[rescue] 611 cases & cables

[Curious George]

Hi,

--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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!

I have a couple of 611D's but keep most of my disks
in 711's (greater packing density  :> )
 
> 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...

See my other post re connecting IN's to IN's, etc.
You should NOT be able to just connect all of the IN's
(or OUTs) together since that leaves you with a long
"stub" at each device.
 
> > 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 :)

OK.  I think the biggest power hogs I have are MO drives
 
> 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.

The 611T's are only narrow (internally) as well.  So, no
big loss there (lots of WIDE external cables tying narrow
devices together  :<  )

> 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.

Exactly!  Unfortunately, I can't find *an* OS that supports
all these different drives.  E.g., Slowaris chokes on the
M.O. drives...