Overhauling a Dell Dimension 8400

I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.

All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
someone elaborate on what they are?

I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

Searcher7 wrote:
> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
> the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
> drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.
>
> All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
> secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
> I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
> someone elaborate on what they are?
>
> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
> just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
> drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Darren Harris
> Staten Island, New York.

I see some slides in the manual. Funny what the owner would
have done with them. The slides generally are different,
on different computer cases, so there is no point keeping them.
Unless maybe, you owned a second 8400.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1054037

Paul

Searcher7 wrote:
> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
> the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
> drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.
>
> All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
> secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
> I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
> someone elaborate on what they are?
>
> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
> just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
> drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Darren Harris
> Staten Island, New York.

Darren,

The orignal 8400 drives were mounted with green mounting brackets that
slide into matching slots and latch. Optical drives go in the top two
external drive bays, and hard drives in the lowest two drive bays.

The factory original hard drive was a SATA drive, not an IDE drive.

You can buy the drive mounting hardware inexpensively on eBay.

The 8400 is a sturdy and respectable system, and well worth the effort
to refurbish. Memory used is 400- or 533-MHz DDR2 unbuffered SDRAM.

.... Ben Myers

On Jan 19, 1:13 am, Ben Myers <ben_my...@charter.net> wrote:
> Searcher7 wrote:
> > I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
> > the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
> > drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.
>
> > All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
> > secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
> > any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
> > I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
> > someone elaborate on what they are?
>
> > I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
> > just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
> > drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?
>
> > Thanks.
>
> > Darren Harris
> > Staten Island, New York.
>
> Darren,
>
> The orignal 8400 drives were mounted with green mounting brackets that
> slide into matching slots and latch. Optical drives go in the top two
> external drive bays, and hard drives in the lowest two drive bays.
>
> The factory original hard drive was a SATA drive, not an IDE drive.
>
> You can buy the drive mounting hardware inexpensively on eBay.
>
> The 8400 is a sturdy and respectable system, and well worth the effort
> to refurbish. Memory used is 400- or 533-MHz DDR2 unbuffered SDRAM.
>
> ... Ben Myers

Thanks.

I see some rails on eBay, but I don't know if the rails for the
optical drives are the same rails used for the hard drives in the
lower two compartments.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

Searcher7 wrote:
> On Jan 19, 1:13 am, Ben Myers <ben_my...@charter.net> wrote:
>> Searcher7 wrote:
>>> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
>>> the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
>>> drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.
>>> All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
>>> secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
>>> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
>>> I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
>>> someone elaborate on what they are?
>>> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
>>> just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
>>> drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?
>>> Thanks.
>>> Darren Harris
>>> Staten Island, New York.
>> Darren,
>>
>> The orignal 8400 drives were mounted with green mounting brackets that
>> slide into matching slots and latch. Optical drives go in the top two
>> external drive bays, and hard drives in the lowest two drive bays.
>>
>> The factory original hard drive was a SATA drive, not an IDE drive.
>>
>> You can buy the drive mounting hardware inexpensively on eBay.
>>
>> The 8400 is a sturdy and respectable system, and well worth the effort
>> to refurbish. Memory used is 400- or 533-MHz DDR2 unbuffered SDRAM.
>>
>> ... Ben Myers
>
> Thanks.
>
> I see some rails on eBay, but I don't know if the rails for the
> optical drives are the same rails used for the hard drives in the
> lower two compartments.
>
> Darren Harris
> Staten Island, New York.

There are two types of green mounting brackets. A pair of the long ones
is used to mount optical drives in the external drive bays. A pair of
short ones secures a hard drive into one of the internal bays. As
original equipment shipped with a computer, the brackets have
slightly-longer-than-usual mounting screws, but I have used standard
Philips head mounting screws of the standard length found in generic
computers. Mouting screws are different, too. Optical and floppy
drives require a screw of smaller size and smaller thread than hard
drives... Ben Myers

wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:51:06 -0800 (PST), Searcher7
> <> brought the following to our attention:
>
>> On Jan 19, 1:13 am, Ben Myers <ben_my...@charter.net> wrote:
>>> Searcher7 wrote:
>>>> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally managed to open
>>>> the case to take inventory, there was, a 10G IDE hard drive, a CD-RW
>>>> drive the slave on the same cable, and a floppy drive.
>>>> All were loosely placed in the drive compartments with no way to
>>>> secure them. I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
>>>> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments, so obviously
>>>> I'm missing some parts that were used to hold the drives in place. Can
>>>> someone elaborate on what they are?
>>>> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives anyway, so should I
>>>> just ditch the case for another? Or is there a plausible way to secure
>>>> drives inside these compartments which lack other hardware?
>>>> Thanks.
>>>> Darren Harris
>>>> Staten Island, New York.
>>> Darren,
>>>
>>> The orignal 8400 drives were mounted with green mounting brackets that
>>> slide into matching slots and latch. Optical drives go in the top two
>>> external drive bays, and hard drives in the lowest two drive bays.
>>>
>>> The factory original hard drive was a SATA drive, not an IDE drive.
>>>
>>> You can buy the drive mounting hardware inexpensively on eBay.
>>>
>>> The 8400 is a sturdy and respectable system, and well worth the effort
>>> to refurbish. Memory used is 400- or 533-MHz DDR2 unbuffered SDRAM.
>>>
>>> ... Ben Myers
>> Thanks.
>>
>> I see some rails on eBay, but I don't know if the rails for the
>> optical drives are the same rails used for the hard drives in the
>> lower two compartments.
>>
>> Darren Harris
>> Staten Island, New York.
>
> I recently tried to order some mounting hardware from Dell.. but it was
> a huge bureaucratic nightmare, and I ended up returning the brackets to
> Dell anyway. In the 670, the green drive brackets are smaller that the
> green CD brackets. They are shorter.
>
> -Ed

With these brackets being so plentiful and inexpensive on eBay, I doubt
that it makes sense to try to order them from Dell... Ben Myers

Hi!

> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally
> managed to open the case to take inventory, there was,
> a 10G IDE hard drive

Surprising. I know that when I ordered my Dim8300 directly from Dell,
the smallest drive choice available was an 80GB unit. (It was toward
the end of the 8300's lifetime.) All the uplevel drive choices were
SATA.

Something makes me think that someone shoved whatever parts would fit
into the system to "make it work".

I would doubt that the Dim8400 *ever* came with a PATA hard disk from
the factory.

> a CD-RW drive the slave on the same cable

Dell didn't do it that way from the factory.

> I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments,
> so obviously I'm missing some parts that were used
> to hold the drives in place. Can someone elaborate on
> what they are?

Dell used a series of green rails to mount the drives in this system.
You may have spares stuck to the inside of the case, on the half that
opens up. If you do, use those. If not, someone here probably has
some. I have some that I don't need on a loose hard drive, so if all
else fails...pay postage and they're yours.

(You can contact me off group using wct <atsign> walshcomptech <dot>
com...)

These rails plug or screw into the screw holes in each drive, and then
you slide the drive into the case.

> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives
> anyway, so should I just ditch the case for another?

I'm not sure you can do that, the motherboard may not quite fit.

The Dim8400 is a pretty competent machine, with the Intel 915 chipset
and an LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU. I think it would be worthwhile to put a
few dollars worth of work into it...it still performs quite well.

William

William R. Walsh wrote:
> Hi!
>
>> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally
>> managed to open the case to take inventory, there was,
>> a 10G IDE hard drive
>
> Surprising. I know that when I ordered my Dim8300 directly from Dell,
> the smallest drive choice available was an 80GB unit. (It was toward
> the end of the 8300's lifetime.) All the uplevel drive choices were
> SATA.
>
> Something makes me think that someone shoved whatever parts would fit
> into the system to "make it work".
>
> I would doubt that the Dim8400 *ever* came with a PATA hard disk from
> the factory.
>
>> a CD-RW drive the slave on the same cable
>
> Dell didn't do it that way from the factory.
>
>> I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
>> any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments,
>> so obviously I'm missing some parts that were used
>> to hold the drives in place. Can someone elaborate on
>> what they are?
>
> Dell used a series of green rails to mount the drives in this system.
> You may have spares stuck to the inside of the case, on the half that
> opens up. If you do, use those. If not, someone here probably has
> some. I have some that I don't need on a loose hard drive, so if all
> else fails...pay postage and they're yours.
>
> (You can contact me off group using wct <atsign> walshcomptech <dot>
> com...)
>
> These rails plug or screw into the screw holes in each drive, and then
> you slide the drive into the case.
>
>> I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives
>> anyway, so should I just ditch the case for another?
>
> I'm not sure you can do that, the motherboard may not quite fit.
>
> The Dim8400 is a pretty competent machine, with the Intel 915 chipset
> and an LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU. I think it would be worthwhile to put a
> few dollars worth of work into it...it still performs quite well.
>
> William

Correction. The Dimension 8400 motherboard, mounted on a metal plate,
will NOT fir in a generic computer case without substantial surgery to
either the motherboard or the case. People are warned not to try this
at home. I don't ever do it either at the office... Ben Myers

GMAN wrote:
> In article <414daf32-026d-4456-bf6c->, "William R. Walsh" <> wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>>> I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally
>>> managed to open the case to take inventory, there was,
>>> a 10G IDE hard drive
>> Surprising. I know that when I ordered my Dim8300 directly from Dell,
>> the smallest drive choice available was an 80GB unit. (It was toward
>> the end of the 8300's lifetime.) All the uplevel drive choices were
>> SATA.
>>
>> Something makes me think that someone shoved whatever parts would fit
>> into the system to "make it work".
>>
>> I would doubt that the Dim8400 *ever* came with a PATA hard disk from
>> the factory.
>>
>>> a CD-RW drive the slave on the same cable
>> Dell didn't do it that way from the factory.
>>
>
> I have a Dell 2400 that was done "That Way".
>
>
>>> I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't

The Dimension 2400 (also 2300, 2350, 4600, 4700, B110, 3000 and Optiplex
GX170) chassis is a microATX chassis in which Dell could have cabled the
hard drive and the optical drive together on one IDE cable.

Distances between drive bays on the Dimension 8400 (also 8300, 8200,
8250, 4550, 4500, 4400, 4300 and various Precision models) are such that
it is nearly impossible to cable optical drive and hard drive together
if they are mounted as Dell did at the factory. To do so would also
require a non-standard cable longer than the 18" standard, and likely to
cause sporadic malfunctions of drives due to corrupted electronic
signals carried along the too-long cable... Ben Myers

On Jan 19, 11:48 am, "William R. Walsh" <wm_wa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > I picked up a Dell Dimension 8400, and when I finally
> > managed to open the case to take inventory, there was,
> > a 10G IDE hard drive
>
> Surprising. I know that when I ordered my Dim8300 directly from Dell,
> the smallest drive choice available was an 80GB unit. (It was toward
> the end of the 8300's lifetime.) All the uplevel drive choices were
> SATA.
>
> Something makes me think that someone shoved whatever parts would fit
> into the system to "make it work".
>
> I would doubt that the Dim8400 *ever* came with a PATA hard disk from
> the factory.
>
> > a CD-RW drive the slave on the same cable
>
> Dell didn't do it that way from the factory.
>
> > I'm not familiar with these PC cases, and there aren't
> > any screw holes in the three metal drive compartments,
> > so obviously I'm missing some parts that were used
> > to hold the drives in place. Can someone elaborate on
> > what they are?
>
> Dell used a series of green rails to mount the drives in this system.
> You may have spares stuck to the inside of the case, on the half that
> opens up. If you do, use those. If not, someone here probably has
> some. I have some that I don't need on a loose hard drive, so if all
> else fails...pay postage and they're yours.
>
> (You can contact me off group using wct <atsign> walshcomptech <dot>
> com...)
>
> These rails plug or screw into the screw holes in each drive, and then
> you slide the drive into the case.
>
> > I want to upgrade the 256mb ram, and add drives
> > anyway, so should I just ditch the case for another?
>
> I'm not sure you can do that, the motherboard may not quite fit.
>
> The Dim8400 is a pretty competent machine, with the Intel 915 chipset
> and an LGA775 Pentium 4 CPU. I think it would be worthwhile to put a
> few dollars worth of work into it...it still performs quite well.
>
> William

Thanks.

Your e-mail bounced back.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.