WTB Toaster 4k to Flyer ribbon cable

[Heiroglyph]

I may be able to help, I need to find one too and luckily I work there

PM me an address and I'll try to dig them up.

[Heiroglyph]

Problem solved!
How about making the octopus cable sets for the flyer card too!

Those are very straight forward, it's just 50pin SCSI cables in a unique bundle.

I'll see if I can find some of those too, I was just planning to use internal drives.

[Heiroglyph]

The AV drives have to be on the Flyer SCSI.

It gets far better transfer rates than an Amiga controller, especially to the Flyer.  Going across the Zorro bus wasn't a possibility.

My SCSI drives will be in the tower, but using flat ribbon cables to the Flyer instead of the external Octopus cable.

I've also run three flat SCSI ribbons through the card slot openings to external SCSI cases before.

[Heiroglyph]

Just another note, for 100% reliability (not stability, but dropped frames and stopped playback) you'll want three drives, one per chain.  Two for video and one for audio.

I've used it with a single newer drive, especially 10k RPM drives, but most older 50pin SCSI drives struggle to keep up with playing two streams of video, the seek time is just too long.

I've got a few 15k drives I'm planning to use, so I should have zero problems in that area.

[Heiroglyph]

Oh, one more thing...You HAVE to set up the drives and format them using the NewTek tool. (can't remember the name...)

It uses a special format, but has speed advantages and no file or drive size issues.  I've used some relatively huge drives with no problem >80GB.

The Flyer software does have problems with over 180 files per directory though.

[Heiroglyph]

Excellent info! I have been keeping 2 10GB / 10K RPM for the video. I take it I can use any drive for audio or should all 3 match?

They don't have to match at all.

Generally the A/B drives are large and fast but, any SCSI drive will usually work for audio.  Audio is smaller so it doesn't stress the drive or fill up very quickly.

The audio drive is intended for plain audio like music, the A/B drives keep the audio and video together on video clips.

[Heiroglyph]

I think everyone has become confused over the years.

I just looked at my Flyer and there is just ONE connector on the Flyer that would go to the Toaster.

See how the BNC connectors on the back of your Toaster 4000 are removable on a little separate board?

You need the version of that BNC board that has a cable permanently attached that goes to the rearmost connector on the Flyer.

The crazy twisted cable was for Toaster 2000's (the original) that weren't made with a removable BNC card.  Since it was sort of hacked on, the cable for that model was pretty gnarly.

About half way down this page are pics of before and after the replacement BNC card: http://www.rcgrabbag.com/archives/amiga-a4000t

I can get you that little card/cable combo no problem, just PM me your shipping address and I'll send one to you.

[Heiroglyph]

After another sweaty day at the warehouse, I've FINALLY found enough cables to give some away.

I'll be sending the BNC board with attached cable to SACC-guy, esc and both types to Amigakit early next week.

[Heiroglyph]

Maybe you could teach AmigaKit how to make the Flyer cable so its easy for customers to find and buy new ones.

That's the idea of sending them both to AmigaKit.

It worries me that since we aren't making/stocking them any more, they won't be available when someone needs them.

[Heiroglyph]

I've also found a couple of used Octopus cables so far.

These really aren't hard to make, just really expensive.

I haven't decided what to do with those yet.