[HN Gopher] Billy bookshelves as a retro motherboard "rack"
___________________________________________________________________
Billy bookshelves as a retro motherboard "rack"
Author : ingve
Score : 58 points
Date : 2026-03-01 08:24 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rubenerd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rubenerd.com)
| Kenji wrote:
| Nice fire safety and grounding. Wood is ideal for both. They
| should build data centers like this.
| wongarsu wrote:
| How exactly do you envision this going wrong?
|
| The rack itself won't hold electrostatic charge, and if the
| devices themselves want to be grounded they can be grounded
| through their power supply
|
| And wood isn't _that_ easy to get to burn unless you turn it
| into small particles first
| tokai wrote:
| That shelf is more glue and fire retardant than it is wood. Its
| also really bad as a book shelf so it might still be superior
| in this role than the intended one.
| avian wrote:
| As a current user of the said item of furniture I'm curious
| what makes it really bad as a book shelf.
|
| It's a shelf and in the past few years it has not yet failed
| at holding my books.
| tokai wrote:
| The shelves will start to sag substantially if you fill
| them.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Can't say I can observe this with a few years old ones.
| Even with shelves having reasonable amount of magazines
| or bigger books.
| shagie wrote:
| It depends on the loading. If you've got it 9-12" high
| apart and are putting paperbacks on there... that shouldn't
| be a problem.
|
| However, when the shelf becomes multiples of that, then
| people start putting hardcover volumes or laying the book
| flat and stacking them high within the shelf.
|
| It won't necessarily _fail_ , but it can substantially sag
| with heavier loads.
|
| This is an issue for boardgammers who are after larger and
| heavier shelf spaces which is why the Kallax shelving is
| much preferred. I'll also note that Ivar shelving is solid
| wood rather than particleboard.
| relaxing wrote:
| I once worked in a hardware lab that used wire shelving for
| holding arrays of running machines, and a bad ground running
| through one chassis caused anyone who touched the shelf to get
| shocked by something very close to line voltage.
|
| I'm more worried about heat dissipation though.
| pch00 wrote:
| I really don't want to be too much of a downer, but is this
| really just an HN post about someone putting something on a
| shelf?
| GJim wrote:
| You're not wrong.
|
| How in gods name this article made it to the front page of HN
| is a mystery.
| pwg wrote:
| Because enough readers upvoted it to cause it to appear
| there.
| relaxing wrote:
| Any ideas on that mystery, then? Since you've got your
| finger on the pulse around here.
| pwg wrote:
| There's no mystery. The way _any_ story makes the front
| page is enough users upvote it from the "new" page for
| it to appear there.
|
| So the answer to the question of "how did it make it
| there" is exactly what I said, enough upvoted it that it
| made it to the front page.
|
| As to "why" those folks upvoted it, well, on that I have
| no idea.
| GJim wrote:
| You <-----> The Point.
| iso1631 wrote:
| 16 points in 2 hours?
| paganel wrote:
| What can I say, I'm a Billy simp, there's one just behind
| me as I'm writing this comment and for about a year now
| I've been forcing myself to buy a new one to put it on
| the right-side of my current desk (sometimes I'm too lazy
| for my own good, as in this case). So just seeing Billy
| in the title and as the actual subject of the blog-post
| made me upvote the submission, apparently I'm not alone
| in this.
| criddell wrote:
| Bots are in to stuff like this.
| coldpie wrote:
| Hey at least it's not Yet Another Fucking LLM Article.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Literally today I was thinking about how to organize all my
| out of date computers in my room, and thinking about building
| a cabinet or shelves.
|
| Oddly poignant. I can't be the only one.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I mean, you can probably reduce any HN article to something
| that doesnt sound worthy of being on here if you want
| relaxing wrote:
| Sure, but this truly is just about putting a motherboard on a
| shelf.
|
| They couldn't even be bothered to get a good photo of it ffs.
| close04 wrote:
| This article proactively saves you the time and effort to
| reduce. It is really just that. Man realizes his object fits
| on shelf.
| kotaKat wrote:
| If the 486es were running OpenClaw then everyone would be
| losing their minds.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Well, you know how messy most hackers are..... my mom would
| like this article.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| You could start a giant company using some computers on
| shelves:
| https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10266216...
| jl6 wrote:
| What you're really here for is the Lack Rack:
|
| https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
| nerdjon wrote:
| I keep wanting to build this but I have seen people talking
| online that they changed the legs and they are now hollow and
| not really suitable for this.
|
| That has made me very cautious to use this for any serious
| amount of mounting.
|
| Edit: Apparently there is a section on that page about it, but
| does not give a ton of confidence that it won't give me a lot
| of issues.
| Arubis wrote:
| The tops of the posts are still solid. You could mount a
| single rack unit and be okay, but fully populating lack legs
| is not recommended. Cute way to hide a network switch,
| though.
| ralferoo wrote:
| I have an old Lack (20 years) and while I've never used it as
| a rack, it'd just been retired from under the TV as I got a
| new one with a wider base. I notice that even though it's
| never been moved much, it doesn't feel very stable any more
| and I wouldn't trust it with a rack of heavy equipment,
| especially with HDDs that could suffer catastrophic failure
| if they fell. That said, attaching brackets would sure up the
| legs a bit. Ideally you'd want to attack brackets at the back
| as well I guess.
|
| I also had a Billy sat next to it, and did similar to this
| (but again not racked), with all of my AV gear inside. The
| door was great, it'd make any status lights diffuse and so
| they wouldn't interrupt watching a film in the dark (and my
| old Sky box used to have annoying blue LEDs with an animation
| when playing back a recorded show), but at the same time
| remote controls still worked through the glass. Literally
| best of both worlds. I cut a big hole in the back for cables,
| which also served well for airflow. I considered adding a
| fan, but never needed it. I suspect there would be issues
| with negative pressure doing that though.
| retired wrote:
| The wide LACK (90x55) has a lower weight rating than the
| square one (55x55). 20 versus 25 kilogram.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I swear every year that passes it sounds more plausible that
| IKEA has a bunch of people chewing on wood and putting it
| together into furniture like they were building wasp nests.
| Their stuff makes frickin' papier-mache look like a steel
| girder in comparison.
| bombcar wrote:
| LackRack is cute in that it works and fits, but the real home
| datacenter is wire shelving - one of THOSE bad boys can support
| hundreds of pounds AND have good airflow (and sneaky cable
| routing!).
| saalweachter wrote:
| If you trawl auction sites for business liquidations, you can
| also usually pick up an actual rack for pennies on the
| dollar.
|
| It doesn't even have to be a tech business; most random
| offices have a small rack in a closet somewhere with some
| networking equipment on it, and the whole thing usually sells
| as one lot to anyone with $50 and a screwdriver to remove the
| equipment from the site.
| bombcar wrote:
| They're not hard to find as you say (you can even find them
| at scrap yards and such) - though then you can find the fun
| of getting the right mounting hardware to actually PUT
| things in the rack (and you get to learn the difference
| between telco racks (very common) and server racks
| (somewhat less common).
| saalweachter wrote:
| If you've accidentally purchased a telco rack it won't be
| ideal, but modifying it into a server rack is going to
| yield a better rack than a coffee table or bookshelf.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah for a lot of things these days I actually prefer a
| telco rack, as you're unlikely to be shelving giant rack
| mount chassis and UPS as much as you used to.
| layer8 wrote:
| Reminds me of the LACK that is commonly used for server racks:
| https://www.google.com/search?udm=web&q=lack+rack
| ralferoo wrote:
| One really good alternative to racks is a flight case with
| integrated 4U / 8U rack. They're meant for musicians transporting
| audio equipment, so can be a lot expensive, but they're nice with
| front and rear panels that pop off, and are very portable. The
| bigger ones (12U and 16U) often come with wheels too which is
| nice.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The mobo collectors are going to have to fight the vinyl
| enthusiasts for IKEA's Billy shipments.
| jonlucc wrote:
| Are Billy deep enough for vinyl? It looks to me like they're
| only 11.75" deep, not 13.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, looks like the KALLAX is preferred, the BILLY does
| leave a bit of album hanging out. (Although I don't believe
| you need all of 13" for an album sleeve--perhaps closer to
| 121/2". Still overhang though.)
| netsharc wrote:
| There's a version of Billy that is deeper (39cm = 15.35in),
| but maybe only in some regions:
| https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-90401932/
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've mentioned this before, but my first CoLo server was from a
| friend that built servers for a good sized hosting company back
| in the late 90s. He built it from spare parts but had no case for
| it. He hung the mother board against a dry erase board from the
| mounting holes with zip ties. He had a PSU sitting on his
| workbench with cables feeding up to the mobo. IIRC, the hard
| drive was suspended on the wall as well. In that vein, anything
| can be a "rack" if you squint at it hard enough and maybe tilt
| your head a bit.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Your friend founded OVH?
| NoSalt wrote:
| Great idea, but my Billy's are all full with my LEGO builds. :-D
| BeetleB wrote:
| Billy bookshelves are well known for their hackability. Just
| Google "billy hacks".
|
| See for example:
|
| https://ikeahackers.net/2025/06/billy-bookcase-hacks.html
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I'm a pretty mid around the house DIYer, and I commend the
| ingenuity. But will never understand someone going to the
| expense and hassle of buying a Billy and converting it into
| built-ins. Someone who can do the conversion is also capable of
| adding their own shelves at a fraction of the cost, and the
| product would be far more sturdy.
| zem wrote:
| ikea furniture is surprisingly bimodal, either it's cheaply made
| stuff that doesn't last or it's startlingly solid and cleanly
| designed for a great price. don't think I've ever gotten
| something that was just okay.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-05 23:01 UTC)