Several years ago I was given a small network switch from my high school. The switch was defective and dropped packets constantly so I wanted to give it new life.
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Removed the audio port riser from the motherboard so it would fit in the unit all the way.
Got a 1U heatsink for a server from dynatron. Clears the lid just perfectly with back plate!
Fired up the system to do a load test to see if the blower was adequately powerful cooling.
Got our Intel 1G nic mounted with flexible PCI-e x4 adapter cable.
Soldered the internal terminals of the uplink port to a cat5 cable and plugged it in to our nic.
Made some lexan disk mounts and airflow containment.
Stacked sata cables are a challenge to figure out and get 2 compatible cables.
Soldered USB headers onto 4 of the ethernet ports and made ethernet to usb adapter cables!
Installing linux with software raid 1.
All done, you would never know!