A3000 with CSMKIII and CVPPC in it

[x56h34]

I've played around with my standard A3000D system yesterday and I've decided to see what it looks like when it is expanded with the following:

68-pin hard drive
CSMKIII accelerator
CVPPC graphics card

The end result looks really nasty. There is barely enough space available for everything to fit, but the real killer here is the SCSI terminators and cabling, and the "CVPPC to video connector cable". They clog up what ever little space is left over for air-flow. I always knew that this sort of thing wasn't really recommended even though both CSMKIII and CVPPC were designed to fit even inside the A3000D case, however I never imagined how tight this fit really was.

Although everything runs perfectly fine, I wouldn't dare leaving this thing on, running for longer than perhaps an hour...maybe less.

Some crafty modifications are definitely required in order to run this sort of setup with proper cooling, especially if you have a CSPPC, instead of CSMKIII which I used.

It would definitely help if I had a round SCSI cable that was the right size, but still...it's way too tight in there for comfort. :-)

I guess the first step to providing better cooling would be to cut a hole in the metal plate, and get rid of the right floppy drive mounting area, at least so that some of the cabling could be taken away from the motherboard and placed in the upper part of the case.

Just my 2 cents on the subject. :-)

[patrik]

@x56h34:

Adaptec sells some really really good rounded uw-scsi cable. It is extremely slim, bendable and it also doesnt have those enormous waffles around the connectors which most rounded cables tend to have.

I bought one of those for my A4000D. It has P/N 1494704-00 and was originally a 4-device cable (5 connectors plus a builtin SE/LVD terminator in one end - so actually a 3 device cable when used with a CSPPC/MK3).

As, I never plan on using more than 2 internal devices in my A4000D, I removed the last connector (and ofcourse cabling, which had 2x the cablelength compared to the other connector) which gives me two free connectors after putting a terminator in the other end and not overly much cable.

You can see how it looks a bit here. I have attached the end of the cable which has the builtin terminator on the CSPPC, then the cable goes to the harddrive (it is bent in a nice loop under the harddrive), then there is a free connector laying in the 5 1/4 drive-cage, accompanied by the last connector with a terminator inserted into it (almost totally covered by the floppy cable).


/Patrik

[AntonioX]

Patrik

That is one nice setup mate, I have not seen any thing as good as that in a normal desktop Ak4

[adolescent]

I think the CVPPC under the drive tray is dangerous.  

Have you thought of "swiss-cheesing" the entire drive tray to help with cooling.  That way you could keep the mounting points for the drive trays but allow much better ventilation.  

[560SL]

Hey x56h34, can we have a look? Would be nice to see some pics of the A3000.

I put in the A3640 in my A3000 a couple of months ago, and I thought that was a tight fit. Did no cutting of the metal plate but I inserted a couple of extra fans to allow better heat transport inside the case.

[x56h34]

adolescent wrote:
I think the CVPPC under the drive tray is dangerous.  

Yep, definitely not worth the risk. I think it would be better to use a zorro video card instead, just to play it safe.

Have you thought of "swiss-cheesing" the entire drive tray to help with cooling.  That way you could keep the mounting points for the drive trays but allow much better ventilation.  

That's not a bad idea, but I'm still sort of debating whether it's worth it, that is to cut parts of A3000D casing in general. :-)

[x56h34]

560SL wrote:
Hey x56h34, can we have a look? Would be nice to see some pics of the A3000.

I'll see what I can do. :-)

I'll try and make some pics this coming weekend, or earlier if I find the time.

[Argus]

@x56h34

I have run just such a setup for years, since maybe 1998 and never had a problem.  Of course, I installed my CyberstormPPC as a replacement for an A3640 for which I had cut out a nice 3" square hole in the drive tray where the right hand floppy would be.  Played Quake on it for hours on end, never had a crash.   Several years later I added a large fan over the drive tray hole to increase airflow. Originally, I was just using the A3000's native scsi controller.  About two years ago I added an internal 18Gb Seagate Cheetah 80-pin SCA drive onto the Cyberstorm's controller (much faster!).   Both the CyberstormPPC and CybervisionPPC cards are Phase 5 makes so maybe that's why it's worked so well for so long.