Planning a first time Mod.

[Blake]

Hi, I am planning a mod, I'm a first timer so I want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything.

Bassically I want to seperate my CD Drive, power buttons and small set of USB ports into a small box to sit on the desk while the rest continues to sit on the floor.

Building of the the box seems relativly straight forward, just a matter of paitence and time. I intend to use some kind of plastic and paint it so it has a steel finish, there are plenty of guides for that and I'm not too woried about that. Again with mounting the CD Drive I have an old 200MHz so I can probably canabalise that for the mounting bay. Power again doesn't seem to be too prolematic as there are many guides out there about installing your own switches. And it seems more of an issue of detaching it from the orriginal computer switch into a new one.

I have two main problems I want to clear up before I seriously start working on this though. The biggest is the issue of cables. Is it possible to get long enough cables for the CD drive and the USB I/O card? I assume if it is you just get them at any standard computer store but I'd like to be sure.

Secondly is the issue of cooling. Will the CD drive need cooling at all? If it does the fan would almost definatly have to be mounted lying horizontal. Will that again provide any problems and will limit me to the type of fan I need to use?

[Dukeman]

Your best bet would be to use a usb external drive box made for CD/DVD's. This will provide you with a USB to ATAPI bridge and a power supply that will run it just fine. You can then add a USB hub to provide your USB connections. The ATX power switch is just two wires and a momentary switch so it should be no problem running some wires from your custom box to the PC.

[Blake]

The only problem with that is that I'm limited by the fact my motherboard only has 1.0 USB ports so then if I go off that I'll be limited by transfer speed.

[Albaholic]

you can always get a USB 2.0 pci card

[Blake]

Which leads me back to the question can I get a cable that reaches PCI card from my desktop back down into my motherboard.

[gvblake22]

Bump for a fellow "Blake" :D

[stool]

I can't swear to it, but I believe that the max length for USB cables is 10'. If you stay within that you should be just fine. As to a CD run externally, what mobo are you using? there are both USB and Firewire external CD setups you can lay hands on.

[Albaholic]

Which leads me back to the question can I get a cable that reaches PCI card from my desktop back down into my motherboard.
if you cant find one, and REALLY want to do this, you could use something that acts as a repeater and daisy chain them till you reach the desired length