#Removable Hard Drives
10 messages in this thread
Ray,
I have my Syquest drive connected to a GVP hardcard. It doesn't take much
of anything to connect it to the hardcard: all you need is a mountlist
entry and a three-connector SCSI cable (to replace the very short cable
that connects the on-board hard disk drive to the board). One thing is that
you have to issue a diskchange command to get the cartridge recognized by
the OS.
Wayde
Wayde:
If I hear you right, you took the two connector SCSI cable off of the hard
card, replaced it with a three connector, and then hooked the Syquest to
the third connector? Thus, one on the host adaptor, one on the Syquest and
one on the hard card drive, right?
Where did you tap in for power? (I'm real dumb about these things.) How
about formatting? You use the GVP software that came with the hardcard?
?|^] Ray Lewis
By the way… does anyone have a cheap, reliable source for these one-,
two-, three-, or N- connector SCSI cables? I went from one to two drives
once upon a time, and went to a local electronics place to get it, paid a
fortune, and had to listen to them mumble about power transistor prices the
whole time. Is there a mail order place that sells these? I've like to
stockpile a few for my parts bin.
Just buy some 50 wire ribbon cable (about $14 for 10' of it) and some 50
pin berg connectors (crimp on style). Add connectors at will.
Are these as reliable as they could be? I've been dissatisfied with some
home-brew crimp-on connectors.
I've been using them for years…no problems as long as they're properly
crimped. In fact, right now I'm using the setup I suggested to you. I've
got 2 SCSI drives sitting outside the A2000, on the end of a 10' 50 wire
ribbon with crimp-on connectors for the terminator plug, the 2 drives, and
a 4" stub cable from one of the drives. Works perfectly. BTW…"properly
crimped" doesn't necessairly mean you have to use the special crimping
tool. It simply means that the cable is properly lined up…and pressed on
the pins all the way.
Was that ten feet, or ten inches? And are terminator resistor packs
commonly available, too?
Feet…not inches. You can, of course, cut it to any shorter length you
want. The resistor packs..I'm not sure about. We had several spares at
work that came on a 50 pin Centronics D plug. I just got a crimp on 50 pin
Centronics D socket and crimped it on the end of the cable. Works fine.
You could build your own though. The 220/330 resistor arrays are commonly
available and you could build one into a plug.
Yes, terminator resistor packs are commonly available through electronic
parts places.
As Don mentions, 50 pin ribbon cable is low cost, and the connectors aren't
too bad either. If you decide to roll your own cables, here's a tip…
Clamping the connectors on without proper tools can be frustrating, to say
the least. You can use a vise to do the crimping. Just be careful to get
the wires lined up and the connector at right angles to the cable. You are
better off buying the proper crimping tool, but they tend to be expensive
and not worth it for occasional use.