Micropolis Raidion™ LS

DRIVE SERIES SPECIFICATIONS

Description

Micropolis Raidion LS Modular Desktop Storage Enclosure for 5.25-Inch full-height Winchester Hard-Disk Drives.

The Micropolis Raidion™ series of storage enclosures consists of modular bricks of high transfer rate digital storage systems, intercoupled multiple digital storage units. The systems can be scaled from smaller stackable desktop or deskside units, which is a common configuration for the "Raidion LS", or 7-units tall towers more suitable for datacenter use. The Raidion SCSI array lineup was introduced in mid 1991.

Each storage module houses a single SCSI drive, its own power supply and a fan. Over multiple "towers" up to 28 modules can be put into an array. As each modules has its own PSU, the array has higher redundancy but failing drives are not per-se hot-pluggable, as early JBOD LS systems were often daisy-chained and the bus has to be shut down to fix a drive from the array.

To customers the system was sometimes marketed as "Speedstack" due to the ease of how modules could be added. Early Systems that were shipped before the "Raidion" product name was established carry the name "MicroDisk LS" on the top lid. The larger 5.25" system was Micropolis' first step into the modular storage array space. The Raidion LS system, being a simple JBOD enclosure, was usually configured as a software RAID via Micropolis' own RAIDWARE™ Novell extension drivers and connected to a computer system via a SCSI host adapter, like an Adaptec 1502/1505 or 1540 card. Due to how the RAIDWARE software was designed, early versions could only accomodate for Micropolis-built hard-drives - a later software patch removed this limitation. If the software patch can't be applied, it is possible to make drives like the Micropolis 4221, 1991 and similar drives compatible via patching the drives' EEPROM.

Common compatible SCSI controllers:
Adaptec AHA-1540 (ISA)
Adaptec AHA-1640 (PS/2 Microchannel)
Adaptec AHA-1740 (EISA)
Adaptec AHA-2740 (EISA)

Modules and Components

  • RM 2100 - 2100MB capacity, 5.25-inch form-factor
    Array module, part-no AR1926-01-9, for full-height 5.25" Micropolis 1926 and third-party SCSI2 drives
  • RM 3020 - 3020MB capacity, 5.25-inch form-factor
    Array module, part-no AR1936-01-8, for full-height 5.25" Micropolis 1936 and third-party SCSI2 drives
  • 200013-01-9 - 50-pin SCSI cable with one 90deg angled special conector

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