Oddbean

Here's a project that I spent a weekend on... I call it the Swapstr. It's a small form factor SFF by HP. The Elitedesk 800 G3 65w I believe... I modified it to accept the new CF-Express B digital photo cards as a sort of swappable, bootable drive bay. It's supposed to have PCI express speeds although I can't verify this even with speed tests, but it was challenging and novel all at the same time. Now I can swap out different nostr and Linux distro tests/experiments without disassembling the case and connections every time. It's not truly hot swap, but cold swap is good enough for my purposes... It is trayless! I guess I was yearning for the olden days of 3.5" floppy disks. #Swapstr #Linux #PCmods #CompactFlashExpress #CF-Express #CFX #ColdSwap #NostrDesktop #HP #EliteDesk #GrowNostr https://image.nostr.build/f428510fe2c16a4fa0351eef8b1556cc9045e299c6a3165fb37c882f8a17aa37.jpg https://image.nostr.build/8aec3eb8509ad21eedc96250c227d00a6def163e8c4e4c21bb2d0a3b5b08abca.jpg

Well, i recently learned, there is already something called Swapstr... I don't bitcoin much. Sorry. 😞 Any ideas what I should rename it to? I've learned so much just making it. Learned how to dremel the metal inside the case and use a utility knife to modify the front plastic cover by eye... I'm actually suprised that the drive bay and front case face actually lined up after just eyeballing the dimensions and doing a few test fits for alignment... I've already ordered the parts to add a second CF Express NVMe drive bay in the PCIe E-key wifi slot with an A+E-key to NVMe adapter board and then piggybacking the NVMe to CF Express B adapter board on the A+E-key adapter board... Hopefully it all works out and I don't knick the motherboard with the dremel tool this time. I think I may have to eliminate or relocate the tiny little speaker from the front since it's blocking where I want the second CF Express drive bay to go to the left of the first front-load drive bay. Now why on earth couldn't they have just made it right the first time! 😁