A little info regarding sas boards, chasis boards, portable bay boards

[Knuckle Buster]

I recently came into possession of 2 complete professional grade movie studio on site editing stations that consisted of 4 double drive docking stations they hold the big removable Codex Digital 512gig hard drives and 4 transfer stations that had 2 LTO 5 tape drives and 2 square docks that take T-800 cubes that best i can tell slid into the cameras the t-800 cases hold 4 western digital caviar black 500gig laptop drives and each transfer stations housed 6 western digital caviar black 2tb hard drives. The 2 two editing stations and the server all have the same mother boards Supermicro X7DBE-O with dual xeon E5450 quad core cpu's which seemed over redundant so I knowing very little about servers decided in my infinite wisdom to try and build a home server, hopefully gaming computer, storage, coffee table. I emptied out 2 transfer stations and stood them up, made a wood base and with a piano hinge on one side made a pair of legs that open for extra storage and a shelf in it and I used the server for the table main body. I used the lid to the server for the shelf in the legs and also a shelf that connects the bottom of the legs for support and plan to replace the lid with a piece of bronze tinted plexiglass. I moved the mother board to the back end it had been central with alot of unnecessary clutter.. I have the hard drives in 3 stacks of 4 with fans pulling air from 1 side across/threw the stacks to the other I made power cables with 4 HD heads within 6 inches and stacked and pulled the sata cables to make it look unbelievably clean my problem comes with not knowing how the sas chasis boards or other boards schematics work as I haven't been able to find any files, also I used the levers that you lock down after inserting a t-800 that turns the power on to that block of drives to shut of one of the laptop drives each and then made custom mounts and installed keys so all the games and stuff my 3 kids and I want to store goes into main storage and only our personal settings and files go on our personal hard drive that they can literally shut down and lock it up. I used everything the way they were used with minor tweaks and just in a different configuration but I dont know how to get my data from the sas cards to my mother board the only plugs on back of the docking stations are 1 25 pin and 8 sas lsi 3801e ( 2xsff-8088) sockets that i have some cords for but nothing to plug them into , their are plenty of unused plugs on the little sas boards and the portable drive boards and I have a selection of pci e cards to chose from but again my knowledge of their super powers is limited.. so the mb is Supermicro X7DBE-O
Intel 5000P ( Blackford ) chipset
Cpu's xeon E5450
32 gig ddr2 ecc fb
Dual port gigabit ether etc
6 sata 3.0 ports
Each sata controller
2 (x8) and 1 (x4) pci-express
2x 64-bit 133mhz pci-x
1x64 -bit 1pp mhz pci-x
Ati Es1000 Radeon hd video
Sin lp ipmi 2.0
Support for raid 0,1,5,10 windows
And 0, 1, 10 for Linux
I have a Myricom 10G-PCIE-8B-2S
DVS CENTAURUS II LUCY 4 HD/SDI DVI PCI-E VIDEO CAPTURE CARD and 2 mini cards that go with it
Pci express host bus adapter
DVHMF- 22PIN
AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT 90% OF THAT STUFF DOES HOW TO HOOK THEM UL TO DO WHAT I WANT IF THEY CAN .. I JUST WANT TO GET ALL THE DRIVES CONNECTED TO THE MB SO THEY ARE USABLE WITH THE BEST CONFIGURATION AND THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CABLES.. I MIGHT HAVE WAY TO.MUCH CRAP HOOKED UP OR NOTHING THAT WILL DO WHAT I WANT THE WAY I WANT.. BUT I FIGURE IT was all hooked together at one time.. I know it all worked I had the transfer stations And the big drive bays hooked to the editing stations and their was still clips of Life Of Pi the last movie it was used on but I am not versed in how to hook it all up I just used the little common sense I have to get it up and running enough to see what it was.. it seems to be running Linux, Red Hat, Fedora for an os
As an added bonus I grabbed 8 SKB cases and a box of cables the SKB's have 2 - 512gig removable hard drives in each for 16 big drives and 8 tb of removable storage..

As a side note. I am an Insomniac that only sleeps 1 night a week for 5 hours I am also bipolar. Anxiety. PTSD. And I restore old tools and build custom motorcycles when I can stay focused.. I have about 3 weeks pretty solid into building this with almost a week in just sanding and polishing to look like a mirror.. I dont know what they paint these servers with but it is extremely resilient..lol.. I spend ridiculously long amounts of time on the smallest details because I have entire nights alone to kill and once my mind gets hooked on something it doesn't stop until done. Which includes sidetracked and silly ideas.. like my hand made hard drive mounting system with 8 double coilover spring mounts that also have fans inbetween each stack and on each end for 4 fans across the stacks.. and I understand that this isn't going to be a screaming gaming computer but my boys will be able to play at a respectful rate and stream at the same time and it keeps me busy which that and showing my kids that you can do anything you want if you put the work in and I don't use mental health issues as an excuse to fail.. I use them as a your dad is tougher than all of that stuff and it might take a little longer but I finish what I started.. the total cost for this project so far is 0 dollars and 200 plus hours. From finding out what I had and thinking of what I could do with it and then disassembly sand polish decide how i want it make all pieces and parts from scratch scrap pieces and unneeded removed parts and reassemble.. I may not be fast .. but I am very detail oriented.
The Devil Is In The Detail..
So any help would be appreciated I know their are alot of different cables that are not used on these boards and cards I figure a few will do what I need. Not worried about what it will cost to finish because I am almost done and I have 4 lto5 tape drives I am putting on ebay so I am pretty sure I'll come out ahead on cost.. and I have nothing but time so.. is what it is..

As a side note. I am an Insomniac that only sleeps 1 night a week for 5 hours I am also bipolar. Anxiety. PTSD. And I restore old tools and build custom motorcycles when I can stay focused.. I have about 3 weeks pretty solid into building this with almost a week in just sanding and polishing to look like a mirror.. I dont know what they paint these servers with but it is extremely resilient..lol.. I spend ridiculously long amounts of time on the smallest details because I have entire nights alone to kill and once my mind gets hooked on something it doesn't stop until done. Which includes sidetracked and silly ideas.. like my hand made hard drive mounting system with 8 double coilover spring mounts that also have fans inbetween each stack and on each end for 4 fans across the stacks.. and I understand that this isn't going to be a screaming gaming computer but my boys will be able to play at a respectful rate and stream at the same time and it keeps me busy which that and showing my kids that you can do anything you want if you put the work in and I don't use mental health issues as an excuse to fail.. I use them as a your dad is tougher than all of that stuff and it might take a little longer but I finish what I started.. the total cost for this project so far is 0 dollars and 200 plus hours. From finding out what I had and thinking of what I could do with it and then disassembly sand polish decide how i want it make all pieces and parts from scratch scrap pieces and unneeded removed parts and reassemble.. I may not be fast .. but I am very detail oriented.
The Devil Is In The Detail..
So any help would be appreciated I know their are alot of different cables that are not used on these boards and cards I figure a few will do what I need. Not worried about what it will cost to finish because I am almost done and I have 4 lto5 tape drives I am putting on ebay so I am pretty sure I'll come out ahead on cost.. and I have nothing but time so.. is what it is..