Adem Rudin (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theholymac) wrote,@ 2005-02-02 10:47:00 |
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Ok, so I got the pics of the project up...
Project synopsis:
As a fan and collector of old 68K macs, I have made I know throughout my rural area to all that I will take donations of old computers, or macs of just about any type. And every now and then, I find something that just sparks my interest for a hack... In this case, the subject was a NuDesign 540MB SCSI external hard drive that I received along with an Apple 12" monitor, an LC with fried video, and an Imagewriter II. The case for the drive was metal, which I've rarely seen. Most of the external SCSI cases I come across are nasty plastic, and usually hard to disassemble. This NuDesign drive, however, was incredibly east to disassemble --- four screws to remove off the bottom, and the whole top cover slid off. Like most SCSI drives of the day, the power supply was built in, so you only need a standard computer power cable, not some proprietary power brick. I fell in love with the case, and decided that I'd convert it to FireWire. Although there was a single 3.5" drive installed, it was fairly obvious the case was designed to be able to accommodate a 5.25" drive as well... or, for someone crazy like me, two 3.5" drives. New mounting holes would have to be drilled, but my high school has a decent shop, so I made a jig, and used the two junk drives (the 540MB drive that originally was installed in the case, and the OEM 6GB drive (fried) from my B&W Yosemite G3) to test fit the configuration. Everything seemed to fit reasonably well, and it was time to buy some modern internals for the drive... For the bridgeboard, I ended up settling for a FWBU2-IDE11 from http://www.fwdepot.com, it's a bridgeboard based on the Oxford 912 chipset that includes FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. I mainly got it because of the shape of the board; it mounts in vertically instead of horizontally. Because of the arrangement of the drives, I wasn't sure if a horizontally mounted board would fit... It turns out that one *probably* would fit, but when the case is this cramped, it's nice to be on the safe side. One of the old Centronics 50 pin SCSI connectors was used to plug the hole the bridgeboard didn't (of course, it isn't functional... it's just to keep dust out of the case, and to look cool). As for the drives, I purchased two Maxtor 6B250R0 drives from http://www.newegg.com, 250GB ATA133 drives with 16MB cache. They're fast little buggers, and I'm very happy with them. There are a lot of vents on the underside of the case for cooling, and the drives are spaced off from the bottom of the case so as not to block them with brass standoffs. Finally, I replaced the original exhaust fan with a 60mm Vantec Thermoflow. Unfortunately, I neglected to take "before" pictures, but here are some pictures from after the conversion!
This is the front of the drive, it looks exactly the same after the conversion as before. As you can see, it's very much a beige box.
And this is the rear of the drive, and the only external sign (aside from the new mounting holes on the bottom) that the drive has been modified. The auxiliary power outlets are nice, they are also switched on and off by the main power switch.
Closeup of the rear panel. Gotta love the ancient and modern side-by-side...
And a nice artsy macro shot.
Here's an internal shot of the bridgeboard installed in the case, it's a bit of a tight fit but it works... The 4-pin connector on the left is power, the 2-pin on the right is for the drive activity light, I actually got the drive activity and power indicator lights to work. It looks nearly stock from the outside.
And here's a shot of the inside... as you can see, Jordan, not only is there no room for the voltage inverter to run the cathode, there's really no space for the cathode. And all you'd see thru a window is cables. Maybe I should have gotten EL cables...
So why did I do this, when for approximately the same price I could buy a Lacie Big Disk in a more compact case with essentially the same specs? That lack of a powerbrick, the retro/stealth look, and the fun of a project all made it worth it for me.
Problems and known issues:
It gets a tiny, tiny bit warmer than I’d like during operation. If the problem's worse than I think, I might look for an open faceplate (meant for a CD drive) that'll fit, and install two or three 40mm fans where the CD would normally go to aid in cooling. The cooling situation seems fine. I've left it on for hours, transfered a couple of gigs around, etc, and it seems to be running much cooler than I originally thought.
Hard power. I have to turn it manually on and off with the switch on the back, no automatically turning on and off with the computer it's hooked up to, like newer drives (otherwise known as soft power).
So yeah. If you have a desire to see the pics, click the link above. Be warned, they're kinda big... Seriously, six pictures at 1280x960 resolution. If you're on dial-up, sorry man. Go out and do something else for an hour or so while the pics load.
Summary of major parts used:
2x http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe
1x http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_inf
1x http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe
UPDATE 12/01/05: Pictures are back up! Go Flickr, you rock! The drive went flakey on me, it turns out the bridgeboard freaks out if you use longish IDE cables, AKA, any master/slave configuration. It turns out that I actually got a good one, people were shocked to hear I had it running reasonably well for over 6 months. A FWB-IDE01A has been ordered to remedy this. Pictures to follow.
UPDATE 12/08/05: Picture of the new bridgeboard:
It works better now (and certainly is faster), but I think some of the problems are stemming from an inadiquate power supply. It works PERFECTLY fine with only one of the drives mounted, and not quite so well when they're both mounted. Who knows...
*/
Ok, so I got the pics of the project up...
Project synopsis:
As a fan and collector of old 68K macs, I have made I know throughout my rural area to all that I will take donations of old computers, or macs of just about any type. And every now and then, I find something that just sparks my interest for a hack... In this case, the subject was a NuDesign 540MB SCSI external hard drive that I received along with an Apple 12" monitor, an LC with fried video, and an Imagewriter II. The case for the drive was metal, which I've rarely seen. Most of the external SCSI cases I come across are nasty plastic, and usually hard to disassemble. This NuDesign drive, however, was incredibly east to disassemble --- four screws to remove off the bottom, and the whole top cover slid off. Like most SCSI drives of the day, the power supply was built in, so you only need a standard computer power cable, not some proprietary power brick. I fell in love with the case, and decided that I'd convert it to FireWire. Although there was a single 3.5" drive installed, it was fairly obvious the case was designed to be able to accommodate a 5.25" drive as well... or, for someone crazy like me, two 3.5" drives. New mounting holes would have to be drilled, but my high school has a decent shop, so I made a jig, and used the two junk drives (the 540MB drive that originally was installed in the case, and the OEM 6GB drive (fried) from my B&W Yosemite G3) to test fit the configuration. Everything seemed to fit reasonably well, and it was time to buy some modern internals for the drive... For the bridgeboard, I ended up settling for a FWBU2-IDE11 from http://www.fwdepot.com, it's a bridgeboard based on the Oxford 912 chipset that includes FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. I mainly got it because of the shape of the board; it mounts in vertically instead of horizontally. Because of the arrangement of the drives, I wasn't sure if a horizontally mounted board would fit... It turns out that one *probably* would fit, but when the case is this cramped, it's nice to be on the safe side. One of the old Centronics 50 pin SCSI connectors was used to plug the hole the bridgeboard didn't (of course, it isn't functional... it's just to keep dust out of the case, and to look cool). As for the drives, I purchased two Maxtor 6B250R0 drives from http://www.newegg.com, 250GB ATA133 drives with 16MB cache. They're fast little buggers, and I'm very happy with them. There are a lot of vents on the underside of the case for cooling, and the drives are spaced off from the bottom of the case so as not to block them with brass standoffs. Finally, I replaced the original exhaust fan with a 60mm Vantec Thermoflow. Unfortunately, I neglected to take "before" pictures, but here are some pictures from after the conversion!
This is the front of the drive, it looks exactly the same after the conversion as before. As you can see, it's very much a beige box.
And this is the rear of the drive, and the only external sign (aside from the new mounting holes on the bottom) that the drive has been modified. The auxiliary power outlets are nice, they are also switched on and off by the main power switch.
Closeup of the rear panel. Gotta love the ancient and modern side-by-side...
And a nice artsy macro shot.
Here's an internal shot of the bridgeboard installed in the case, it's a bit of a tight fit but it works... The 4-pin connector on the left is power, the 2-pin on the right is for the drive activity light, I actually got the drive activity and power indicator lights to work. It looks nearly stock from the outside.
And here's a shot of the inside... as you can see, Jordan, not only is there no room for the voltage inverter to run the cathode, there's really no space for the cathode. And all you'd see thru a window is cables. Maybe I should have gotten EL cables...
So why did I do this, when for approximately the same price I could buy a Lacie Big Disk in a more compact case with essentially the same specs? That lack of a powerbrick, the retro/stealth look, and the fun of a project all made it worth it for me.
Problems and known issues:
Hard power. I have to turn it manually on and off with the switch on the back, no automatically turning on and off with the computer it's hooked up to, like newer drives (otherwise known as soft power).
So yeah. If you have a desire to see the pics, click the link above. Be warned, they're kinda big... Seriously, six pictures at 1280x960 resolution. If you're on dial-up, sorry man. Go out and do something else for an hour or so while the pics load.
Summary of major parts used:
2x http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe
1x http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_inf
1x http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe
UPDATE 12/01/05: Pictures are back up! Go Flickr, you rock! The drive went flakey on me, it turns out the bridgeboard freaks out if you use longish IDE cables, AKA, any master/slave configuration. It turns out that I actually got a good one, people were shocked to hear I had it running reasonably well for over 6 months. A FWB-IDE01A has been ordered to remedy this. Pictures to follow.
UPDATE 12/08/05: Picture of the new bridgeboard:
It works better now (and certainly is faster), but I think some of the problems are stemming from an inadiquate power supply. It works PERFECTLY fine with only one of the drives mounted, and not quite so well when they're both mounted. Who knows...
*/
