Apple Inc.

Brion E LaPointe

Robert Angelo Riccomini

Ken R Weber

William M Becker

David C Northway

Jeff Wood

An apparatus and a method for securing a component in an electronics housing utilizing an apparatus including a rail attached to a side portion of an electronics housing, a door slidably coupled to the rail, a bezel coupled to the electronics housing and covering a portion of the rail, and a multiple position locking mechanism coupled to the rear of the bezel. The apparatus is used to cover and secure the external components of a server wherein the server contains one or more removable external components that are data drives and the media in those data drives. The locking mechanism includes a rotatable switch lock connected to an axial moving link that rotates a specially designed shaft that contains predetermined locking locations to contact a protruding rib portion of the door and hold or lock the door in a particular position. The multiple position locking mechanism contemplates that the door will be locked in such a position so as to prohibit the removal of the external components completely or alternatively prohibit removal of the external components that are, for example, the data drives, but allow the removal from the electronics housing of the external components that are the media within those drives. Thus, for example, there is a locking position of the door such that a floppy disk on CDROM is removable, whereas the drives that cover the media are not removable.

Three-position locking mechanism

A metal frame is fabricated from magnesium alloy and all the main components of the computer, including the logic board, the hard disk drive, the keyboard, the upper and lower halves of the computer's case, and the pivoting display screen are all directly attached to the frame. The frame thus offers a method for constructing a personal computer which will have greatly improved shock resistance, integrated electromagnetic isolation, and structural strength, without increasing the weight of the completed computer in any significant fashion. Additionally, by means of a cooling flange fabricated as part of the frame, the central processing unit of the portable computer is thermally connected to the frame, which then acts as a heat-sink for the central processing unit, greatly improving its reliability.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Brion E LaPointe