- Joined
- Jan 24, 2017
- Messages
- 10
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.