15 Sep
2010
15 Sep
'10
9:22 a.m.
jim s [jws at jwsss.com] wrote:
I spotted some 3 1/2" form factor drives that I
think may be SCSI
drives of the narrow "SCA" persuasion. I noted them mainly
because they
have a small looking black plastic connector similar to a centronics
connector, with what appears to be a central male bar with
contacts on it.
It rang a bell about the discussion about such connectors in some
Sparcbook laptops.
Though the form factor is totally useless, it would be interesting if
the bus was the same, and one could fab up a cable out of a dead
sparcbook to such a drive. Just thinking.
I have to grab the drives tomorrow and see what they are. No idea at
all about whether they work, but they have been around for a
long time.
If the drives are the usual 3.5" HDD form factor (as you would find in
a modern PC for example) and the connector is SCA-80 (i.e. takes up
75% or so of the rear width of the drive) then it's almost certainly
SCSI and all you need is a cheap (~ ?5) adapter to hook it up to a
SCSI-1 or SCSI-2 chain. If the connector is significantly narrower
(noticeably less than 50% of the width of the drive) then it is SCA-40
and will almost certainly be Fibre Channel. Some Sun boxes apparently
take FC drives and you can make an adapter to hook them up to an HBA
in a PC.
Interestingly I always thought that SCA-80 was a relatively recent
addition to the SCSI fold, but a few months ago I acquired a Seagate(?)
1GB drive with an SCA-80 interface. So it's obviously not as recent
as I thought.
Antonio