[SunRescue] Stock drives in the SS20?

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> I just got my PeeCee running with two SCSI drives that I pulled from my
> SS20.  I notice that my SCSI controller (and linux) tell me that these are
> Seagate/SUN drives.  I'm sort of wondering what they guys down at sun were
> thinking when they spec'ed these drives for the SS20.  They're the 1 gig
> HAWKs, and replacing these two with a single IBM DeskStar (MUCH newer) cut
> the ammount of heat building up and venting from the machine in half.  The

The IBM DeskStar drives are exceptional when it comes to low heat
dissipation.  The Hawk drives were bleeding edge at the time and very fast
(high end before the 'cuda came out).  The IBM drives are the result of a
long evolutionary process, they are unremarkable when it comes to size and
speed for their timeframe.

You replaced two drives with one drive and got half the heat.  The SM41's
and GX produce a small amount of heat relative to the drives, so I don't
see this as particularly remarkable.

If you think it's bad now, think about how it was before the drive fan was
added.  Convective cooling just worked with a single fast drive but two
would cause a meltdown in short order.

Speaking of vents, why does every SGI Indy seem to blow a powersupply
after a couple years?  I must have replaced over 2 dozen of them over the
years. 

-James