24 Oct
2004
24 Oct
'04
1:22 p.m.
On Oct 24 2004, 11:22, John Foust wrote:
I recently inherited a stack of Fibre Channel gizmos made by Compaq:
three x12 hubs, a tape controller, and a Storageworks modular
data router.
eBay prices are all over the map: some sellers trying to
unload them for $1000+, but the real auctions are going for
less than $50 for each box. Each slot in the hub needs an
optical transceiver; these seem to sell for $10 each.
Cables? Many offered, few bidders. FC hard drives? $20 each.
This stuff cost a fortune not so long ago. Why is it
rock-bottom now? Will it ever be attractive to hobbyists?
Because serious users have upgraded and the cast-offs aren't very
popular, I suspect. To users who think SCSI is odd, FC probably seems
wierd for words (look at the interface on the back of those drives).
They also tend to be small and relatively power hungry, compared to
cheap ATA drives, and how many cheap FC-AL PCI cards have you seen for
a PC?
I've got some FC-AL RAID stuff, but it's on an Origin 2000, and anyway
it's all 9GB drives. Hardly something buyers would fight over.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York