Home made hot swap SCSI ?

Doomer

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 1999
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Is there such a thing as a hot swap SCSI back plane that works with a standard SCSI controller or a contoller / back plane combo that will work in a standard PC ?
I want to build a hot swap server from scratch. I've got a bunch of 80 pin sca drives I'd like to use as they were intended to be used. Any ideas appreciated.

 

Evadman

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Feb 18, 2001
30,990
5
81
You would have to have a PCB custom made for that. If you want to design one, check out Express PCB.

Also look into finding the headers you would need, along with how to power the backplane.

Could be fun, let us know how it goes :)
 

MysticLlama

Golden Member
Sep 19, 2000
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Actually, if you search around long enough, you can find a spare part# for something like you're looking for from a small server or workstation.

In my machine I have a LianLi PC60, 3x 10k 18.2gb SCSIs in that front cage, on a 3 drive backplane that was pulled from a Gateway2000 workstation. Not really hot swappable because of where they are situated, but you get the idea of where to get the part. :)
 

Oyeve

Lifer
Oct 18, 1999
22,047
877
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<< I've got a bunch of 80 pin sca drives I'd like to use as they were intended to be used. >>




I sorta made an SCA drive cage. It was ripped from a compaq server. It was an additional drive bay for the ml530 I believe. Anyway, I dremeled off the excess metal and smoothed it down. It is a 10 drive bay that uses these special drive holders. The backplane has SCA connectors so the SCS drives plug directly into it. The back of the cage has 3 fans to cool off all 10 drives and the power connector is of the standard 4-pin type found on any PC power supply. The whole cage itself is about a foot long/wide and only about 8 inches deep. Pretty small considering it can house 10 drives. I used it briefly for a SCSI U160 raid setup but got my hands on 2 full UWSCSI3 chassis. This thing now collects dust on my server tower case. It was a fun little project though.