> From: NetBSD Bob <nbsdbob@weedcon1.cropsci.ncsu.edu>
> Subject: Mounting HDs in MVII without plastic baseplate?????
> To: port-vax@netbsd.org
> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 14:35:12 -0400 (EDT)
> 
> I am short of those silly plastic base plates used on the hard drives
> in MicroVAXen.  Can I just a) mount the drives loose in the bays, or
> b) drill side mounting holes on the outboard side to hold the drives?
> Will anything stupid like shorts or somesuch occur, i.e., do the drives
> need to be grounded or floating relative to the chassis?

Seems to me that the drives get grounded by their connecting wires.
And maybe even by a push-on grounding-tab wire.

If your system doesn't get bounced around a lot, just stuff the
drives into the bays.  But be sure to put some electrical insulating
material between the printed circuit on the bottom of the drive and
the surface it rests on.  A couple of IBM cards used to do the
job for me.

Also note that the same drive mounting plates were used on other DEC
computers, including the Rainbow and a variety of Micro-PDP systems.
At one time a third-party hardware supplier (Sigma) sold bent-up sheet
aluminum disk mounting base plates which fit in the same slots.

   carl