[CB_HK]

What is it?

The Vault L is a hard disk enclosure falling under the Challenge line. It was released as a way for users to easily add a disk array to their network or workstation. It consists of a large enclosure with an internal power supply, two 140mm cooling fans, four differential SCSI connectors, and room for eight hard disks. The end user can configure the drives to operate independently, together in small groups, or, in my case, as one large RAID array with all eight drives striped together.

There are two versions of the Vault L: a Differential SCSI only model and a mixed SCSI model which supports both Differential and Single Ended SCSI. I happened to acquire a Differential only version, which works perfectly when attached to an Onyx.

Acquiring the Vault L

A huge thanks to Ian Mapleson for helping me track down a very elusive Challenge Vault L!

As with most elusive SGI things, one of two things usually happens: you luck out and stumble upon what you're looking for in the most unlikely place, or you post up wherever you can and wait patiently for someone to come along with what you're looking for.

In my case I got very lucky after a conversation with Ian and found out that he happened to have a Vault L that had been sitting unused for quite some time. It was fairly beat up and in need of repair. The power supply was non-functional and the metal skins had started to rust where paint had been nicked away. We worked out the details and in short order I had the unit on its way to the States.


The photo Ian sent of the Vault L. Some of the rust and scratches can be seen.

Tear Down

The Vault L is a relatively simple beast to disassemble. Ian had already done a bit for me, having removed the sled screws and metal stand that helps to balance the unit and prevent it from tipping over. The rest of the unit consists of an outer shell and inner core. The inner core contains the slots for sleds, the backplane (almost identical to that of an Onyx), power supply, fans, and cables needed for power and SCSI.


Large areas of rust were present on the vents. Hard to see in this photo but the fan ports were heavily rusted.


A bit easier to see the rust in this photo. Especially noticeable are the areas surrounding the backplane.


The power supply is a Cherokee unit that likely had use in other commercial and industrial applications.


The opposite side showing where the backplane harness attaches to the PSU.


The PSU removed from the core before shipping off for repair.

Repair

The power supply was no longer functional and needed to be rebuilt. Due to work and the small amount of time I've had in the past few months to work on anything hobby related, I opted to send the PSU to Power Clinic, Inc. in Addison, Texas. I've had units repaired by them before and I can say that their work is top notch.

Additionally, the outer shell and core had a large amount of rust to deal with. Thankfully the backplane, cables, and connectors were undamaged and simply needed a good scrubbing to remove dust and dirt that had accumulated.

Overall the repairs required were minor. Aside from the PSU, sanding down the rust and applying two layers of Rustoluem--one to kill rust and another to match the metal finish--the core was a relatively easy repair.


After a bit of sanding, a coat of rust killer was applied to the heavy areas of damage, followed by a metal finish for top coat.

Painting the Shell

One part of this repair that concerned me initially was finding a color match for Challenge blue. I had decided that if need be, I'd take the front panel in for a color match. Where, I wasn't sure, but I knew at least that I could get the paint color sampled and a code to match it generated. Thankfully I didn't have to go down that route. One of my close friends is a wargaming hobbyist who enjoys assembling, painting, and playing tabletop miniatures. In talking with him about how best to go about paint matching we stumbled upon the fact that Citadel Paints had a color called Thunderhawk Blue which was a 99% match to Challenge blue. A bit of chatting about what would be involved and he agreed to help out with refinishing the outer shell. While we discussed how best to replicate the black finish, I opted to go with a rattle can stain black that matched almost identically to the original finish.


Areas where paint had chipped off showed the worst signs of rust.


In order to do a seamless repair, I decided to paint over almost the entirety of the case, masking off the logos.


This is the bottom of the support bracket that sits flush to the bottom of the shell. You can see the rings that sit on either side helping to balance the unit. The absolute worst rust was present here. All of it was removed and multiple coats of Rustoleum black were applied to bring back a fresh finish.


Citadel Thunderhawk Blue was almost a perfect match for the skins.


This was the largest project my buddy had worked on at this point. You can see there was some trial and error with getting the surface finish correct. If this was something to do again I'd recommend getting an HVLP sprayer to handle the larger area. His airbrush did a great job though.


First coat done. This was a bit concerning to see since there was no way to replicate the logos correctly. I had opted to mask them in order to preserve them. Thankfully, a few things helped solve this: sanding the raised areas, masking as absolutely close as possible (down to the individual shapes) and applying a top clear coat once done.


Way better after applying a few fixes! This is after the top coat had been applied. You can just tell the difference in color when looking inside the logo. When you're more than six inches away the colors blend seamlessly and it's practically impossible to tell them apart.


Finished! I was incredibly happy at how well the paint had turned out.


Back portion showing the SCSI ports and labels.

Preparing the Drives

In the interest of putting together a system which not only mimicked what would have been available at the time but also one that I knew would function correctly, I opted to go with period correct SGI hard disks. A bit of searching and I found a seller on eBay who had a large stock of 68-pin IBM drives that had SGI part numbers. While they were only 4 GB a piece, with 8 drives installed I'd have a 32 GB array which would be plenty for my purposes.


Eight all-original SGI drives on freshly cleaned sleds! This was a relaxing afternoon of taking sleds apart, cleaning them, and reassembling each one to be identical.

Powering Up

Once the PSU came back repaired and the shell, core, and drives were prepared, I began to build the unit back up. It was thankfully as quick as disassembling the system. I connected the unit to my Onyx once complete and went through the process of powering up the Vault, happy to see that all the drives responded and spun up correctly! From there it was a quick process of formatting each as an option drive and then writing a quick script for xlv_make to run. In all it took only about 30 minutes to get the array built completely from scratch--28 minutes of which was initial power-on through formatting.


It's alive! This was after I had a chance to format the disks and setup the unit as one large array. This is during boot, when IRIX is querying the unit and checking to make sure that are no errors before mounting.


Sitting pretty next to the Onyx. This was just before hook-up and getting everything running. This is where it will reside, as my (almost) daily IRIX rig.

Conclusion

The Vault L is not going to win any contests when it comes to other storage options out there. But if you're looking for a period-correct unit that SGI purposely designed to complement their systems and work seamlessly together, then this is it.

It truly is a pleasure to restore something so elusive and bring it back into service. I'm looking forward to using this unit as part of my main system.

Thanks for reading!

[jpstewart]

Thanks for sharing. I've heard of the Vault series before, but never seen pictures of the "L" model. That's a rare and interesting piece of hardware.

[Jacques]

Great write up! Thank you for sharing. It’s a really attractive unit actually!

[CB_HK]

Thank you both! I'm very happy to be able to share something that is rather uncommon. Especially after getting a chance to give it new life.

[Shiunbird]

It looks amazing!