JVC miniBox

If you live in the SF Bay Area and haven’t heard of Urban Ore, you need to check it out.  Something like a thrift store on steroids, the warehouse-sized bazaar vends wares ranging from cabinet doors, construction supplies and tools to early 90s electronics, retro furniture, and large-scale art from theater sets.  All for thrift store prices.  I think I’ll start sojourning there weekly, and hopefully find more gems like this:
JVC miniBox – $2.00

Inside I found a 65W PSU (4A on the +12V rail), a 1.06 GB Seagate SCSI Hard Drive (model #ST31055N), a SCSI CD-ROM drive, and about a pound of dust.

 

I stripped and cleaned the box with a quickness.  Happily, a miniITX motherboard fits quite nicely in the upper compartment (though there are no motherboard mounts):

Fitting a power supply in that small case will be much more of a challenge.  A PicoPSU might be the only option.  A stock CPU heatsink also probably won’t fit, so I may need to use a board with a low profile passive heatsink, such as a Supermicro Atom board.  The 80mm fan mount in the rear is likely enough to keep the whole box cool, but I may cut out more to accommodate a 120mm fan to improve cooling and reduce noise.  The dual 5.25″ bays will easily accommodate a 3-in-2 cage or two single hot swap cages (there are no tabs separating the bays).  Finally, a paint job is in order as no-one likes that ugly beige…why was that horrid color the standard for so many years?

So, what should I do with this one?  The obvious options in my mind are a 3 drive miniServer, an HTPC, or a SFF desktop computer.  What do you think?