Ok, so I have been doing research, and this affects everyone here who
collects SGI, apple, and anything using scsi. in the near future, the supply
of smaller SCSI drives will eventually dry up, due to failure from age and
lack of supply, as I believe they are no longer manufactured, unless for the
industrial/server market. I could be wrong on that part, but I take it as
such because my searching for them brings up nothing new. what does that
mean for collectors? it means that your neat little apple or SGI or etc will
run, until the scsi disk dies, then we will be left cannibalizing machines
for disks, paying ridiculous prices for leftover scsi disks, which will
skyrocket because of the small supply.
So what is our option? I have seen SCSI to IDE adapters around, but they go
up into the $100's to $200's, say you have a minimum 10 machines, that
leaves you somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 total, before the disk or
devices. If we could design a simple SCSI to IDE interface, we could be set
for a good long while on storage for these devices for a decent amount of
time. There are all sorts of adapters to IDE, there is CF to IDE, SD to IDE,
SD to CF which could be placed in a CF to IDE adapter if need be, i'm sure
one could also rig up a USB drive to SCSI if one tried, but I could be
wrong.
Having said that, I know nothing about programming microcontrollers or
simple processors, but I have seen people on the board who do. I'm sure if
we can find a chip capable, and lay out a schematic, source code, and
possibly a board layout, members could source their own boards and
components to build their own devices at home (given they have a chip
programmer), so no one person has to take on the responsibility of supplying
parts, kits, finished devices unless they so choose to. This is just an
idea, if nothing becomes of it, no big deal, just putting it out there....
-Joe