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20090416 Thursday April 16, 2009
Got the spuds, now what?

So I ordered 5 540-3025 for $15 off of ebay.com. And note, I easily could have had my manager okay getting 3 additional drives from my Ultra 24. Really, it is that easy. But DYI and blogging are fun!

The spuds were too tall. We can see here that we have room for 3 additional drives:

Space for 3 drives

And yet we can only add two spuds here:

Only two spuds kinda fit

Note that the middle one is not even aligned properly into a slot!

So first off, if I just wanted to add one drive, the spud would work without any modification. Secondly, I'm not upset with the seller on eBay.com - I took a calculated risk on these spuds. Thirdly, I have a dremel and I'm not afraid to use it!

I did a quick visual comparison of the old spud and the new one, it looks like the top can easily be cut off at these points:

Arrow shows where to cut

I can better show this with a red line in the back:

Red line shows where to cut

It won't effect the hinge and it looks easy enough to do. The first pass on the first spud is shown here:

Rough first pass

I took my time and probably made it harder than it really was. You can see here how raggedy it looks:

Needs to be smoothed

That will need to be smoothed down. I don't need perfection, but I don't want to cut myself putting a drive in. I also don't want any pieces falling off due to vibrations and being sucked into a fan! A close up can really show how unacceptable this is:

Close up on roughness

I also want to show you a before and after picture so you can see what I took off:

Before and after

I then quickly started on the second spud, focusing on cutting out portions:

Cutting out boxes

I don't show the final results, but I did smoother cuts and I didn't have to sand it as much.

And we can see the two spuds added to the Ultra 24:

In the Ultra 24

Okay, now I just need the drives to show up!


Originally posted on Kool Aid Served Daily
Copyright (C) 2009, Kool Aid Served Daily

Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/tdh/entry/got_the_spuds_now_what
Comments:

Hey, neat. Your Ultra 24's drive bay bears a resemblance to my Ultra 45's. I guess that's not too surprising considering their purpose as workstations.

I found a pair of short-height spuds locally in Tulsa at a used computer shop. There is a recycle / web auction shop on Pine Street--I think they're called OK Computer Recyclers--that has a warehouse of old business cast-offs. They've closed their real-world storefront, but it shouldn't be too hard to find contact info. I've also heard O.A.R.S. gets old Sun kit in periodically, but I've never seen any there on my infrequent visits.

Just in case you ever go hunting again, the spuds I bought were from a 540-2938 and look identical to the shipped 540-6666 with the exception of the gray/purple color scheme vs. white/white (like yours).

Posted by jmd on April 16, 2009 at 08:57 PM CDT #

I think the O.A.R.S. guy let me swap out a NVRAM chip for my Ultra 5 or 10. I forget which. This must have been 4 years ago.

It was a neat place to browse, but I've been to heaven -- http://weirdstuff.org/ and I always compare stores to that place. :->

Posted by Thomas Haynes on April 17, 2009 at 12:05 AM CDT #

If you have to cut plastic like this, a coarse file works really well, and doesn't melt the plastic like a Dremel tools does... the right kind is known as a "bastard" file...

Posted by Bart on April 17, 2009 at 01:53 AM CDT #

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