed if the door has to come off.

All in all pretty simple and effective. The plan for this now is to run from my old laptop in the comms rack as a super low powered monitoring box for the network, and from that, ALL THE GRAPHS!

the one downside to this is extra heat, and the minor problem with that is the button for the screen is on the front of the TFT, so the only way to power it off is to use the kettle lead. This might not be as much of a problem if i move the screen to another project in the future and just view the graphs over the network, maybe on the TV...

The Big Desk Move - Pt 5: Networking

At this point, the desk pretty much works, although the equipment leaves a little to be desired. With the racks moved into place (details to come) the internet is working again, but not to the PCs.

The last desk had a wall box underneath with a string of 4 cables coming out going to a panel, oneby one they'd developed faults and no amount of debugging had found a solid cause other than "it's dodgy".

So with a new build comes some new sockets and cables.

After about 2 hours patching, wrapping and feeding, then finally zip tying along the length, the rack's umbilical cord is coming together.

Finally, patch the other end into the comms rack, and it's done.

This is a bit of a short one and the comms rack got another overhaul too which i'll post shortly to make up for the lack of much happening.