This old Brio BAX400 had been shelved for some time its PII-400 cpu, 256MB ram and 4.2GB drive. Not very thrilling but time for some changes.
New motherboard - Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2P (need uATX form factor)
New CPU - AMD 5200+ dual core (not to much grunt as the PSU can't cope)
New RAM 2 x 2GbDDR2-800, 4GB Total (128bit mode)
New Drives 2 x 1TB 7200rpm SATA 3.0GB/s, 1TB total in RAID1 mirror
All up just over A$500 for a 4GB, 2700Mhz Dual Core, 1TB RAID1 Mirrored server.
Again here's where the fun begins...
The uATX motherboard drops straight into the Brio chassis, so far so good. First hitch, wrong power connector! The old Brio used a 20 pin V1.0 ATX Connector while the new board has a 24 pin V2.0 ATX Connector. Simple solution, just plug into the first part leaving the end 4 pins exposed. See photo.
Next hitch, the board has a 4 pin 12V Aux ATX Connector while the existing PSU has a 6 pin plug with one blue wire running to it. In essence we only need to get a good 12V supply onto one pin of this 4 pin connector as the other 3 are routed back to the main power supply connector. Solution;
a) Cut the blue wire to this 6 pin plug back near the PSU and insulate the remaining blue wire running back in the PSU.
b) Take the blue 6 pin plug and a very sharp knife and convert it into a 4 pin plug (see photo below).
c) Splice/connect the free end single blue wire attached to the plug onto one of the heavy yellow drive wires. (note all drives use 1 yellow, 2 black and 1 red wire per hard drive connector)
d) Plug the new cut down plug into the 4 pin motherboard socket as shown below. Please note very, very, very carefully the orientation of how this connector is fitted. (see photo below) Yes I know it looks very strange! A better solution would be to purchase and use new connectors or re-use old ones but I simply had none and had to make do.
Next are front panel connectors, the bane of any upgraders life! Again some surgical work with the knife split the existing Brio single row connector into the just the right single connectors. (see photo)
Last but perhaps most annoying were the fitting of the RAID1 Array pair of drives. One drive was easy as the Brio has only one location for fitting a hard drive. The second drive was not so easy. Being SATA drives their location is limited to the length of the SATA cables. I could have placed the drive at the top of the chassis but would have had to rearrange the optical drive and I would have lost my spare IDE drive location. My solution was to drive two holes in the chassis spreader bar and mount the second drive as shown.
This machine is now running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and VMware Server and is destined to host several virtual machines, replace existing real servers, reducing my electricity bill and help do my part in being green. Setting all that up will be a whole new story!
...have fun and enjoy your new Brio! ...Robert
Important notes. The Brio PSU is rated for 90W. Yes that's all so keeping the motherboard and CPU down at the bottom end of speed is very important. Same goes for only using one low power drive and optical drive. In practice that little 90W supply packs a punch more but I would not count on it. Also you follow these instructions at your own risk! Dead motherboards, PSU's and sliced fingers from sharp knives will not be my problem. Although this information is provided in good faith, I can not accept any responsibility for how it is applied.
