rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) (11/16/90)
Someone posted an ad for used ST equipment and made mention of "a Supra Hard Drive Interface" and a Seagate hard drive. From this I infer that Supra markets an interface that allows one to use a nice cheap IBM style hard-drive on one's ST. Is this correct? And if it is so cheap to get set up with the interface and drive, why would anyone choose anything else for his or her ST? -Roy Wood.
src@cs.odu.edu (Scott R. Chilcote) (11/17/90)
In article <1990Nov16.003735.14049@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes: > >Someone posted an ad for used ST equipment and made mention of "a Supra Hard >Drive Interface" and a Seagate hard drive. From this I infer that Supra >markets an interface that allows one to use a nice cheap IBM style hard-drive >on one's ST. Is this correct? And if it is so cheap to get set up with the >interface and drive, why would anyone choose anything else for his or her ST? > >-Roy Wood. Why wouldn't anyone want to buy an interface and use a standard hard disk? Is that your question? Here's my answer... A Supra hard drive interface costs $100, if you can still get one. There is a better product out now (I should know, I bought the Supra) from ICD, and it's about $130 mail order. This is called a HOST ADAPTER. Everything is an interface these days, so let's keep things clear. The Host Adapter plugs into the ST's DMA port (one of the very wise parts of an ST) and converts these signals to be SCSI compatible. You can have up to 10 DMA devices, and data rates have the potential to be 2 Megs per second through this port. Fast! Okay, so that's a start. You mentioned cheap IBM-PC style drives. But now we only have SCSI compatibility. Whoops! So you need to convert from SCSI to ST-412/506 now, if you want to use an off-the-shelf MFM or RLL-encoded PC type hard disk. What now? Well, the best and easiest choice is to get an SCSI compatible drive instead. This costs $30-$150 more than an equivalent ST-412/506 hard disk. The other choice is to buy a second "adapter", which converts from SCSI to ST-412/506. These come in both MFM and RLL flavors, and Adaptec is a good choice. They sell them for about $130, depending on the model. It will let you connect TWO cheap PC-type hard disks with one board. An extra savings... But now you need a hard disk, and hopefully one that's supported by the Supra or ICD formatting software. Otherwise you need a lot of specific information about your disks. And you need a box. And you need a power supply. And you need cabling. And you need the luck of the Irish, because if just one of all those connections you made is flaky, it is a long, arduous trail. It takes very sophisticated equipment to debug a hard disk setup -- or lots of trial and error. If you approach the chore correctly, you can do all this, save $50 - $200 over the cost of a mail-order ready made hard drive, and have a dependable machine. If, say, you get a bad part in the mail (which one) it is sheer hell. I went through all of this about two years ago, and wound up with a 65 Meg hard disk after six months of struggle. Not only did I get a bad hard disk, I got a bad Adaptek SCSI-RLL adapter! I'd still do it again, rather than buy a new setup. It has run without fail since then, and I need more space now. _________________ src@cs.odu.edu Scott R. Chilcote
depeche@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Acme Instant Dehydrated Boulder Kit) (11/18/90)
>In article <1990Nov16.003735.14049@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes: >> >>Someone posted an ad for used ST equipment and made mention of "a Supra Hard >>Drive Interface" and a Seagate hard drive. From this I infer that Supra >>markets an interface that allows one to use a nice cheap IBM style hard-drive >>on one's ST. Is this correct? And if it is so cheap to get set up with the >>interface and drive, why would anyone choose anything else for his or her ST? >> Well, I bought a supra 30mb hard disk, and it is a box, with interface and power supply, and inside it is, lo and behold, a SEAGATE hard disk mechanism. And in fact, the documentation lists my "supra serial number" and my "seagate serial number". just thought you'd like to know. -- |S. Alan Ezust | depeche@cs.mcgill.ca | |McGill University School of Computer Science | Montreal, Quebec, Canada | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Please note the new e-mail address!!! |
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (11/20/90)
In article <1990Nov17.032431.25272@cs.odu.edu> src@cs.odu.edu (Scott R. Chilcote) writes: >In article <1990Nov16.003735.14049@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes: >>Someone posted an ad for used ST equipment and made mention of "a Supra Hard >>Drive Interface" and a Seagate hard drive. From this I infer that Supra >>markets an interface that allows one to use a nice cheap IBM style hard-drive >>on one's ST. Is this correct? And if it is so cheap to get set up with the >>interface and drive, why would anyone choose anything else for his or her ST? >Why wouldn't anyone want to buy an interface and use a standard hard disk? >Is that your question? >Here's my answer... >A Supra hard drive interface costs $100, if you can still get one. There is >a better product out now (I should know, I bought the Supra) from ICD, and it's >about $130 mail order. This is called a HOST ADAPTER. Everything is an >interface these days, so let's keep things clear. I just bought an ICD host adapter last week, for around $84. This is their Advantage ST, minus clock, which I didn't need for use in my Mega. Their AdSCSI ST Plus has the clock, and is 10-20 bucks more, and also about twice the size. >The Host Adapter plugs into the ST's DMA port (one of the very wise parts of >an ST) and converts these signals to be SCSI compatible. You can have up to >10 DMA devices, and data rates have the potential to be 2 Megs per second >through this port. Fast! Just to add here - the ICD docs say they support the full SCSI command set, and will also support SCSI-2 commands. Sounds cool to me, tho I've yet to obtain any hardware that needs the SCSI-2 compatibility... >Okay, so that's a start. You mentioned cheap IBM-PC style drives. But now we >only have SCSI compatibility. Whoops! So you need to convert from SCSI to >ST-412/506 now, if you want to use an off-the-shelf MFM or RLL-encoded PC type >hard disk. What now? >Well, the best and easiest choice is to get an SCSI compatible drive instead. I concur. These are the best performance drives, anyway... >This costs $30-$150 more than an equivalent ST-412/506 hard disk. The other >choice is to buy a second "adapter", which converts from SCSI to ST-412/506. >These come in both MFM and RLL flavors, and Adaptec is a good choice. They >sell them for about $130, depending on the model. It will let you connect >TWO cheap PC-type hard disks with one board. An extra savings... I've often wondered if that was the way to go... more drives per controller sounds like a good idea, dunno why. Just a gut feeling. >But now you need a hard disk, and hopefully one that's supported by the Supra >or ICD formatting software. Otherwise you need a lot of specific information >about your disks. And you need a box. And you need a power supply. And you >need cabling. And you need the luck of the Irish, because if just one of all >those connections you made is flaky, it is a long, arduous trail. It takes >very sophisticated equipment to debug a hard disk setup -- or lots of trial and >error. Hey, I have a shoebox case with 40 watt power supply I will be trying to get rid of Real Soon now... It ran a Quantum 80 and Miniscribe 8425S faithfully for 2 years. (Setup for 2 half-height or 1 full-height drive, power for 2 drives plus fan.) I guess you do need luck in getting good parts, I haven't had trouble on this end yet. You *do* need to be *incredibly* careful about the cabling though... That's why I'm selling this case and power supply, and needed a new host adapter last week, 'cause I wasn't careful enough. Don't ever ever ever plug a SCSI cable in backwards. I fried my old Supra host adapter and my Quantum drive. (Really fried the host adapter. smoke, vaporized PCB traces, the works. Sigh. And that one had a working clock and battery on it...) Needless to say, mistakes can be very expensive. I still have to get my drive repaired. >If you approach the chore correctly, you can do all this, save $50 - $200 over >the cost of a mail-order ready made hard drive, and have a dependable machine. >If, say, you get a bad part in the mail (which one) it is sheer hell. I went >through all of this about two years ago, and wound up with a 65 Meg hard disk >after six months of struggle. Not only did I get a bad hard disk, I got a bad >Adaptek SCSI-RLL adapter! >I'd still do it again, rather than buy a new setup. It has run without fail >since then, and I need more space now. Heh - that was the exact reason I got started on this ordeal... Got a Syquest drive and needed to move to a bigger case to hold everything. Mounted the Quantum upside down relative to its old position, didn't notice that I now needed to twist the cable around to match... Plugged everything in straight, and boom. At least the other drives didn't smoke too, I would've probably thrown everything out the window at that point. Oh well. So now I have a brand new Syquest staring at me, waiting for me to fill some cartridges (this is neat!) with data. Of course, I *had* been planning to use it to back up my Quantum....... Sigh. 88 megs, and nothing to do. Don't let this happen to you... I still think it's worthwhile to build your own system, if you're at least half competent. (As obviously I am not. Sheesh.) Mail order places sell these Syquest packages for around $700-900, and I got mine for about $500, plus the $85 for the unexpected expense of a new host adapter... -- -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan Mac// - adv., q.v. MacToo, e.g. McHave a McHappy McDay! McThanks, McYou MacToo!