Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!ukc!sys.uea!cmp8118
From: cmp8118@sys.uea.ac.uk (D.S. Cartwright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turning the computer on it's side
Message-ID: <1548@sys.uea.ac.uk>
Date: 4 Jun 90 13:09:36 GMT
References: <27220@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Organization: UEA, Norwich, UK
Lines: 35

v081nhdb@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Nina Banerjee) writes:

>The reason not to turn the computer on it's side,unless you have a tower case,
>is the hard drives. In the tower cases, the drive slots are horizontal, though
>the system is vertical, so they work fine. I don't think it matters of you 
>only have floppy drives. This is what a friend of mine in the computer 
>business told me.

	But are they horizontal ?? Don't quote me on this, bit I'm pretty sure
the last few Model 80's I opened up had the hard drives on their sides. I have
a feeling it's all to do with what machine you have. I can't read the original
question that Nina's note is the response to (our system threw it away when it
expired), but I can only guess that it depends what drives you've got.

	For example, I have a feeling you'd have very few problems sitting a 
PS/2-80 on a desk, though it's not the recommended thing to do (if you want to 
do that, IBM sell you a model 70 !!). One fact to consider is "Do they rely on 
gravity or an absence of it ??". Does it help the disk life of a Model 80 hard 
drive if it's hung on its side, so that there are no gravitational forces 
trying to push the heads against the surfaces ?? Does the Earth's pull help the
heads to unpark themselves in the morning ?? I reckon the disks are designed to
work either way (i.e. the heads are strong enough not to crash into the disks
and the unpark mechanism can manage quite well on its own without any help from
Isaac Newton). Anyone out there listening who designed the disks ??

	Just a few thoughts to be going on with ...


		Dave C.

-- 
 Dave Cartwright,               | cmp8118@sys.uea.ac.uk or uk.ac.uea.sys
 School of Information Systems, |  depending on what mood the mailer's in ...
 University of East Anglia,     | "Computing Science undergraduates do it
 Norwich, ENGLAND. NR4 7TJ.     |    concurrently, using multiple ports ..."