On 11/7/21 10:02 PM, Andrew Hakman wrote:
Racks work great when they come together as a system, like you buy a stack of dell servers, and you buy them with a dell rack at the same time, then it all works great. Or you have a bunch of HP equipment -that's setup for rack mounting- and you have an HP test equipment rack. Don't even think about putting HP test equipment into an HP "server" rack - things will inevitably not work somehow. When you try to put a bunch of random stuff together into a random rack, you end up with all sorts of incompatibilities really quickly. The second thing you need after you get a rack is access to a metal brake and a drill press (at the very least) so you can make up custom brackets and other random things you need to get stuff to actually fit into the rack you have. Or at the very least, some way to cut up plywood to make shelves (yes, you can buy shelves, but "rack shelves" tend to be stupidly expensive, but then again so is plywood now... sometimes you can't win for trying!)
While there are definitely some annoying issues, it's not that bleak. It's just a matter of getting the right hardware, primarily the cage nuts/Tinnerman clips/etc that fit, and the screws to fit those.
From my desk in my lab, I can see three Sun racks, one Compaq rack, two DEC racks, one HP rack, and one Spirent rack, all but the latter two having been designed for computers, and all are full of test equipment. No issues.
The big problems start when you start trying to use, for example, Dell rack slides on a piece of HP test equipment. Don't even bother. Get generic rack rails or shelves, like Navepoint, Black Box, etc, and install them in the rack using cage nuts or Tinnerman clips that fit that rack. All of those nuts and clips and such are available on eBay (people taking them home from work by the pocketful) or aftermarket on Amazon etc. All are cheap.
My all-time favorite rack shelves for heavy things are Black Box model RM399. They are dramatically overpriced (Black Box..) but they can sometimes be found on the surplus market via eBay. They will hold vast amounts of gear, four or five heavy HP RF instruments per shelf, very securely, and their mounts are adjustable for racks of different depths. Navepoint makes nice stuff but the steel they use is softer than it should be. Don't overload them.
-Dave
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Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Dave McGuire