Opening an external LaCie Tsumami case

[eric]

I recently got an iconic and hard to come by LaCie Tsunami drive - which was very discolored and dead. I'd love to stick an external BlueSCSI in it and have some period correct external storage for my Macs and I couldnt find any instructions on how this case is opened, so here they are!

First look at the back, on the top side of this photo you can see 2 of the vents have a clips in them. I did break one of the plastic parts between the vents because it was so brittle.

Find something plastic that fits and push down firmly but gently and it will eventually pop out like so. Have some other plastic guitar pics to hold it open so it doesn't latch back in!

Each side of the front fan has 3 little latches, these actually came off fairly easily just by popping the guitar pick down into them.

Remove the two screws

And that's it! You're in!

 

[eric]

Removing the internal drive was actually harder than I expected.

First unscrew the posts from the DB25 connector. Then unscrew the ground. Remove the SCSI select wires.
Push the DB25 back and inside, it's very tight but you should be able to move stuff around and pull it out.

It seems to have an active terminator setup and a dupont wire hooking up to 5v. I'm not sure if the switches control termination or not. Have to find the manual or tone it out.

I didn't get a good shot of this part but there is also a screw at the front. Remove it and jiggle the HDD side to side a bit and it'll start to move. Then push back towards where the DB25 connectors were and it'll slide back and you can lift it out.

The PSU just remove all the connections and it lifts out, nothing is holding it on.

This drive has a ton of Dupont wires and things kind of just tacked on all over, very strange.

Oh well, now to clean it up and put a BlueSCSI in it.

 

[wottle]

I picked up one of these a while back and was thinking of doing something similar. I must say, they yellow worse than the space key on my IIc... I'll definitely be using this guide to help me disassemble before retrobrighting... Thanks for documenting!

 

[wottle]

So I finally decided to fire mine up and was surprised the 250MB Quantum inside still worked. Extremely load, so I doubt it will last long. Not a problem, as I'll be throwing a BlueSCSI in mine once my PCBs come in.

Are you removing all the electronics, PCU and all, and simply having the BlueSCSI powered by the SCSI cable?

I know I ran into an issue with the BlueSCSI without external power on a couple old Powerbooks with the SCSI dongle. So having external power wouldn't be a terrible thing. I may look to find a place to add a microUSB power on the back in case I need to power it when needed. Or I could use the existing power cord with a molex power adapter to power it...

 

[eric]

Are you removing all the electronics, PCU and all, and simply having the BlueSCSI powered by the SCSI cable?

I'll likely wire in a usb power adapter where the psu was so it's all enclosed. Better to have external power and not need it than to need it and not have it.

 

[techav]

I have one of these I picked up from Computer Reset. Be sure to take a good look at the power supply. The filter capacitors had burst open in mine. I also had to replace the fan. Surprisingly everything still worked just fine, bad caps and all.

I'm running a blueSCSI in it at the moment, but once I get one of the newer DB25 models I'll probably put the original drive back in the case. (It's currently in my Classic. A 9GB Classic is just .. absurd)

 

[lilliputian]

Just got one of these enclosures for cheap on ebay. Since it has no drive installed, I have my options for what I want to do with it. Thanks for the teardown instructions!

Do we know the dipswitch settings for the SCSI ID?

 

[dramirez]

Do we know the dipswitch settings for the SCSI ID?

Shoud be something like:

1 2 4 T

0 0 0 0 SCSI ID 0, Termination Off
1 0 0 0 SCSI ID 1, Termination Off
0 1 0 0 SCSI ID 2, Termination Off
1 1 0 0 SCSI ID 3, Termination Off
0 0 1 0 SCSI ID 4, Termination Off
1 0 1 0 SCSI ID 5, Termination Off
0 1 1 0 SCSI ID 6, Termination Off
1 1 1 0 SCSI ID 7, Termination Off
0 0 0 1 SCSI ID 0, Termination On
1 0 0 1 SCSI ID 1, Termination On
0 1 0 1 SCSI ID 2, Termination On
1 1 0 1 SCSI ID 3, Termination On
0 0 1 1 SCSI ID 4, Termination On
1 0 1 1 SCSI ID 5, Termination On
0 1 1 1 SCSI ID 6, Termination On
1 1 1 1 SCSI ID 7, Termination On