Would anyone be interested in a device with the
footprint of a
3.5in hard disk drive, which allowed SD or CompactFlash cards to
be connected to a SCSI bus?
One of my customers has just such a setup on their E&S system. I
believe it's two adapters, SCSI-to-IDE and IDE-to-CF.
I've got a similar setup:
- an ACARD AEC7720U SCSI to IDE bridge adapter which I bought from the UK
for approx UKP 46 including VAT, airmail postage etc.
- an IDE to CF adapter which I bought of DealExtreme, Hong Kong for about EUR5.
The ACARD adapter is connected to the narrow SCSI bus in a DEC Alpha running
VMS. I use this for reading CF cards, not for running VMS from a CF card.
The setup works but it's not ideal. The biggest problem is when I swap the
CF card, the combination sulks until I power both adapters off and on again
together. I vaguely recall that a more expensive ACARD adapter (or possibly
IDE to CF adapter - I forget which) may have offered the ability to hotswap
the card.
The mechanical arrangement is not ideal either. The IDE to CF adapter has a
40 pin IDC socket on the board for the IDE connection and the ACARD adapter
similarly has a 40 pin IDC plug. Fitting these directly together makes it
hard to get at the CF slot. I suppose I could make up a short lead...
Regards,
Peter Coghlan.
