frank@rsoft.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter) (08/29/90)
With dual controller support making it possible to run four or more drives
on a 386 system, and with ever faster computers making disk access more
and more likely to be a system's bottleneck, the temptation to run >2 drives
is ever increasing.
While it is possible to mount hard drives outside of the main computer case
I'd much rather not. Can anyone point me to a source for tower cases that
have more than 6 half height drive bays? !RSoft is currently full with 2
full height hard drives and 2 floppy drives. I've only found one source so
far but they were uncooperative to the point of refusing to give me the
dimensions of the case (too much work to measure one!) - I'll not be dealing
with them.
Should one also be looking for a larger power supply for a system like this?
What size power supply should one use for (as an example) a high end 386
with 4 full height drives, two HD controllers, 16 megs of RAM, and a usual
assortment of tape drive controllers, multiport cards, display adaptor, etc?
Please reply by mail - I'll summarize if there are requests to do so.
Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge and opinions.
--
_____________________________________________________________________________
Frank I. Reiter UUCP: {uunet,ubc-cs}!van-bc!rsoft!frank
Reiter Software Inc. frank@rsoft.bc.ca, a2@mindlink.UUCP
Surrey, British Columbia BBS: Mind Link @ (604)576-1214, login as Guestrcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (08/30/90)
frank@rsoft.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter) asks about cases to hold more than the usual complement of drives... > While it is possible to mount hard drives outside of the main computer case > I'd much rather not. Can anyone point me to a source for tower cases that > have more than 6 half height drive bays?... I've got a clue, but I'm posting rather than emailing to him because I think it may take a little digging to get to something useful. Monolithic Systems, in Englewood, CO, shows a "system platform" which is essentially the sort of box Reiter is looking for, with a power supply and high-end motherboard. I *think*, from the one time I talked to them, that they also sell the case and power supply without the board. The case takes ten half-height bays. It's a tower with the bays one above the other, so you can use whatever combination of half and full height you want. Up to six of the bays can be open to the outside. It will also take a motherboard with up to 14 slots (which will guarantee you run out of interrupt vectors before you run out of slots:-). > Should one also be looking for a larger power supply for a system like this? They seem to think so; they use a 450-watt supply. (For comparison, regular AT boxen are 200 or a little more; towers tend to have 220-230 min and up from there. 450 is a lot.) Since your goal for a larger box is more drives, I wouldn't skimp on power. If you use SCSI drives, at least some of them power-sequence themselves; that's a consideration since it's the start-up power requirement that's the most demanding. But you really need to check the specs for the particular drives you're going to use. Add up the starting power for all the drives, add the board requirements, add some for expansion, add some more to be conservative. Now, the downside on MSC: They're a manufacturer, not an end-user vendor. I don't know who's selling their boards, and I've not had much luck trying to work with them or get much info out of them, beyond the glossies I got at a local expo a couple months ago. (You're welcome to chase them if you have the urge...Monolithic Systems Corp, 7050 So. Tucson Way, Englewood, CO 80112, 800-525-7661 or 303-790-7400. Tell 'em you heard about 'em on USENET.:-) They have some other interesting boards. They may be kind of expensive, from what I could guess. As you can tell, I have no connection to them; I'm not even a "satisfied customer" or anything like that. I just saw some of their stuff and thought it might give Frank Reiter, and others, a chance of a place to start looking for what they need. Maybe some other netfolk have run across places that resell MSC? -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...I'm not cynical - just experienced.
feustel@netcom.UUCP (David Feustel) (08/31/90)
Computer Shopper, Infoworld and PCWeek all carry ads by manufacturers that sell large tower cases (10 hh bays, 450 watt power supplies). -- David Feustel, 1930 Curdes Ave, Fort Wayne, IN 46805, (219) 482-9631