Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!emcard!stiatl!pda
From: pda@stiatl.UUCP (Paul Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Turning micros on their side
Message-ID: <3579@stiatl.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 89 18:16:51 GMT
References: <18284@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: pda@stiatl.UUCP (Paul Anderson)
Organization: Sales Technologies Inc., Atlanta, GA
Lines: 37

In article <18284@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
>->Is there, or should there be any problem turning computers on their
>->side?  I have a z-248 with 2 hard drives, and I need to know if
>->turning it on its side will puty too much work on their mechanisms, or
>->any other adverse effects, like the boards falling out of their slots,
>->and crashing into each other, obliterating the boards, the computer,
>->the R.O.K., all of Europe, the world, and even Life, The Universe, and
>->Everything???

Actually, there is a good reason not to do this with some systems.

The data separator for disk drives is typically very dependant on the
rotational speed of the drive for clocking data properly.  While MFM
controllers seem to do this very effectively, with some percentage
of variation in rotational speed, RLL controllers DO NOT.  It is typically
recommended that drives hooked to an RLL controller be formatted and
used withing 5 degrees of the horizontal plane.

I am quoting this information (loosely) from an article in the March
issue of Computer Shopper.  It bears inspection.  The article was on
building your own 386 machine for a Unix engine.  The info presented
was very well written and down to earth.  I would suggest reading it for
a further description of this situation.

My own experience with RLL controllers and ST238 drives indicate that this
information is exactly correct.  Once I put my drives back on a level 
surface and reformatted them, I no longer had any form of unrecoverable
soft error (well, that is, after the drives came up to operational
temperature   :-)

As far as CPU boards are concerned, just don't point the edge connectors
down, that way the bits won't run out...   :-)

paul
-- 
Paul Anderson		gatech!stiatl!pda		(404) 841-4000
	    X isn't just an adventure, X is a way of life...