Off topic discussion • Re: Product Suggestion: Internet Airlock

Maybe I just created confusion by calling it an Internet Airlock. I think there are other benefits from being able to plug a raspberry pi into a drive bay and power it from a regular computer power supply besides coupling it with an old computer. You could use it to replace a dead motherboard in a computer. You can add other peripherals like hard drives and DVD-CD ROM drives without needing multiple wall warts. You can stack a bunch of r-pi's and run multiple simulation scenarios , or multiple custom hardware. I think being able to put an r-pi into a tower and power it from a regular power supply allows you to build larger r-pi systems.

Maybe, or maybe you've broadened the spec

In terms of mounting a Pi inside a PC case, while AFAIK there is no commercially available product, doing it is not difficult and there are freely available mounts for 3D printing.

Getting 5v into the Pi is also largely trivial: tap it from one of the many conectors available on the PSU. (for drive connectors, it's usually the red wire). Feed it to the GPIO header or the usual input connection.

The trick with ATX PC PSUs is getting them started. When plugged into the mains but the PC is not booted all you get is 5V and 2A via the 24 pin motherboard connector. To get everything else the motherboard has to pull one of the other pins on that connector low. Obviously, the Pi is not designed to work this way.

Fortunately, you don't need all the complexity of the PC motherboard - you can use a simple switch between the relevant pins to do the job. But if you do that remember to do a proper shutdown on the Pi first.

As for using a Pi to "replace a dead motherboard", well that isn't as straight forward as you seem to think, though it depends on your aim. A Pi is not going to be a drop in replacement for an x86/AMD motherboard.

FWIW, my current NAS is Pi based and in a PC case: CM4, official carrier board, PCIe packet switch, two PCIe SATA cards, five SATA drives, and a couple of zero2Ws. The PCIe cards and drives mount where you'd expect them too. The zero2Ws are mounted where a HAT would fit and the CM4 is mounted on a piece of styrene sheet which, in turn, mounts on the standoffs that a normal motherboard would use.

PSU state (on/standby) is by a switch but I could have just hardwired to always on. I didn't because I got fed up reaching to the back of the case for the switch on the PSU when a hard reset was necessary.

Statistics: Posted by ejolson — Thu Oct 31, 2024 4:51 pm