I have a NeXT turbo color station.
I'm researching on how to get it up and running.
The hard drive can't boot (I was advised in a different thread to replace it) but one thing I noticed was that it's very loud. Even when it was working, I remember the workstation to always be loud.
Can anything be done to reduce the noise?
My guess is that my scsi hard drive is loud...Are there brands out there that are compatible with less noise?
Solid state drives?
I see posts about scsi2sd...What is that?
The SCSI2SD is the way to go. It's a small board that allows you to use a micro SD card in place of a mechanical hard drive. It uses a 50-pin SCSI connector so it can be directly connected to the NeXT logic board. To set it up, you connect the SCSI2SD to your modern PC and set some parameters so the SD card can be recognized as bootable media by your NeXT computer. Inertial Computing sells them in the US.
See store.inertialcomputing.com. They have two versions: v5 and v6. Either should work, but v5 is cheaper and is what most of us have installed in our computers.
Switching to a solid state drive also allows you to safely install a quieter fan since the heat inside the case will be significantly reduced.
Indeed. Those old SCSI hard drives run HOT.
I replaced the very loud drive in my nextstation with a SCSI2SD and the fan with a Noctua 80mm. It's barely audible now.
How is SCSI2SD mounted to black hardware?
The noise is the best part, I like hearing the big hard drives spooling up like a jet engine, its part of the era! :-)
For those who insist on running a spinny drive, the Seagate Barracuda 36ES2 ST318418N is the quietest and most modern 50 pin SCSI drive you can get for your NeXT. I have two of them and love them...