Roy J. Tellason wrote:
On Saturday 06 May 2006 11:25 pm, Don Y wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
On Saturday 06 May 2006 10:27 pm, Don Y wrote:
>> I have a 20GB (40GB compressed) Exabyte
here. Not sure how
>> true the "video tape" option is for higher densities... :-(
> I believe that the guy mentioned "20GB" in our conversations. What
> sort of tapes would that things use?
If it is an Exabyte, they are most likely 8mm (as Chuck> said).
Roughly 1/2" thick (cartridge) by 2" x 3". My tapes claim
"exabyte recognition systems" which I assume is just something
that tells the drive what (ahem) capacity the tape is.
Note other types of drives also support 20G (and MUCH higher)
densities (DLT, SDLT, etc.) but I assume (from your comments)
that these are all exabytes.
These two that I have immediately to hand, yeah.
They appear to have
the standar 4-pin power connector and a 50-pin SCSI connector that's tied
by way of some very short cables to a hot-plug (?) setup via a little
board on the back, it appears to be an 80-pin connector. That stuff is
mounted to a rail of sorts that goes around the back and most of both
sides.
The board is probably an SCA adapter. This, by itself, doesn't
make the assembly "hot swappable" -- though hard to say without
knowing what your adapter actually does...
I've heard that acronym before in the past day or so, what's it stand for?
Looks like those hard drives are supposed to be
hot-pluggable too, it's
too bad they aren't standard drives inside of those modules, those I
could have used, these things I can't see any way to use them unless I
can figure out some way to hook up to the rack as a whole.
Double check the drive
connectors. Make sure they aren't
*80* pins like the adapter on the tape drive. If so,
they are all ScA drives and very commonly used.
Oh, these drives are definitely very strange. Made in Singapore by IBM
Singapore, the connector is like nothing I've ever seen -- it's in four
separate little sections, which are 3, 3, 4, and 8 pins wide, but
double-sided, and with spaces in between them. The rest of what's in the
plastic module is 3 LEDs on the "front panel" which are tied to a small board
at that end of the module -- this has what appears to be a bunch of coils on
it and assorted surface-mount parts, and a chip that's not packaged but
under a blob of epoxy. Then at the back end of the module is another small
board that contains a voltage regulator (LM317T), a couple of diodes, and
some capacitors. And one chip with a sticker saying "Part No. 31H8183",
plus the external connector, which is 3 rows of 24 holes each, though it's
obvious looking at the inside of the connector that not all of those holes
have contacts in them. This resembles nothing that I'm familiar with.
And I have a *LOT* of these, two big boxes of them still sitting out in my
car...
Nothing that gives you a clue as to how big the drives are?
(e.g., if they are 1G, probably not worth the time to sort
it all out...)