Forum OpenACS Q&A: OT: help with my new Dell server

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Posted by Jonathan Ellis on
I ordered a 1650 with scsi, hoping to use my older IDE disks for WAL and indexes. But, it seems Dell has gone out of their way to make this difficult. I've uploaded a photo here. Circled in blue is where the SCSI disk is plugged in. A standard IDE cable will not fit through the slots you see in the PCB. Apparently I'm supposed to get some kind of adapter to allow me to use my disks -- if I can use standard IDE disks at all. There's also the issue of the disk sleds; no extra ones are included. Can anyone shed some light on this? Is there an option besides (a) nothing and (b) spending $$$ on dell-branded stuff?

I also circled in red in the photo some whatchamacalits. I have no idea what these are for; can anyone explain?

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Posted by Roberto Mello on
Jonathan,

I don't know how to solve your SCSI problem. I noticed the thing circled in blue in my dell too (600SC), and dug through the manuals. It seems to be something to hold the PCI cards in place (for transportation?) but I've never seen a PCI card that long.

-Roberto

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Posted by Steve Manning on
I'm not a Dell man but it looks like you've circled (in blue) a back plane for hot swappable disks. If thats the case I suspect that you would struggle to mount your IDE drive in a hot-swap cradle as it would be wired to connect into the SCSI backplane.

Can't you mount your IDE disks somewhere else like up under the CD-ROM (?) in the top of your photo?

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Yeah, that looks like a hotswap backplane alright.  But that doesn't look like a 1U rack ... which is what the Dell page claims you've bought.  Or am I not seeing the photo right?
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Posted by Jonathan Ellis on
Yeah, looks like that is what I'll do.  I don't really need the CD, so I'll take that out and have room for two up there.  For the third, well, I guess I will duck-tape it to the roof of the case.  (You can fix anything with duck tape. :)
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Posted by Jonathan Ellis on
oh, and my bad on the model.  I got a 1600 SC, not a 1650.
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Posted by Alfred Werner on
It's DUCT tape man!!! For taping ducts - you know .. not ducks! :)
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Posted by Jonathan Ellis on
Actually, no -- it was developped for the army as a waterproof tape way back when and named after the "water off a duck's back" expression.

William Safire did a whole column on the etymology of duck tape a few week's back. :)

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
The "circled in red whatchamacalits" are clearly some sort of gizmo that you can lock the far end of a full-length PCI card into. Why that would really be necessary, I don't know, but certainly it would make it more secure. The nify little diagram on the inside of the case should show this - mine did anyway.
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Posted by Alfred Werner on
Safire Schmafire! The army calls it Hundred Mile an Hour Tape ..
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Posted by Steve Manning on
Actually your both right - a quick search of Google reveals that back in 1864 Albert Cob developed a tape for sealing ducks in ducts as a means of long term storage. :)
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Posted by Alfred Werner on
I have it on great authority (uh you know who) that this is what really happened:

Just So Story Concerning Ducks and Ducts

A great deal of confusion has arisen of the etymology and usage of the terms duck tape and duct tape. Let's start with our aquatic friend the duck. Back, oh say some time ago,
Peter Stuyvesant, newly appointed director-general of the New Netherlands colony, arrived in new Amsterdam in 1646 to note the apparent lack of good care that the
world's greatest fleet was taking of their sails. Being a man of infinite wit and considerable resource, he consulted a junior officer from Fort Orange, Brant Arent Van Slechtenhorst, on how to solve the great tears in the cloth (Dutch doek, cloth) of the navy's vessels.  Slechtenhorst proposed that tar and other gooey stuff applied to strips of cloth from sails that had been removed from service as unrepairable would serve to repair the torn sails of the fleet, and so, duck tape became widely used in the Dutch navy, influencing even young Peter the Great who spent years in Holland studying the famed Dutch Navy and directly borrowing terms into Russian such as schooner, yacht (from Jagt - to chase), etc.  The English language has similarly borrowed Dutch nautical terms like sloop (Dutch sloep, boat) schooner and yacht. So it's no surprise that the humble duck has also been introduced into our language.

Around the same time - the HVAC guild of lower Schenectady was experimenting with ways of sealing ducts. Having foreseen the Walrus and Carpenter, they did make some early efforts with shoes and ships and sealing wax (and ceiling wax), cabbages, and a few kings. Having no success, they went to the harbor to get drunk, met some Dutch sailors and shared their problems over a pint. Well, maybe a metric pint. Being proud men, they stole the solution shared by the sailors, renamed their invention DUCT tape in order to cover the trail of the borrowed solution, and being good Americans, they promptly filed patent, an effort that went largely unrewarded since the USPTO would not exist for another hundred years.

And so best beloved, now you know where duct tape and duck tape got their names.

And with that - we have a win-win for the second time and I gracefully retire from the debate :)