Racks, rails and panels

From: Ian Primus <ian_primus_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Tue Nov 18 21:18:30 2003

I worked some more tonight, and I have managed to get the PDP-11 system
box mounted, and rails in place for the tape drive. I will need some
help to hoist the tape drive up so it can go into the rack. The Fujitsu
Eagle is another story entirely. I have looked at the rails some more,
and they do appear to be safety rails, and they are missing the rear
right angle flange that would allow me to screw them into the rack.
Also, even if I did have this flange I do not know how I am to get this
drive into the rack at all. I need to somehow lift the drive up far
enough so I can screw the rails in place. The only thing that I can
think of is to stack the drive on top of something the right height
(I'm thinking of using some junk PC clones and some wooden boards), so
that I can screw in the rails, then shove the drive back into the rack.
But, there I face another snag. The Digital rack I am installing this
in is not threaded. Also, the spacing between the front and the back is
different than the other rack I have, and I noticed that some of the
rails I had didn't fit as easily as they could have. Are there really
different depths for racks? I would have imagined that a 19" rack would
be standard dimensions, but the Digital rack definitely seems to be
different than the other generic rack. Another little snag I
encountered with the Digital rack is that I _can't_ use the Tinnerman
nuts that clip onto the rails. The problem is that in the Digital rack,
the rails screw in from the _back_ of the front part, instead of the
front. If I screw them into the front, the holes in the side don't line
up with the other upright. I found a couple appropriate sized bolts
with locking nuts that I was able to use, I'm going to get some more at
the hardware store tomorrow though. So, in other words, I need a pair
of the rear right angle pieces from the Fujitsu Eagle rails (I don't
know if these are the rails it came with or not, I'll take a picture
though). Also, in the "it would be kinda nice to have" category, I
could use the front panel from a Fujitsu Eagle. It's not an important
part, it just looks nice. I can always fabricate some sort of cover
from wood though.

> It's amazing how much energy and thought trivial s**t consumes.

Amazing, isn't it? I haven't even had a chance to fire the thing up
yet, since I really need to get things organized and mounted before I
can hook everything up. It's just amazingly complicated to mount
something as heavy as a Fujitsu Eagle into a rack when you've never
done it before, and have none of the proper parts to do it.

Ian Primus
ian_primus_at_yahoo.com
Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 21:18:30 GMT