garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett) (11/19/90)
In article <SCOTT.90Nov18181255@mcs-server.gac.edu> scott@mcs-server.gac.edu (Scott Hess) writes: >In article <1990Nov18.181541.16646@percy.uucp> nerd@percy.uucp (Michael Galassi) writes: >> >> g) My cube is of the old variety with the out blowing fan, is it enough for >> me to reverse the fan (mount it backward or are there other structural >> changes that need to be made for the machine to be safe to my OD? > I've heard that simply reversing the fan doesn't work, either. Something >with how the casing is designed . . . > Which brings up a good question: Why isn't NeXT offering a case upgrade >to user's with the very old cases? This would seem to be relatively cheap, >so that they could either offer it free (ala the 40M swapdisk), or >fairly cheap. Presumably they get their cases from somewhere, right . . . ? I would like to _wholeheartedly_ second this idea. NeXT should offer the cube's case as a separately purchaseable item. They could even offer a trade-in so that they could recycle the magnesium in the old cases... Offering such a case trade-in would offer two main benefits: 1) the lifetime of cubes having the old-style fans could be extended (especially the optical disk). 2) the newer 030 cases have four 1/2-height mount points instead of the two full-height mount points (this change was reportedly made about six months ago). Supposedly, NeXT is offering a new face-plate for cubes having the four mount points that will allow internal installation of a 2.88 MB floppy in the 030 style case. --- Here's another idea: NeXT coul offer an extened upgrade deal - the user purchases an 040 cube minus all RAM memory and hard disk storage (keeping the 2.88MB floppy and the 040 processor card). The 030 cube owner then returns his 030 cube minus the RAM, optical, and hard disk(s) (the returned cube would include the 030 processor board). This deal would solve the fan problem and the nuisance of having to install an external 2.88MB floppy. The purchaser would still get the 040 processor board at the upgrade price. And the cube casing trade-in should be worth something off the price (assuming the casings can be recycled). What about it? Does anyone think this could work? I'd sure go for it if the deal was reasonably priced. This would even provide NeXT with a reason for the controversial decision to replace the black-hole with the recycle symbol :-) -- John Garnett University of Texas at Austin garnett@cs.utexas.edu Department of Computer Science Austin, Texas