[rescue] 611 cases & cables

[Jonathan Groll]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:30:44PM -0700, Curious George wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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  :< )

I've had a recent experience with assorted I/O errors, caused by
mounting a modern 320GB SATA drive in a 611 case.  

My plan was to mount the drive in the 611, powered by the power supply
of the external case, and then just run a regular SATA (not eSATA)
connector directly into the back of an U60 with a PCI SATA controller
in it.

Various system errors occurred, even while doing a newfs on the
device. I've now mounted the SATA disk in one of the floppy drive bays
internal to the U60 and power it with the internal PSU, and the errors
have disappeared but I'm concerned how many drives can be powered by
the internal PSU as I would like to add further drives (to play with
ZFS!).

Do I need to take extra care with grounding both of the cases
together? Does the power supply of the 611 produce enough current for
a SATA drive on all voltages? (Yes, I know I should measure but spare
molex connectors are always a rarity in my life!)

Cheers, 
Jonathan.