Guided Tour - Fourth Stop: The Drive Zone

(We are now looking toward the front of the computer, on the computer's right side.)

At the bottom of the picture, we see the metal case which encloses the power supply. To its side is the area we looked at at our previous stop. In the upper half of the picture, we see all the drives present in the computer.

At the top of the picture is a metal frame or "mounting tray" in which all the drives are mounted. The frame can be slid backwards and lifted out of the computer to allow for easier access to the bays. There are two 5.25" bays (on the left) and two 3.5" bays (on the right). The "3x3 series" of this computer lacks the bottom 5.25" bay, so that the case can be shorter.

The large drive at the upper left is the CD-ROM drive. The large four-conductor cable carries power from the power supply. The ribbon cable connects to the Sound144AM card, as does the thin cable next to the ribbon cable.

The small drive at the upper right is the floppy drive. The small four-conductor cable is also a power cable, carrying the same voltages as the large cable on the other drives. The ribbon cable (with some wires twisted) goes to the motherboard, as seen earlier. The twist in the cable is important. The cable has one connector at one end (for the motherboard), one connector in the middle, and one connector at the other end (as seen here). The middle connector goes to drive B, if the computer has two disk drives. The twist in the cable allows the computer to tell each drive apart. Some computers use a non-twisted cable, in which case a jumper on the drive must be set to tell the drive to act as A or B.

Below these two top drives, we can partially see the two hard drives. The drive on the right has the large four-conductor power cable and the 40-conductor ribbon cable attached, but the drive on the left is not connected. The drive on the right is mounted in a 3.5" bay. On the left, a drive (with the same physical size) is mounted in a 5.25" bay, using special mounting brackets. These brackets didn't fit too well in the frame - more information is in my "My Experiences with IDE..." page.

Below the bay is a fairly thick cable which runs from the power supply to the power switch on the front of the computer. We cannot see this cable in this picture.

At the next stop on our tour, we'll take a closer look at these drives, from couple different angles.