#Hard Disk Drive
Ben– Most all drives on micros are ST506 drives. SCSI is the interface between
the computer and the controller, while ST506 is the I/F between the controller
and the drive. Perhaps a picture would make it more clear for you and any
others…
———————–
| Computer I/F bus |
———————–
V <—— This is the Amiga bus
——————-
| SCSI interface |—> to other controllers for disk, tape, etc.
——————–
V <—— This is the SCSI bus
———————–
| disk controller #1 |—————– <–These are 2 ST506 connections
———————– |
V V
———————- ———————-
| Hard disk drive #1 | | Hard disk drive #2 |
———————- ———————-
C Ltd sells the SCSI I/F. You can buy the disk controllers made by Adaptec,
Western Digital, OMTI and others for <$200. The SCSI interface will support
several controllers which may be for disk or tape. Most disk controllers only
support 2 drives but with 5.25 disks now in the >200Meg range you probably
don't need more than one controller. The controllers typically are the same
size as a 5.25" drive and bolt onto the top of the drive.
My preference in disk controllers is the Adaptec ACB-4070 which supports 2,7
Run Length Limited (RLL) encoding. This allows 50% more data on a disk than a
simple controller. ie, 30meg from a 20, or 120 from a 80. I think other outfits
now have RLL controllers but this is the one I'm familiar with. If you contact
a mail order outfit for a controller make sure you ask for SCSI as IBM PC (ugh)
versions exist for most of these and they are far more common.
Tom