Semi-OT: IDE & SATA to USB "dongles"

On 5/30/2006 at 1:28 PM Billy Pettit wrote: Now that's an interesting question.' I think if "maintainability" is plotted against time, it often looks like a bell-shaped curve. Near the peak of the curve, we have devices that use available commodity components (e.g. 7400-series TTL and/or discretes), so, for example, it's possible to keep a PC XT mobo going for a long time. Way off on the back end of the curve are devices constructed from things that were once commodity items, but which are old enough to be rare (point-contact transistors, germanium diodes, UV-201As, your 160A core, etc.). Off the front end of the curve are those devices constructed from devices that, although only slightly out of date, are no longer available and whose specs may never have been published outside of an internal company document (try to replace a house-numbered ASIC on a 1990's PC mobo). If one wanted to make an ST-506 or 412 replacement, I'd be sore tempted just to do it with some battery-backed SRAM and a microcontroller. 100 MB was once a big hard drive, but it's not even big for SRAM nowadays. The replacement might extend the useful life of your device by decades, since there's no moving parts to wear out. I'm sure that you could do likewise for your 160A core. Someone once offered me a genuine Linotype hot-type typesetting machine. I didn't take the guy up on his offer, but I wonder if there are any of the beasts still in use. Cheers, Chuck