My PC needs 2 cases

The day I bought a Sound Blaster Platinum sound card, my computer's case (a superb Enlight Box, with dual 300W smart power supplies...) hit its limit. Strange?

The problem was that the Platinum comes with a 5 1/4 device called the "livedrive", which is a set of useful audio inputs / outputs. Being a 5 1/4 device, the livedrive obviously requires a 5 1/4 bay on the PC's case, and it was that bay that was NOT available in my Enlight, stuffed with 5 hard disks, one floppy disk, one CD Recorder... and one CD player.

To be honest, by re-arranging the devices and doing something that shouldn't be done [cough... cough...], it would have been possible to fit yet another gadget in. But I decided not to, and started studying alternatives to keep everything I had (and need) and still debut the livedrive!

Of course that if the Enlight case was no longer enough to hold all the hardware, I had to buy a second case and find a way to connect both cases. There an easy solution to it, it is very old, and it called the SCSI bus.

The SCSI bus transports electrical signal that can travel for longer distances than those running in IDE cables. But SCSI devices are more expensive because each hardware on the SCSI bus must have some self logic control, while IDE HDs (for example) rely 100% on the IDE controller for all the control issues, which aren't many, because an IDE bus holds two devices (master and slave), maximum.

Because my CDROM burner (Plextor Plexwriter 12-4-32) and CDR reader (Plextor UltraPlex 40max) are SCSI devices, and because my SCSI controller (Adaptec 2940 U2W) can handle two SCSI buses, I just had to buy a 2nd case, for the CD and for the CDR, then connect it to the main (Enlight) case, via an appropriate SCSI cable, connected to the external port of the Adaptec.

The best SCSI case for 8 devices I found, was a proposal from ... surprise?... Enlight, dated 1990!!

After some frightening first moments, when I simply couldn't understand why there were (are) ~50 cables of all colors and lengths inside the SCSI case, things developed quite fast and in less than one hour, I had the PC up & running with everything perfectly attached and clean.

The SCSI case has plenty of cables and plenty of LEDs (check the pictures), because its front is hosting an array of indicators, that can light up when each of the up to 8 devices is accessed. For example, if I crammed the case with 8 SCSI HDs, and if the HDs offered appropriate outputs for the available cables and LEDs, then it would be possible to know exactly which unit(s) were working.

Unfortunately, the Plextor CDR, the Plextor CD and a small Quantum HD (a special edition of the 8.4 GB Fireball), do NOT have outputs for LED activity, so my Enlight can't make the turn of a Christmas tree, next December :).

After understanding that I wouldn't be needing the plethora of cables inside Enlight's SCSI box, I just organized them together and forgot their existence. Besides this glitch, the growth of my PC to a second case was very easy.

After all, a SCSI case is terribly simple solution, that consists in no more than a regular case, that has been simplified not have the same number of holes :) and that features a very ordinary SCSI cable, in a circular loop, with two external I/Os that allow the connection to the SCSI bus on the main case, AND to an eventual 3rd case, or to an eventual self-contained external device, such as a scanner.

The only thing you should understand is that the first and the last devices on the SCSI bus must be "terminated". This means that you must look at the bus, as if it was a pipe, and treat each device as if it was a valve that must be "open" to pass the data, and closed, when to avoid leaks.

In other words, in my 2nd case, only the Plextor UltraPlex 40max is terminated, because it is the last device, in the sequence, counting from the I/O that connects to the main case.

SCSI is really a wonderful thing. It is a shame that customers don't buy it as they buy IDE, because if there was some demand pressure, prices would surely come down, though they already have, at least in relative terms.

The day I buy a DVD reader / burner for my PC, it **MUST** be a SCSI device, to be installed in the 2nd case, because the main box is hosting IDE drives, the livedrive, and a 10.000 rpm U2WSCSI HD, that houses Windows 2000. Things are arranged so perfectly (with special coolers per HD, dual "silent" fans on each end of the case...) that the only modifications that may happen on my main Enlight, will be related to the motherboard, PCI and / or AGP gadgets.

Read more about my PC (previous to the 2nd case), on 130700.