Laptop Optical Drive on back wall inside SE/30 case: Interference problems?

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

My Pet IIfx has an internal CD in place of its 5.25" HDD for lid free NuBus Card playtime. Looking at doing same for my new, clear SE/30 testbed.

IDE to SCSI keeps things more simple, but clunky with an unshielded ribbon cable. The drive has plastic windows on the bottom for interference with the Optical Drive itself.



My preferred solution is this SATA DVD/CD, while not a slot loader, being thinner with a better cable system, it's still a far more elegant installation than the PowerBook drive. Though requiring an extra conversion level for SATA->IDE, I'm hoping the SATA conversion cable I ordered is shielded. The bottom of the drive is all metal for shielding and Thin SATA cable connection moves conversion electronics far from the neck board. Thinner profile of the drive clears breakout board cubic entirely. The PATA/whatever drive might possibly interfere with the tallest of breakout boards where the thick section starts, but its "wing"remains clear of breakout board cubic..



Neck board is all analog as is the PSU, so I'm hoping I'm covered from the digital end, but I'm wondering if the Neck board a/o PSU might produce magnetic field interference with the drive mechanism's operations, its electronics or cabling?

So is this a workable notion or a pipe dream?

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In the cutaway of my new SE/SE/30 Testbed you can see just how thick the SE/30 and @maceffects artistic display case really are. Had I thought of adding the Optical ahead of time, I might have been able to avoid the thin slot I'll need to make for clearance, whatever, nothings perfect. :mellow:

 

[maceffects]

Interesting concept!  Things are differently tight in there.  There might be slight interference in my opinion, but as I always say...  Only one way to find out!

I think this photo definitely shows how thick the plastic is.  Most people just assume its cheap thin acrylic plastic :lol:

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

YAH! I had no idea how difficult it would be to cut through all that polycarbonate.  :-O But the Japanese pull saws came through as always. A few more nicks and scratches from the process than I'd like, but I really like the way it turned out. The excised section sits in place, held by craftily angled cuts snugging it up to the side and back under the force of gravity acting on the cantilevered top section. At some point I'll put sections of clear stick-on disks that just happen to be about the same thickness of the saw kerf/missing material.

I hope someone can give a definitive answer about electronic noise a/o magnetic field disturbances. If not, I'll wrap a long IDE cable round and round inside to see how it might affect interfacing with an IDE mac before I order the $35 SCSI converter. So far it's only been trinkets-n-cables out of pocket.