@gregthecanuck
Haha, I love the idea of stacking boxes to make a tower!!!
Here's what I would do:
One small board with CPU, basic IO, PCI-Express controller and memory, this is the motherboard.
Selectable size backplane cases, for instance single/dual slot 180 degrees (A500 style case with motherboard, graphics and sound card) or 3-8 slots 90 degrees (A4000/A4000T style jobbie, but plugin modules are plugged into the backplane which in turn is plugged into the motherboard).
 
The boxes, PSU and the backplane would come with the tower, and you could have cabling from each box into the drive bay area in the front (SCSI, SATA and sound cables.
There would be a door on the side of the drive bay area, and drives would be mounted in cassetes which would be removed by pulling them out of the front. Adding a new controller and a drive would mean removing the drive bay side door, putting card and cabling in box, slotting box into backplane, positioning cable so it will reach drive, slotting drive in from the front and connecting it to PSU and controller.
This would be so cool!!! 
I'm gonna design something around an existing PC here just to prove the concept, even though a passive PCI-Express backplane would be endlessly cooler. Maybe I can get hold of an SBC and a backplane cheaply and do it with normal PCI/ISA cards. I even have an old Whistle Interjet ISDN-dialer that can be modded into something like this.
Hold that thought!! _________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean. |
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olegil 
