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Excerpts from an Aperture Laboratories Employee, circa 2012:
[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]
9 March 2012:
I've become a fan of older Aperture hardware it seems. Working on the latest Aperture Laboratories Portable Testing Unit, I discovered the following images in an old service manual:
I've managed to dig out these parts, and intend on resurrecting this machine from Aperture's early days. With the ongoing lockdown in the labs, I have some free time to complete this project. I'm still trying to find any form of literature regarding the unit's external design, will log those images as soon as I discover them.
This post brought to you by:
Note: This worklog is in no way connected with vALVE or related companies. This is just a mod made by a fan of the Portal game/world.
[END TRANSMISSION]
[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]
Sunday 22 April
After a lot of planning (and interruptions, damn that Wheatley, useless pile of [REDACTED]) I have started to work on this project! First I have grabbed a power supply from the reverse engineering plant, seems they were looking at this Silverstone Essentials Series 500W unit in preparation for the reverse engineered Aperture Science unit to supply power for our next generation of Aperture Science Single-user System.
Disappointingly, the pinout of the connectors is all wrong! How inefficient is a motherboard when it needs to be supplied all these different voltages?! Seems the ASPTU uses a more efficient combination of 12v and a standby 5v supply. Much nicer.
So, I've had to remove all these unnecessary wires. See below:
Seen above is a quick size comparison of the PSU and the ASPTU board.
The unit in its correct location in the system
The opened unit (OOC: Warranty? BAH!)
Removing the unnecessary wires - the ones to the left are about to be removed
That's more like it. 26 wires in total, rather than the 40+ that existed before. Don't worry, the wires will be sleeved for a more uniform look.
The remaining ends - the plugs you see are for the Aperture Science Singular Board Unified Televisor Translator (seriously the marketing dept needs a shakeup!)
The loose wires will be inserted into a 20 pin plug for the board.
A selection of the removed wires. Some of this (approx 10-20cm) will be saved for powering disk devices and cooling apparatus.
I hope to pass on more work on this project soon, barring any more interruptions.
[END TRANSMISSION]
OOC:
A few more pics over on LOSIAS.net
Specs so far
2x Intel Xeon L5420 2.5GHz (according to Passmark, the pair have 90% of the performance of a stock clocked Core i7-2600k. I render a lot as well as game so need 'moar REAL cores'. I also have a trick or two up my sleeve. Passmark says 3GHz 5400 series Xeons have similar performance to the core i7-2700k or i7-3820.. considering what I paid for this hardware it's a steal)
4x 1GB DDR2 FB-DIMMs (going to purchase another 4 soon enough, for real quad channel bandwidth)
Supermicro X7DWT motherboard (I believe I'm the first modder to use the Half-SSI style form factor.. I could be wrong. The board is designed to be paired with a twin inside a single 1U server, hence the funky power input. Seriously, read the thread here: http://www.losias.net/showthread.php/758-The-Supermicro-X7DWT-thread! )
XFX GTX285 1GB (I wanted something within budget that had decent performance and was long, to suit the motherboard)
500GB WD Blue
2x Deepcool Ice Edge Mini coolers (going to be custom mounted)
Chassis will be made from 1mm alu sheet, with some steel reinforcing and whatnot.
[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]
9 March 2012:
I've become a fan of older Aperture hardware it seems. Working on the latest Aperture Laboratories Portable Testing Unit, I discovered the following images in an old service manual:
I've managed to dig out these parts, and intend on resurrecting this machine from Aperture's early days. With the ongoing lockdown in the labs, I have some free time to complete this project. I'm still trying to find any form of literature regarding the unit's external design, will log those images as soon as I discover them.
This post brought to you by:
Note: This worklog is in no way connected with vALVE or related companies. This is just a mod made by a fan of the Portal game/world.
[END TRANSMISSION]
[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]
Sunday 22 April
After a lot of planning (and interruptions, damn that Wheatley, useless pile of [REDACTED]) I have started to work on this project! First I have grabbed a power supply from the reverse engineering plant, seems they were looking at this Silverstone Essentials Series 500W unit in preparation for the reverse engineered Aperture Science unit to supply power for our next generation of Aperture Science Single-user System.
Disappointingly, the pinout of the connectors is all wrong! How inefficient is a motherboard when it needs to be supplied all these different voltages?! Seems the ASPTU uses a more efficient combination of 12v and a standby 5v supply. Much nicer.
So, I've had to remove all these unnecessary wires. See below:
Seen above is a quick size comparison of the PSU and the ASPTU board.
The unit in its correct location in the system
The opened unit (OOC: Warranty? BAH!)
Removing the unnecessary wires - the ones to the left are about to be removed
That's more like it. 26 wires in total, rather than the 40+ that existed before. Don't worry, the wires will be sleeved for a more uniform look.
The remaining ends - the plugs you see are for the Aperture Science Singular Board Unified Televisor Translator (seriously the marketing dept needs a shakeup!)
The loose wires will be inserted into a 20 pin plug for the board.
A selection of the removed wires. Some of this (approx 10-20cm) will be saved for powering disk devices and cooling apparatus.
I hope to pass on more work on this project soon, barring any more interruptions.
[END TRANSMISSION]
OOC:
A few more pics over on LOSIAS.net
Specs so far
2x Intel Xeon L5420 2.5GHz (according to Passmark, the pair have 90% of the performance of a stock clocked Core i7-2600k. I render a lot as well as game so need 'moar REAL cores'. I also have a trick or two up my sleeve. Passmark says 3GHz 5400 series Xeons have similar performance to the core i7-2700k or i7-3820.. considering what I paid for this hardware it's a steal)
4x 1GB DDR2 FB-DIMMs (going to purchase another 4 soon enough, for real quad channel bandwidth)
Supermicro X7DWT motherboard (I believe I'm the first modder to use the Half-SSI style form factor.. I could be wrong. The board is designed to be paired with a twin inside a single 1U server, hence the funky power input. Seriously, read the thread here: http://www.losias.net/showthread.php/758-The-Supermicro-X7DWT-thread! )
XFX GTX285 1GB (I wanted something within budget that had decent performance and was long, to suit the motherboard)
500GB WD Blue
2x Deepcool Ice Edge Mini coolers (going to be custom mounted)
Chassis will be made from 1mm alu sheet, with some steel reinforcing and whatnot.
Last edited:
