news@daver.bungi.com (05/09/90)
I thought I would share with the group how I packaged the 9380S drives which I purchased in the group buy a while back. However, first concerning the "Hi-Tech" 9380S deal, I totally agree with Dave Rand when he says: >Yup. I'm happy with the Miniscribe drives that we got. The price was great, >the service has been fine, and they shipped the drives to the non-local >folks, saving Karl a heap of trouble. All in all, we got a good deal! Now, where to begin: When the tower cases first came out I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. However, I subsequently have come to realize, at least in the less expensive versions, that the design inherently provides inadequate cooling to the drive bay area. Consequently, I decided package the 9380S's in a separate stand alone enclosure. At a local surplus house I was able to find a mini-AT 'like' case for $10.00. I say like because it was designed to minimize case height (5 inches) by using a special internal board arrangement. The first drive simple mounts in the FH drive bay provided in the case. I mounted the second drive inside the case on 3/4 inche stand-offs. The standoffs screw into the holes provided on the underside of the disk frame. Next this assembly is then secured to the bottom of case by machine screws through the case into the standoffs. For a power supply I used one of the new PC 'mini' style switching power supplies which are rated for 200 watts. It measures 5.5"L x 5.8"W x 3.38:H and cost me $52.00. The 12VDC serviced is rated at 8 amps. In practice I am able to spin-up both drives at once with no apparent problem, but I suspect the current margin during this period is thin. In addition to price and availability, a standard PC type supply has the benefit of comming pre-wired so to speak (ie. ready to plug into the drive and AC-line). The one surprise was that the disks ran VERY hot. After they had run for an hour or so they were almost to hot to touch. Prior to this I had only run the drives for short periods and had not noticed any significant heat build-up. So I did the obvious and added a auxilary fan in addition to the small onr within the power supply. The result is the drives now run quite cool. Quite frankly, I was amazed at the difference. The original IO-card space on the rear of the case make an ideal place to mount the fan. To provide the SCSI interface, I mounted a 50-pin female Centronics style connector on the lower rear surface. Anyway, I am very pleased with the result, and hope that my brief discription will help someone. One modification I am thinking about is adding the ability to select SCSI ID's from a switch on the rear surface. This reminds me, does anyone know of a simple way in which the SCSI terminator resistors could be 'inserted/removed' via a rear surface switch ?? Best regards, johnc --
cld@kd4nc.UUCP (Charles D'Englere) (05/10/90)
news@daver.bungi.com writes: >I thought I would share with the group how I packaged the 9380S drives >which I purchased in the group buy a while back. [*** rest deleted ***] >One modification I am thinking about is adding the ability to select >SCSI ID's from a switch on the rear surface. This reminds me, >does anyone know of a simple way in which the SCSI terminator >resistors could be 'inserted/removed' via a rear surface >switch ?? >Best regards, >johnc >-- One way is to use the same terminators that Apple uses on its SCSI drives. It fits on the end of the last SCSI device. ---------- ------------ ------------ ----------- ------ | UNIX Box |-----| SCSI DRIVE |-----| SCSI DRIVE |-----| SCSI TAPE |--| TERM | ---------- ------------ ------------ ----------- ------ I have made a little switch unit, that can be adaptive to any SCSI drive to allow changing the address just buy pushing a button. This makes setting the SCSI address very easy. Good luck, Charles -- C. D'Englere Consulting UUCP: {...!gatech,!emory}!kd4nc!cld Charles L. D'Englere Phone: 404+3259074 1409 Bronze Leaf Ct. Stone Mountain, GA 30083