[hpsdr] Pandora

[Jason Hitesman]

After last weekend I have renewed interest in the Pandora project.

I have quite a few spare PC cases laying around and had been planning
on just using one of them.  However after experimenting with four
separate cases that's looking less and less likely.  (Though on the
upside in one of those cases I found a VERY nice power supply with
extra noise filtering and the -5v supply that all of the others I had
on hand were missing.)

The problems I ran into were that while the spacing for the cards does
indeed match on a PC case...the vertical spacing doesn't match quite
so well with the standard height spacers in my various cases.  And the
mounting points don't line up well.

The mounting points wouldn't be such a big issue...except that all
four cases had built in spacers for an ATX board at the height
necessary to center cards in the slots.  But those space spacers that
make mounting a motherboard so easy did nothing but get in the way
with the Atlas.  If I mounted the atlas on top of the spacers
(ignoring that they didn't line up with any holes for the time being)
then my ozy card was too high to line up with the slots in the case.
And to mount it low enough that ozy would fit the slots...I'd have to
remove the molded in mounts from the case.  So at that point it would
be easier to cut the whole base of the case out and make my own....

And if I'm going to do that much work it seems I may as well just make
a custom case or wait for Pandora.  Kind of disappointed too.  The
case that had the nice power supply also had a slide out motherboard
tray that would have been very nice.  I may still modify it to
work...but will wait to see what comes of pandora first.

So for now my board is just mounted on some standoffs and kept in a
cardboard box when I'm not using it to keep our desert dust off.

----
Jason Hitesman
N8INJ

 1179616440.0