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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: NorthWay on August 13, 2012, 09:56:00 PM
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In my continuing adventures to revive and piece together my old A4000 I really need to replace those horrible drives with a single drive with 10G+ size.
Are there any good webshops that sell something a CyberStorm/SCSI will be happy about?
I have been trying to find some local shops, but if they happen to have SCSI it is so far out more expensive than SAS it is boggling. And way bigger than I need anyway (and price seems to scale linearly with size anyway).
(Some IDE<->memory card device is a worst case solution if I can't find anything else...)
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I don't know any stores that still sell that small SCSI drives but should not be that hard to find on ebay, PM me tomorrow and I can check my basement if I still have an old SCSI2 drive, if i have you can have it for free :)
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Have a look at those SCSI <--> P-ATA bridges and those for S-ATA.
Otoh, SCSI-1, SCSI-2 is not so much in use. So it's being phased out..
But you can always build something.. ;)
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In my continuing adventures to revive and piece together my old A4000 I really need to replace those horrible drives with a single drive with 10G+ size.
Are there any good webshops that sell something a CyberStorm/SCSI will be happy about?
I have been trying to find some local shops, but if they happen to have SCSI it is so far out more expensive than SAS it is boggling. And way bigger than I need anyway (and price seems to scale linearly with size anyway).
(Some IDE<->memory card device is a worst case solution if I can't find anything else...)
Where are you based? I have some 2GB and 4GB SCSI drives for sale if you're interested.
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http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=scsi+2+hdd&gallery=1
Merry Christmas! ;P
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http://www.pricewatch.com/search?q=scsi+2+hdd&gallery=1
Merry Christmas! ;P
That's a good reference.
All I have left are Ultra160 and Ultra320s.
And I'm pretty sure they aren't backward compatible that far.
They will run with SCSI2 controllers, but even earlier controllers seem unlikely.
After all, LVD drives didn't exist when your controller was made.
Pity they can't be used as 10K rpm 75GB U320 drives can be had cheap (I got two a few months ago for $15 each).
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That's a good reference.
All I have left are Ultra160 and Ultra320s.
And I'm pretty sure they aren't backward compatible that far.
They will run with SCSI2 controllers, but even earlier controllers seem unlikely.
After all, LVD drives didn't exist when your controller was made.
Pity they can't be used as 10K rpm 75GB U320 drives can be had cheap (I got two a few months ago for $15 each).
I do all my price shopping first, with pricewatch. Sadly, you can't really find any Amiga items on it. ;)
Most of these are probably refurbs, but you might get warranties with a few. I didn't bother to check.
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I've found SCSI drives in surplus Mac and Sun stuff from the Amiga era.
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I've found SCSI drives in surplus Mac and Sun stuff from the Amiga era.
Yup. That's where I found my IBM 18GB 50-pin drive. I used that on my WarpEngine. When I upgraded to a CyberStorm I replaced it with an 18GB 68-pin and now the narrow drive is in a Sun 211 box attached to my 2000's Blizzard 2060.
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I bought a new Maxtor Atlas 15k_18WLS 16GB 68 pin hard drive for $10 U.S. a couple of years ago off E-bay. It works great and is really fast. It doesn't even get hot with the AmigaOS unlike a certain other OS that thrashes the hard drive constantly. It's used with a Cyberstorm MK3 cybppc.device 44.71. I would get a Guru on bootup with SFS but PFS works great.
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I just got a NOS 36GB 10k Fujitsu on ebay to try with a Fastlane, but the SOB is so loud there's no way in heck I'll run it. It's supposed to be relatively "quiet" for a SCSI drive, too.
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Of course you can use U320 drive with SCSI2 etc.. BUT the cost won't likely make it worthwhile.
But do consider that the SCSI2 SE interface is quite basic to interface with.
However with Ethernet etc.. you could put the harddrive anywhere and put the noisy harddiscs where you don't have to listen to them.
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I have moved away from hard drives. The benefits of CFs cards such as noise (or lack of..) and reliability outweigh anything else.
On my 4000T I was getting about 9mb/s on the built in SCSI controller
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In my continuing adventures to revive and piece together my old A4000 I really need to replace those horrible drives with a single drive with 10G+ size.
Are there any good webshops that sell something a CyberStorm/SCSI will be happy about?
I have been trying to find some local shops, but if they happen to have SCSI it is so far out more expensive than SAS it is boggling. And way bigger than I need anyway (and price seems to scale linearly with size anyway).
(Some IDE<->memory card device is a worst case solution if I can't find anything else...)
dunno if this helps...i used a couple older mac external scsi drives on my a500 ..cheap 8 gig 15.00 dols ..an you can pull apart if you wanna install internally...had to format on my pc then the amiga ..but work well an good price ..
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There are still loads of older SCSI hard drives available. Look through Mac stores and/or ebay and pricewatch. I just bought a 2Gb IBM SCSI2 hard drive for $9.00 including shipping through ebay (it works great!). Also just bought a SCSI CD ROM drive for my A2000.
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Old drives = end of useful lifetime, high probability for "all you data are belong /dev/null"
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Old drives = end of useful lifetime, high probability for "all you data are belong /dev/null"
That's why we have backups. ;-)
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And the Amiga environment ain't the best place to execute a backup ;)
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Why not just go to Mechware's site and get one of these http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_79&products_id=184 I still use old scsi stuff in some of my FTP/NAS servers, but only use these in my Amigas. Easy to set up, and worth every penny.
On edit, I actually have about 6 of these, and use them even on my NAS/FTP servers for the operating systems, so all my scsi/sata space is free for storage. They boot off of the CF in the card reader, and all my HD's are free for data storage. You can get them with or without the PCMCIA adapters. I have the adapters but usually don't use them. Without the adapters, with the CF plugged directly into the reader, you have to set up LUN's on your controller, but that is not hard to do, just set it to boot from LUN 1, as the PCMCIA is LUN 0.
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SCSI-1/2 <--> Ethernet would be great ;)
Works like intended without the direct hardware dependencies.
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I have moved away from hard drives. The benefits of CFs cards such as noise (or lack of..) and reliability outweigh anything else.
On my 4000T I was getting about 9mb/s on the built in SCSI controller
What device are you using for that?
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Why not just go to Mechware's site and get one of these http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_79&products_id=184
Way Cool Stuff!
That looks like a winner unless someone knows a similar item that is even faster?
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Thanks for all the information, suggestions, and offers.
I have been able to lay my hands on some old-but-not-as-ancient-as-what-I-had disks I'll test when I find some good floppies.
Still, a memorycard based solution would be preferable.
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I see that there are SATA<->SCSI converters too.
Anyone have some makes and models to recommend? (Or where to buy?)
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With the low cost of U320 SCSI drives (I picked up four 146GB 10K Maxtor's for twenty-five bucks), I don't see a need to go the SCSI<->SATA Route. While Acard and others make an interface for standard Amiga SCSI-to-SATA devices, they are in the $$$ range. Cheaper is an IDE to SATA adapter, but rather slow and with the Amiga+IDE's issues with secondary drive/ ATAPI support
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U320 is also very different from SCSI-1/2 so a serious converter will still be needed..
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What device are you using for that?
I was using an Acard SCSI-IDE converter and then an IDE -CF card adapter
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Sorry duplicate
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The 4 drives I scrunged for myself yesterday are making me uncertain: They have no power plug. Is this some low-voltage or other standard that gets power from the bus connector? Will it work with my old controller?
(And my 4000 is turning into a nightmare. Every regular floppy would just boot to an open shell, I would get 8000000B from wossname cybremovable driver until I pulled the external cable altogether, and when I booted Hybris it showed errors in the background gfx - either chipset errors or memory errors if I'm lucky)
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The 4 drives I scrunged for myself yesterday are making me uncertain: They have no power plug. Is this some low-voltage or other standard that gets power from the bus connector? Will it work with my old controller?
Does it look like this?
(http://www.education.purdue.edu/edit/connectors/SCSI_SCA_80pin.jpg)
If so, then it's an SCA interface which has all the data an power lines in one interface and you will need an adapter to connect it to your computer.
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Does it look like this?
Yep, that's the one. Thanks for the info, I'll have to google yet more.
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Yes, it will cost five dollars on *bay to convert from a 50-pin SCSI cable to an 80-pin SCA. And you end up plugging power into the five buck interface and setting the device number. I had to save up for months to afford it
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I ordered mine through Amazon UK. Was a little more than $5 but for once something on the cheap side.
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Well the SCA drive will be so much faster than any Amiga SCSI interface that it will be waiting for the interface to catch up. To the best of my knowledge, the Phase 5 SCSI interface (NEC 53C770) on a 68-pin bus is about the fastest Amiga interface there is, and now the HDD's are as inexpensive or less than their CF counter-parts. I have backups on both, but now the HDDs coming out of service with their servers are as cheap to buy as potato chips.
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Well the SCA drive will be so much faster than any Amiga SCSI interface that it will be waiting for the interface to catch up. To the best of my knowledge, the Phase 5 SCSI interface (NEC 53C770) on a 68-pin bus is about the fastest Amiga interface there is, and now the HDD's are as inexpensive or less than their CF counter-parts. I have backups on both, but now the HDDs coming out of service with their servers are as cheap to buy as potato chips.
I have colleagues who know I still work a lot with SCSI just bring me their old server drives. I wipe them and check them for errors. I haven't yet had a single one with errors. I have a multitude of sizes hanging around right now which I will soon be making available. Sadly, the last time I had a bunch of SCSI drives I literally couldn't GIVE them away -- no one would take them! They wound up in the dump. I'm hoping this time I'll have better luck getting them into the hands of people who will use them.
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Everybody likes potato chips!
Yeah, but in a few years they will be looking in garbage cans to find them
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I have colleagues who know I still work a lot with SCSI just bring me their old server drives. I wipe them and check them for errors. I haven't yet had a single one with errors. I have a multitude of sizes hanging around right now which I will soon be making available. Sadly, the last time I had a bunch of SCSI drives I literally couldn't GIVE them away -- no one would take them! They wound up in the dump. I'm hoping this time I'll have better luck getting them into the hands of people who will use them.
Whatever you do, don't throw them away. I still use a lot of scsi drives, and would gladly pay shipping on them if they are gonna be trashed. Thanks.
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Actually, he is right. The servers being taken out of service are being checked and sold , with many in the sub 100 buck range; they would make great home servers. Once I get a better understanding of Linux Server Edition or FreeNAS, I'll put some of those "Vintage" SCA SCSI disks into use.
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Vintage and SCA sounds like "Vintage Quad core 5 GHz" ;)
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Actually, he is right. The servers being taken out of service are being checked and sold , with many in the sub 100 buck range; they would make great home servers. Once I get a better understanding of Linux Server Edition or FreeNAS, I'll put some of those "Vintage" SCA SCSI disks into use.
Not to change subject on the thread, but I am running 2 NAS-FTP servers with nas4free, and 1 with openmediavault. I have found freenas takes so much memory that most old servers don't have enough. I wish the servers I am using had enough memory, but they only have 1 gig, which is plenty for nas4free, and works fine with openmediavault. Freenas takes 4 gig minimum. I use scsi servers, because I have several lying around, that I got for free, or near free, but still work fine. I have a Dell 6300 with 6 scsi HDD's, 2 Dell 2300's with 6 scsi HDD's, a Dell 2450 with 4 scsi HDD's, and a Penguin ir1250, with 4 sata HDD's. I have a few other servers, but they all use IDE. Everything is rack mounted. This is why I said earlier, please don't trash any scsi drives. :)
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Speaking of servers, what does electricity cost at your location?
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Electricity is high, and going up all the time. I have 3 servers that run 24/7. My electric bill isn't too bad, though. I am sure the servers take more than a new one would, as they are older, with the newest one from 2006. I am pretty lucky, as I work for a telephone cooperative. We are also an internet provider, and do phone/voice/internet over fiber to the home, delivering a 1 gig ethernet connection to each house. Of course, it doesn't take anywhere near that much for a typical house, but it is there. Anytime we buy new servers, I either get the old ones for nothing, or buy them for little of nothing. I have tons of old computer hardware, and I don't get rid of any of it, as in my ham radio hobby, there is a lot of stuff that uses serial ports. Nowadays, there is no such thing without a usb-serial adapter. I have 5 or 6 of those but prefer to use the real thing. When it comes to old PC's and servers, I am a packratt.
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Electricity is high, and going up all the time. I have 3 servers that run 24/7. My electric bill isn't too bad, though.
I have my workstation with five hard drives (RAID-1 and RAID-5) which puts out a good bit of heat, an old AMD K6-3+ Solaris server which puts out a fair bit of heat mostly from the AT power supply, and an old customer server I'm co-locating for a while. They don't consume a lot of electricity, but between the three of them and their associated UPSs running constantly my computer room stays around 82F - 85F. I'm working to consolidate that some, though.