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Similar to the x330 SATA mod, I have some NetVista 2800s that I need 5v/12v accessory power from. I’m doing some experimentation with the Asterisk open source PBX and wanted to interface with the house phone lines. I purchased a Digium TDM400P for this task.

This is a modular card, with up to 4 lines. Any combination of FXO or FXS modules can be used. FXS modules to interface with analog telephones require 5v/12v power. The NetVista 2800 has a 4 pin power header, labeled “Hardfile Power” at J11.

The connector we need this time is a Molex 43025-0400. Here’s the pin out:

I also found an IBM part for the xSeries 300. Note that this is not wired correctly for either the x330 and Netvista 2800. It will require reworking for both application. FRU 24P0622:

And that brings me to my final point. I found a really cool product today that would be useful for both the NetVista and 1U servers.

It takes power from the PCI bus to power a 2.5″ notebook hard disk. There are a few different models with different SATA and PATA connection combos depending on your needs. The fact that this product uses a PCI slot is its greatest advantage and disadvantage. PCI slots are usually scarce on machines where this would be useful. None the less, at around $25 it is basically the same price as the IDE adapter you would otherwise need to use a notebook drive in a desktop machine.

This post documents the process of putting SATA hard disks into older 1U servers. At first thought, I thought it would be quick and easy but I will share some of the pitfalls I experienced along the way.

I acquired a pair of x330 servers this summer, basically missing only the CPUs and heatsinks. CPUs were not difficult to obtain, but it did take some trial and error to get correctly oriented passive heatsinks. Before putting these into service, I took the opportunity to bring some much needed larger NAS online for the home network by adding some large SATA drives.

After buying a good set of drives and a controller, I started running into some snags. The most obvious was the lack of standard 5v/12v accessory power. The x330 has a 24-pin header that provides power to the SCSI backplane. Using a multi-meter, I was able to locate the necessary contacts. If your server lacks molex power connectors as well, you will need to trace these down. My best advice is to triple check your readings and use an older drive to test the connection before you hook up your new drives. Nothing like all that work, followed by a puff of the magic black smoke flying out of your new drives :). The right eight pins are the ones we want.

To make a nice cable, you will need a Molex 43025-2400 connector and 4 to 8 pins. While I waited for mine to come in, I just pressed a power cable wire by wire into the connections to make contact.

The next potential point of struggle is getting the drives mounted in the trays. The x330 trays have a plastic SCSI SCA pass through on the end. These were held on with a pair of security Torx screws, so you may need to get creative if you do not have the correct bit. The drives fit nicely at this point, but the SATA power connection was blocked by a metal corner of the tray. A quick bit of work with a file fixed this.

Pull the old hotswap backplane and cable up the new drives. At this point you should power on and see how it goes. Hopefully you wired the power cable correctly.

Now your server is capable of accepting inexpensive, high capacity SATA drives! The basic process should be the same for any 1U server lacking power connectors, though you may need to dig deeper to get to the 5v/12v source (power supply is a surefire bet).

Well, I’ve decided to install WordPress and use it to run my personal domain. I’ve been putting off programming my own CMS for some time, and it really doesn’t seem worth the time these days. WordPress recently released version 2.1, which has quite a bit of functionality and seems like a perfect fit for the purpose of this site. Time will tell, but so far I have yet to find any problems.

I will soon be posting a lot of computer related articles, especially some write ups on hardware hacking and mangling I’ve done. Following that, probably some programming/software/sys admin junk.

So, in lieu of actually writing any code, I’ll start with the old programing adage — “Hello, World!”

Yes, I realize I’m a little late to the blogging party. Better late than never.