[Beowulf] Re: Yet another type of strange rack rail

[David Mathog]

> It sort of looks like
> the front rail is supposed to slide _behind_ the mounting flanges
> A, but unless the tape drive is especially narrow I wouldn't
> expect it to fit then.

So I tried it anyway and it did fit.  There is a sort of capital
Sigma shape to these rails and that offsets the slides far enough so
that everything clears.  Well, more or less, the UPS above it had a
mount that extended down 1 millimeter too far so I had to move the
tape drive down a slot to clear, but that's another story.

It ended up looking like this (please excuse the ASCII art) top view:

top view
 
 -----------
    X ||  ||                center
 [] X ||  ||           back  rack  front
 D  X  A   B                outside
    X
XXXXX C

Where the mounting bolts went through the two flanges A, through
the front rail C, and into the caged nuts D.  The thumb screw 
went into flange B.  The back mounting flanges also went around
the back rail.

So far I've mounted 5 different 2U cases from 4 manufacturers
and no two had anything vaguely resembling the same mounting system.

Sometimes variety is not the spice of life.

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech