Each of the Macs I will build into this huge cluster are 68K, although I am planing to include my 6100/AV in this too. Here are the basic plans:

Instead of hacking the case to pieces to try and get the logic boards to co-exist and somehow stick out the back properly with thier ports, I am going to simple arrange them in a manner that will facilitate cooling and space concerns. I will purchase extension cables for each of the ports and simply "extend" them to the back of the case, where i will drill holes and most likely glue the end of the extension cable in, providing a clean port with no mess or risk of a damaged board.

I'm not 100% sure about expanding the SCSI, I am sure there are extension cables, but SCSI seems very expensive to buy for, especially those little bits and pieces that you always need but are so overpriced. So I may just keep internal SCSI, and besides, being that i plan on purchasing such a huge case, I will have all the room I need.

As for Ethernet, I plan on doing the same extension idea...only I will be taking my 5 port hub and building it directly into the front of the case. That way I can see the activity LED's and see when collisions occur. It means that I have to open the case to changes cables etc., but I think once this thing is setup it won't need much internal tweaking.

I also believe I will be re-doing the port where the original powersupply is since there will be multiple systems inside with thier own powersupplies, so I will place a nice PowerBar inside as well, nicely modded into the case. I also will want to pick up a decent fan to run inside so it doesn't get too hot... :)

The last thing to do is extend the video ports, and for the first bit i will most likely just have the cable extensions lay out of the box, when I can aford it I will get one of those nice electronic switches and mod that in.

When it's finished, I think it will make some server.

However I have some questions:

I want to be able to increase the capacity of the expansion slots in each of these macs. If I were able to make a simple bridge that would plug into the original expansion slots and multiply the slots, would the extra slots function or would it crash it? I'm not sure if these expansion slots have a specific I/O that can only deal with one card or if they simply can't handle the data flow from multiple cards...I know some of the PPC Upgrade cards had a sort of piggy-back solution, that's what gave me the idea.

(The slots to expand are NuBus, PDS etc.)

Thanks for the info and please give suggestions such as what kind of rack/case I should get to mod!

Citon X600

With your SCSI, it's cheap enough to buy a tool, some ribbon cable and some connectors to make your own custom cables. I'm assuming that you'll mostly use internal SCSI, however if you want external then you can buy an adaptor that goes from the ribbon cable connector to a DB25, which means that you run a ribbon cable from the mobo and mount the DB25 somewhere on the back panel. The same tool (but different ribbon and connectors) can be used to make longer cables for the floppy drives.

I'd suggest that you have seperate power for each mobo - if you have to do a nasty reboot on one board, you don't want to have to reboot everything! That doesn't necessarily mean that you need multiple power supplies - you can just put a switch that connects to the low voltage side, one for each mobo.

One other thing - try and find a Mac monitor and keyboard switcher. That will make life a lot easier

cheers
Flash!

trash80(alcoa)s MicroQuadra Cluster
and my very own "Qluster"

both which involve many of the same form factor of motherboard.

what I would suggest, is using as many of the SAME motherboard as possible, like all trash80 is using is the Q605 and LC475 motherboards.

my own Qluster is basically more than one (4-6) quadra 840AVs without NuBus cards in a case similar to that of an Apple Network Server 500/700
I was going to have the switch for keyboard and monitor built in, and see what I could do for building a floppy drive switch... or having those and CD drives internally :P

if you could use VNC on them, you could control them all from your seperately set up 6100 with a bigger monitor

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Honestly, the only thing I can think of that consumers could really use a cluster for is for a rendering farm...

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I'm actually thinking about building my cube concept as a way to use several different LC-PDS cards in "ONE" MicroQuadra and not bothering to cluster it at all! Sort of an ABCDE . . . switching rig with mobos inside the box.

jt

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that sound's interesting.... any ideas how that's gonna work?

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use the internal video connector for the video, and you are good to go, heh

CCC

and you could then use IDE

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so how's that 'little' project going jt?

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I hooked up with the seller and got my $5.00 475 Monday night! (July Auction)
. . . in a word . . . SLOWLY!

jt

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