[rescue] Sun Ultra 40 M2 EATX-SSI Power Supply?

[velociraptor]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Aaron Finley <aaronfinley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently outgrew my existing storage at home and have been
> researching a NAS setup. The Sun Ultra 40 M2 looks exceptionally nice
> for this purpose with its eight internal hot swap drive bays, well
> designed chassis, extremely quiet operation and 1000W power supply. I
> have seen 3TB drives as low as $95, so a 24TB ZFS pool could be had
> for around $1100 (amazing!). Unfortunately, as I would like to
> potentially use the system for more than just storage, the motherboard
> and dual-core CPUs are rather dated. I know that the motherboard is
> Sun custom and uses what appears to be a non-standard foot print with
> edge connectors, but from the pictures it appears the plugs might
> actually be standard ATX-SSI. In all photos the P1 (24-pin?) connector
> is not visible. Can someone that owns a 40 or 40M2 check and see if
> the plugs from the power supply are standard or Sun-specific? This
> would be a great case with a new 5400 motherboard swapped in. I am
> reasonably competent with a soldering iron but would prefer to avoid
> such modification if possible.

Assuming that the U40 M2 is not much different than the silver U20
models, you can swap in a normal motherboard, as a couple of my
coworkers have done to stealth upgrade their work boxes.  AFAIK, it
takes a normal PSU as well, though you will need to double-check
dimensions.  The only issue is the power switch cluster.  Apparently
that takes some re-wiring.  The *purple* workstations will not work,
though, unless you do major surgery to the case, as the standoffs are
not a standard ATX pattern.  The right side of the purple case does
not come off, so that complicates trying to modify it.

Also, due to the floods in Thailand, 3TB disks have jumped for $109 in
late Oct to $179 or higher as of this week.  Most vendors (Newegg,
Amazon, etc.) have a limit on disk purchases as well.  Now is not a
good time to be speccing out a multi-disk array for home.

=Nadine=