Quantum3D Heavy Metal GX+ Mercury System II (The mini-merc)

Yes I own TWO complete functional Mercury systems now, this one dubbed "The Mini-Merc" in reference Dr. Evil Jr. from the movie Austin Powers. The case is shorter by a few inches compared to the stock Quantum3D case, hence the "mini" part and this system specs are slightly less then the other Mercury system I currently own. It seems to run fine even short to fans, but I don't tend to run them long anyways are they generate considerable noise!

The brick popped up on Ebay and I managed to snag it for a very reasonable price.. Everything else shown on the pages below pretty much was stuff squirreled away in my attic from various old projects and leftovers from buys to obtain parts from other projects. The case was found on Ebay with the back panel being swapped out from one from a damaged Mercury case (which is where the overhead fan module came from). The Q3D fan grill was given to me from a Quantum3D employee and the Medusa PCB and swaplock cables came from a friend in Germany. The CDROM and floppy drive were robbed from a Graphite system I had lying about. The power supply was spotted on Ebay several months ago and tucked away as a spare for my other Merc and Iron systems. The motherboard was also a spare from an old 2U rack mount web server and the CPU's came from two different machines (one found by the side of the road on junk week!) the steppings match of course. The hard drive was a $5 purchase off Ebay.

Except for the short case, it's an "as shipped" system from Quantum3D running NT4.

System specs- Intel GX+ server board  with dual 500 mhz P3's with 256 MB of ECC ram, no sound (yet,) 10 gig Western Digital IDE hard drive. 

Some videos- The first shows me testing the new brick in my original system (you can see one brick standing up in the background) the second shows the system running OpenGVS demos from Quantum3D.

Shown in the video is one of the early medusa VGA eliminator setups being used with just VGA output, with this setup two monitors are required just like the later AAlchemy rigs.

Both systems and a green Mercury brick.

As you can see in this early testing picture, there is very little room between the front of the case the card support.

One of the things I had tinkered with long ago was the thought of running a Mercury brick with a Voodoo II style pass-through cable so the need of the Medsua I/O PCB and hard to find Medusa pass-through cable could be eliminated. I succeeded in making such an interface but in the end managed to find a Medusa PCB (not shown in this picture) and opted for originality. The pass-through shown above worked perfectly and the VGA pass-through wiring diagram if you wish to make your own is available on the Mercury FAQ page. 

Wiring all tuned up, Quantum3D style!

PC Power & Cooling 425 watt power supply and P3-500's

Sony floppy and CD-ROM drives.

Medusa I/O PCB (on right) shown installed in case with Swaplock and internal Medusa cables.

Ah much better- From left to right is the two TV outputs (disabled on Mercury,) the Medusa output, and the two swaplock sync ports.