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Xserve Raid to JBOD/NAS Full Stock

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Jan 24, 2017
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Ok so many have tried....few have succeeded but I think I have a good plan in place and am off to a good start. The plan is to convert an Xserve Raid to be used as a JBOD/ SAS expander back to a NAS server or Hackintosh raid controller. This will allow me to keep the case and all of the workings almost fully stock and will look and act very similar to the real deal. Ultimately I'd like it to be an all in one case, but for the first iteration I'm going to attach all 14 drives using a SAS expander card and use a single SAS cable back to a server to raid the setup. The drive trays will be converted to SATA III using a very simple custom PCB that I'm waiting on it to return from fab, and it will allow me to use the lights on each drive so I can see the activity and status just as they exist. It swaps out the rear SCSI connector for SATA to connect to a simple backplane that provides power and the connectors to the SAS expander. While I wait, I've been working on figuring out how to drive all of the status lights on the front so I can use it in combo with a simple Arduino controller to display all the relevant info necessary as it was designed. The only light I'm having issues with is the RAID controller status light. It is not on the same I2C controller as the rest of the lights and I haven't devised a way yet to reverse engineer how to drive it. I've used a multimeter (I believe) to identify which connector pin feeds the positive 5v? power to the light but I haven't been able to sort the rest. Any help from some wizards out there would be awesome. When the rest of the parts come in I will post the build up of the rest of system and how it works. Figuring out the fans, power, controller, were much easier than this one stupid light. Here are links to some short videos show the progress with the status light controls.


 
Ok a little update on figuring out the circuit path to this last light for the raid control status. As far as I can tell there is a 5v shared input coming into the PCB for all of the lights and that 5v is going through 2 resistors before making its way to the led annode. There is a pin in for somehow modulating the light from off, to green, then to red. The cathode sides of the led is on separate paths from the red and green leds and I believe they are tracing to 2 separate mosfets which lead to ground pin. The markings on the mosfets are hard to read but it looks like a1UHN or maybe a1DHN or a1OHN . Its hard to tell. I've searched to death trying to figure out what configuration this may be such that I can figure out how to drive this thing with little luck. I have a working xserve raid and used the multimeter as best as I can to try and see what the supply voltage is on this mystery pin and it does look like 5v. I've reconfigured the arduino several different ways trying to figure out how to get it to light up using pin mode on the mystery pin, I've tried applying 5v directly, looping it to ground etc. If anyone out there has any ideas I'm all ears. I'll abandon this light and come back to it when my other parts arrive, but I hope to figure it out to keep the machine looking and reacting stock. Here are a few photos of what the PCB looks like.
IMG_5551.JPG
IMG_8532.JPG
 
Any updates on this project? Would love to give this a try on my own xraid but only have basic electrical and arduino knowledge.
 
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