[rescue] CDRAX7-H2

[William G. Gruesbeck]

Wes Will wrote:

>I am soliciting any information to aid in returning a few pieces of old
>hardware to service.  The part in question at the moment is a "Procom
>CDRAX7-H2" 7 cd-rom drive array in a nice dual-powered rack-mount case.
>$22 plus shipping, and since it's a heavy bugger, that was $45.  I figured
>for that I at least got 7 32X CD's, the case, and some nice fans.
>
>The Google is singularly un-forth-coming,  and so is the manufacturer's web
>site, which only has more recent versions of this thing ("CDRAX14"-series,
>mostly).
>
>What I know is limited.  Seven drives, and an eighth spot for some control.
> There is a SCSI id selector on that eighth bay where the power and such
>lights reside.  It selects the id for the array, apparently.
>
>It has some sort of oddball controller internally, with two hard disk
>drives - one 2G and the other 4G; the 2G drive has shot craps.  I have
>mounted another similar drive in the space, and the alarm which was
>sounding at power-up can now be reset/silenced without taping the button
>down.  This is a big help already....such a noisy little beastie.  I
>suspect some sort of firmware that I don't have needs to be loaded into the
>drive(s).
>
>Does anyone know if this is a generic RAID device, or part of an odd and
>proprietary storage gadget, as it seems from what I can find about the
>newer models?  Can I plug it in and drive it with something?  Or do I need
>to keep searching for more bits?
>
>I have it powered up and plugged into a scsi b-channel on a spare (garbage)
>box, and the OS (Linux) sees the first CD.  It is mountable, and works just
>fine.  The other six, however, don't exist.  It scans all LUN's; it only
>finds the first one, set at the SCSI id on the wheel selector for the
>entire box.  Each CD has a unique ID within the array, I checked that
>before powering it on.
>
>Opinions?  Assistance?  Manuals?  Experiences?  
>
>Do I have another boat anchor here?
>
>
>  
>
I resued a complete system of these not too long ago. They are from a CD 
Force network CD server, usually used in hospitals after they have moved 
archived records over to CD's. The server itself is a Pentium 233mmx 
socket 7 board in a 4u or 6u rackmount case. It has two dual channel LSI 
scsi controllers in it as well as an IDE boot disk. When the thing boots 
up it caches the cdrom data to those scsi disks so that it's faster 
access across the network. It doesn't really do any kind of array, more 
like a JBOD of CD's. I have the server side as well as three of the CD 
shelves. I haven't really had a chance to play with the original 
software, but I do have the original IDE boot disk sitting somewhere 
here since I didn't know if I'd ever need it. I may be able to take a 
disk image of the original boot disk if you need it, but I don't know if 
it's password protected, or even what OS it is as I wasn't kidding when 
I said that I've never played with it. Are you coming to Dayton for the 
Hamvention? If so, let me know and maybe we can work something out.

William G. Gruesbeck Jr.