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IBM PC cover plate over drives

vwestlife

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OK, so does anyone still have the original IBM cover plate that goes over the PC's disk drives? I suppose it is intended to keep dust out of the drives when you're not changing disks. I have an old book that pictures it, but since I never actually saw one in real life and the photos in the book are just stock IBM press photos, I thought it might be "vaporware"... until I came across this web page and it is pictured!

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/ibm-5150

Click to enlarge:
 
add-on

add-on

I always thought they were genuine required fake add-on, kinda like cd-stabilizers.
strollin, can you pleeeese post some pics ?
patscc
 
The Industrial Grade XTs (&PCs?) have similar, only semi transparent gray plexi, and hinged at the bottom. I never saw that exact one, but I did have a Kaypro PC once that had one 'bout like that. I'm pretty sure it's third-party.

--T
 
OK, here are some pics. It's pretty basic, just a molded black plastic plate with a gasket around the edge. There are no markings to identify the manufacturer.
 

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I always thought they were genuine required fake add-on, kinda like cd-stabilizers.
strollin, can you pleeeese post some pics ?
patscc

I think they're as geniue as the anti-glare filters people put on their monitors.
 
Does look cute. I need one for my trailer/home. I live 100' from a dirt road and man, o' man, I get the dust here like you wouldn't believe.

I don't think I would want to leave it in place while operationing the computer, if I had a hard drive in the bottom drive slot. You get tons of information about what is going on from that little itty bitty red disk activity LED.
 
I got two of them, one black and one somkey gary for my 5150 and 5161. The last one I saw sold for well over 100 bucks on ebay it had a keyboard cover with it also.

Now, that keyboard cover rings a bell. I suggest getting out an Inmac catalog from the mid 80's to see if these things show up--I'll bet they do. I suppose that checking some PC-oriented magazines of the time might also show them.

Sort of in the same category as the printer and monitor cozies that showed up around then too.
 
They're standard on the industrial grade units, cause a whole buncha nasties can enter via that route in a harsh environment. Of course, those units also have a case fan for cooling besides the one in the power supply..

--T
 
It's possible that a small percentage of the cooling air enters the computer through the slots in the floppy(s) drive(s). I would just use it when the computer was off.
FWIW, on the later model XTs, IBM glued a plastic sheet over the vent holes below the disk drives, to restrict the cooling air intake to only the vents in front of the motherboard and circuit boards, where it is more important.

Floppy drives don't really generate any heat due to their intermittent use; the one thing that does kill them in the long run is the amount of dust sucked across their mechanism and read/write heads, so blocking off that air flow would have a beneficial effect, IMO. (I know on the full-size PS/2 towers, the large cooling fan is directly behind the disk drives, and you can actually feel the air flow getting sucked through them -- and coincidentally or not, those PS/2 floppy drives have a very high failure rate.)

The real ideal would be a fanless computer, but the PC and XT just have too much circuitry in them (and a hot-running hard drive in the XT) to make that possible. My Tandy 1000RL, however, is fanless, and it is immaculate inside -- not a speck of dust inside the case!
 
I wasn't worried about the cooling anyway. It's all the information you get from the hard disk activity led. Can tell you a lot about what might be gong on.
 
They're standard on the industrial grade units, cause a whole buncha nasties can enter via that route in a harsh environment. Of course, those units also have a case fan for cooling besides the one in the power supply

It also matters how the case is pressurized. Not uncommon (at least my Cytec rackmount unit has it) is a large fan fronted by a filter positively pressurizing the case. Air comes out of the nooks and crannies to the outside, but it's clean.

The downside is that you have to keep the filters clean.

I used to reverse the direction of airflow with PSU fans on my PCs routinely and add a filter to the back of the case. Now it doesn't seem to be cost-effective.
 
Yah, that's the way they're set up, to suck in thru a filter.

Veering slightly off-topic, how many of youse still have the plastic rear cover plates for your ATs? Are any of 'em intact (i.e. none of the expansion slot covers snapped out)?

--T
 
Cover me!

Cover me!

Speaking of covers, anyone have a 1/2 height black front from the old seagate type hard drives?

Thanks!

Message me if you have to sell.
 
...I know on the full-size PS/2 towers, the large cooling fan is directly behind the disk drives, and you can actually feel the air flow getting sucked through them -- and coincidentally or not, those PS/2 floppy drives have a very high failure rate...

By your description this would be the Model 60s, 65SXs, and 80s, not the later Model 85s and 95s (which were PS/2 towers, but had the power supply and fans at the bottom of the units). Of course the Model 85 and 95s were able to use the 2.88Mb diskette drives, and usually had them stock. The 2.88Mb had a hinged cover over the diskette entry door, which kept most dust out.
 
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