[rescue] 611 cases & cables

[Mr Ian Primus]

> I've been accumulating various/assorted "removable
> media" peripherals (tape, disk cartridge, etc.)
> and gluing them onto my U2.  I put each drive into
> its own 611T case and add it to the chain of other
> devices already attached to the machine.  As such,
> I am always in need of extra 611T cases and those
> nice *short* (12 inch) wide SCSI cables to tie
> them together.
> 
> Anyone have any of either of these that they would
> care to part with?

The open face 611T's are great. I am always short on those too. I've got a fair number of the closed face ones (for hard drives) though!

On the cables... I cheat. Internal 68 pin wide ribbon cables use the same connector as the external cables, and will plug right in. Take a common 68 pin ribbon cable, and you can cut it apart with a razor, right after a connector, so that you have short jumper cables with two connectors. It's not sheilded, but it works OK. The twisted pair type cables are probably the best to use here.

It seems like I've tried running one cable down a stack of 611 cases once, I can't recall if it worked or not - it actually should. But mine aren't arranged in a stack right now, so...

> Of course, the SCSI busses are getting a bit *long*
> (physically).  Is it, perhaps, wiser to just dig
> up a couple of CD-ROM towers and stuff 7 devices
> in each of those?  I imagine the power supplies in
> those are sized for 7 CD-ROM drives (which have
> pretty minimal power requirements).  But, I figure
> I can still get by since, unlike a CD tower in
> which *all* drives might be active at any given time,
> only one or two would ever be running at any given
> time in my case (though I would still have to ensure
> the power supply could satisfy the quiescent current
> needs of all devices  :< )

Those 7 drive CD towers almost always use a full size PC-ish power supply, like 200 watts. (at least, the ones I have seen) It should be fine for almost whatever you can cram into the cabinet, I'd only worry if you were running a stack of Seagate Elites or something, but even then, I've done it, and didn't have any problems :)

The only disadvantage is... well, you've got a huge tower now. And a lot of them are only narrow SCSI, so you'll have to replace the cabling inside the tower if you are running wide devices, and want to run them as such. Also, you don't have the flexibility that the individual cases do, so if you suddenly need an Exabyte drive on some box, you'll have to schlep the whole thing over there.

-Ian