phndm@lut.ac.uk (Jam Jar) (06/18/91)
Organization : Loughborough University, UK. Hi, I've been trying for the last 3 weeks to buy a hard drive for my A3000. Unfortunately, the company I chose to buy from simply can't get itself organised. Even more unfortunately, it is the only company selling 80Mb SCSI drives at a reasonable price (about 10 pounds above what most other companies offer for 40Mb drives). So, being pretty desperate for an 80Mb drive, at less than 500 pounds, I have thought about buying a SCSI card, and hooking it up to a SCSI drive made for PC machines. Has anyone tried this approach? Is it guaranteed to work for any card/drive combination? What is the cheapest I could do this for? If anyone is selling an 80Mb drive, could they let me know? (Replies here or e-mail) Thanks all, Neil. -- ============================================================================== Life is a sexually transmitted disease | 3 line sigs rule | N.D.Moss@lut.ac.uk ==============================================================================
gtoal@tardis.computer-science.edinburgh.ac.uk (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun18.150722.11110@lut.ac.uk> N.D.Moss@lut.ac.uk (Jam Jar) writes:
:Organization : Loughborough University, UK.
:
:Hi,
:
:I've been trying for the last 3 weeks to buy a hard drive for my A3000.
:Unfortunately, the company I chose to buy from simply can't get itself
:organised. Even more unfortunately, it is the only company selling 80Mb
:SCSI drives at a reasonable price (about 10 pounds above what most other
:companies offer for 40Mb drives).
:
:So, being pretty desperate for an 80Mb drive, at less than 500 pounds,
:I have thought about buying a SCSI card, and hooking it up to a SCSI
:drive made for PC machines. Has anyone tried this approach? Is it
:guaranteed to work for any card/drive combination? What is the cheapest
:I could do this for?
SCSI drives aren't made for PC's; SCSI drives are just SCSI drives, but
you wouldn't think this from the price 'Acorn' compnies charge for
them. Did you know you can get a fast 1Gb drive now for 2K? I bought
my 330Mb drive a year ago for 800 quid. I seriously recommend that
if you are up to it, buy a decent SCSI drive (in your price range, 200Mb)
and house it externally in a home made box. The hardest part will be
making a SCSI cable if the drive has an IDC rather than a SCSI plug.
My estimate is that people selling drives for Archies are charging
100% *above* what would give them an acceptable profit.
Grahamaroest@fwi.uva.nl (Axel Roest (N)) (06/21/91)
gtoal@tardis.computer-science.edinburgh.ac.uk writes: >In article <1991Jun18.150722.11110@lut.ac.uk> N.D.Moss@lut.ac.uk (Jam Jar) >SCSI drives aren't made for PC's; SCSI drives are just SCSI drives, but >you wouldn't think this from the price 'Acorn' compnies charge for >them. Did you know you can get a fast 1Gb drive now for 2K? I bought >my 330Mb drive a year ago for 800 quid. I seriously recommend that >if you are up to it, buy a decent SCSI drive (in your price range, 200Mb) >and house it externally in a home made box. The hardest part will be >making a SCSI cable if the drive has an IDC rather than a SCSI plug. IMHO, most SCSI drives are made for the Macintosh market :-) What do you mean by a SCSI plug? The SCSI link is just a list of 50 connections No connector type is in the specs. Most SCSI drives have flatcable (IDC) con- nectors. Sometimes the external box has a 50-pin centronics-type conn. These two are quite easy to interconnect. You can just press a flatcable in between, the pin layout is the same. >My estimate is that people selling drives for Archies are charging >100% *above* what would give them an acceptable profit. I totally agree with that. >Graham Axel -- Strike a pose... There's nothing to it.
gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) (06/22/91)
In article <1991Jun21.101645.24171@fwi.uva.nl> aroest@fwi.uva.nl (Axel Roest (N)) writes: >What do you mean by a SCSI plug? The SCSI link is just a list of 50 connections >No connector type is in the specs. Most SCSI drives have flatcable (IDC) con- >nectors. Sometimes the external box has a 50-pin centronics-type conn. >These two are quite easy to interconnect. You can just press a flatcable in >between, the pin layout is the same. OK, the particular combination I had to make was an IDC on one end for the drive and a Centronics on the other end for the Acorn SCSI card. This is *not* a combination you can get off the shelf, unbelievable as that may seem. (Believe me, I *TRIED HARD*) The clamped IDC end has to be done properly. I tried to make my own (with a clamp - reasonable competantly I thought) but it just didn't work. A very nice guy at Acorn baled me out of trouble, for which I was very grateful. Apart from the cable though, the rest is easy. I used an old Beeb Winny housing I had spare; a friend (I bought two of the drives at the same time to save $20 on postage :-) ) housed his in an old IBM PC which also supplied power for it. Go for it people. Worth the effort. Graham
osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith) (06/24/91)
In article <11237@castle.ed.ac.uk> gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) writes: >OK, the particular combination I had to make was an IDC on one end for >the drive and a Centronics on the other end for the Acorn SCSI card. >This is *not* a combination you can get off the shelf, unbelievable as >that may seem. (Believe me, I *TRIED HARD*) A small bench vice is excellent for making IDC cables up. The small clamp on vices you can buy from RS for about 40 quid are perfect for the job, and you can use them for other things too. These days I am happier making my own IDC cables up - bought ones always seem shoddily made with the cable coming out of the connector at a rather dubious angle etc. Owen. The views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of Acorn.