peters@cc.msstate.edu (Frank W. Peters) (04/04/89)
I recently posted a query regarding third party disks for the Sun. My was in two parts. >We are currently looking into the purchase of a local disk for one of our >diskless 3/50s. We would like to get 300 to 500 meg or so. Does anyone >have any recommendation of a good third party drive in this size range (or >horror stories about one we should NOT get)? __________ wizard!neil@uunet.UU.NET (Neil Gorsuch), from Uninet Peripherals, had this to say about their products: Uninet Peripherals sells 600 Mb CDC Wren V 16.5 mS shoeboxes with a full 2 year warranty for $4100, or only $3600 for factory warranties only (90 days or 1 year, I forget which). These are plug and play SCSI compatible. I can give you many references to call who will enthusastically endorse our products. A 300 Mb 17 mS shoebox with full 2 year warranty is $2400. If you want to buy the disks by themselves without power suypply, FCC class A rated enclosure, cables, etc., it's $3600 for 600 Mb with 2 year warranty, $1900 for the 300 Mb with a 2 year warranty. Call me at (800) 433-6784 if you want to talk about this. (Or at (714) 547-3000 if you are in California.) __________ celeste@coherent.com (Celeste C. Stokely) had this to say: I've got a whole bunch of Wren IV (300MB+ drives) from Parity Systems on my 3/60s. They work fabulously! ... Parity sells (or is about to sell) larger SCSI drives, also. ... Parity is in Los Gatos, CA, at (408) 354-1500. __________ Micky Liu <micky@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> had this to say: We've bought a couple of 380M drives from BoxHill Systems and are very pleased with the drives and the service they've provided. They came at a time when we were very pressured to produce. Sun told us delivery in several months and their quote was way too high. BoxHill delivered in about three days at half the price! (and their tech guy came and installed everything) ... My contact there is Carol Turchin and her numbers are (212) 399-4770 and (800) 727-3863. __________ Shortly after I got this note I received a call From Ms. Turchin who indicated that a 760Meg drive would cost approximately $5,000 (about what Sun wants for a 320Meg). My second query was regarding the usability of an external disk on our 3/160 at some point in the future. I wrote: >Another,related, question: The project for which we are buying this disk >is temporary. We would like, if possible, to be able to attach the disk >to a server (probably a 3/160) after completion of the project. Can a >disk made for the external SCSI connector on a 3/50 be connected to the >internal connector of the 3/160 (sun claims not) and if not, why? Neil Gorsuch sumarized the responses to this question in three words: "NONSENSE, NONSENSE, NONSENSE." He went on to say: ...We have already sold these same drives to be put in deskside enclosures off of an internal SCSI port. We can even make the cables for you if you want (we already have for others). __________ Peter Ilieve <mcvax!memex.co.uk!peter@uunet.UU.NET> had a rather interesting response: This is possible, but involves more hardware hacking than most people may want to do, hence Sun's claim that it is impossible. ... We use a Rodime 140MB disk, designed as a Mac external disk drive, and it works well (although this is not really a response to your disk reccomendation question as 140MB is too small). ... The hard part is making a connecting cable. The cable inside the 3/160 is a 50 way ribbon. We had to make a new cable that had a male ribbon cable header on one end, to connect to the Sun cable, then a normal ribbon cable header, to connect to the 3/160 innards, then on the other end whatever connector your disk needs. When you have made this, go inside the 3/160 and find the end of the SCSI ribbon cable (either on the disk or tape board in the top of the cabinet). Unplug it and plug it into your new cable, plugging your new cable into whatever you removed the Sun cable from. The only other thing is you must remove the SCSI terminators from whatever was on the end of the Sun cable. __________ While the use of Mac disk isn't (as Mr. Ilieve indicated) appropriate for our purposes (though there ARE 300+ meg disks out there for the Mac) I think the use of Mac disks is, in general, a neat idea. Bennett Todd <bet@orion.mc.duke.edu> says: ...You can purchase (for a fairly modest sum, I think less than $100) a kit from Delta Microsystems that connects to the internal SCSI cable on a Sun 3/160 or suchlike pedestal system, and brings it out to a standard Sun external connector on the back. __________ Several others sent messages indicating the option of buying an external SCSI board from Sun. My thanks to everyone who responded. If anyone has any further suggestions or comments feel free to send them along to me. And I don't mind hearing from vendors, so don't be shy. Frank Peters Systems Programmer | Mississippi State University Phone: (601) 325-2942 | Computing Center and Services Internet: peters@CC.MsState.Edu | Post Office Drawer CC BITNET: PETERS@MSSTATE.BITNET | Mississippi State, MS. 39762