[comp.sys.ibm.pc] External Drives

neumann@udel.EDU (Brian Neumann) (12/27/88)

I am looking for an external hard drive for my XT clone.  I cannot find them
anywhere.  The purpose is to keep two floppy drive and to also have the hard
drive. Is this possible?  The apparent non-existence of external drives
of any sort leads me to believe that this set-up is not possible.  Has
anyone else done this?

dave@westmark.UUCP (Dave Levenson) (12/27/88)

In article <6121@louie.udel.EDU>, neumann@udel.EDU (Brian Neumann) writes:
> I am looking for an external hard drive for my XT clone.  I cannot find them
> anywhere.  The purpose is to keep two floppy drive and to also have the hard
> drive. Is this possible?  The apparent non-existence of external drives
> of any sort leads me to believe that this set-up is not possible.  Has
> anyone else done this?

Yes, it is possible.  Your XT hard disk controller will support up
to two devices.

Remember that there are two cables between the hard disks and their
controller.  One is buss-wired and must attach to both drives.  The
other is a separate cable per drive.  It might be easier to put both
hard disks in the external enclosure, or to use two half-height
devices in your XT system unit.  When you run the ribbon cables from
your system unit to the external enclosure, you'll probably be
building a system that will be non-compliant with FCC part 15 (RF
emissions).

There are several external drive enclosures on the market.  I use
one from Walker Electronics of somewhere in Texas.  It has room for
two full-height devices, and contains a power supply capable of
handling two hard disks.  I have a 67 Mbyte Miniscribe and a 40
Mbyte Tandon connected to an AT&T 6300PLUS running UNIX/DOS.  There
are two diskette drives in the system unit.

-- 
Dave Levenson
Westmark, Inc.		The Man in the Mooney
Warren, NJ USA
{rutgers | att}!westmark!dave

hollen@spot.megatek.uucp (Dion Hollenbeck) (01/03/89)

From article <6121@louie.udel.EDU>, by neumann@udel.EDU (Brian Neumann):
> I am looking for an external hard drive for my XT clone.  I cannot find them
> anywhere.  The purpose is to keep two floppy drive and to also have the hard
> drive. Is this possible?  The apparent non-existence of external drives
> of any sort leads me to believe that this set-up is not possible.  Has
> anyone else done this?

Yes, I have done it, but by buying an external cabinet with power supply
made for disk drives, making my own homebrew cables and running them
out to the drives.  They were flat cables and I am sure radiated much
above the FCC class B regulation specs.  They should have been shielded
but I was just not up for soldering all those connections.

	Dion Hollenbeck             (619) 455-5590 x2814
	Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA  92121

                                seismo!s3sun!megatek!hollen
                                ames!scubed/