5 Dec
2004
5 Dec
'04
3:39 a.m.
I fool around with a lot of systems that want small (by today's
standards) 50-pin SCSI drives. A few years ago you couldn't walk
around the streets of Palo Alto without tripping over big stacks of
500MB drives. These days, though, the stacks are made out of 9GB SCA
drives -- far too large for my needs, and often far too large to be
recognized by the computers I fool around with. But drives smaller
than that are suddenly "rare" and "expensive", $30 or $40 for any
SCSI drive under 9GB at a lot of resellers I've visited lately.
Anyone know where those stacks went? Are small drives just impossible
to come by for less than $30 now?
-Seth
--
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You'll love it." - Frank Zappa sethm(a)loomcom.com
5 Dec
5 Dec
3:43 a.m.
I fool around with a lot of systems that want small
(by today's
standards) 50-pin SCSI drives. A few years ago you couldn't walk
around the streets of Palo Alto without tripping over big stacks of
500MB drives. These days, though, the stacks are made out of 9GB SCA
drives --
Well, I have a number of small 50-pin SCSI drives. While I have
comparatively few SCA machines, I'd cheerfully swap my small drives for
large 50-pin drives, or SCA drives with SCA-to-50+4+6-pin adapters (ie,
adapters that break out SCA to 50pin SCSI, 4pin power, and three
jumpers for SCSI ID). I have few to no machines that simply won't work
with larger drives; even the ones that don't handle large drives right
will use the beginning of a large drive as if it were a small drive.
About the smallest drive I use these days is about 1G (I have a
relatively large number of drives that are 1010M). But I haven't
thrown out the older stuff.
What sort of physical size limits? Some of my oldest drives are
full-height 5?" drives....
[D]rives smaller than that are suddenly
"rare" and "expensive", $30
or $40 for any SCSI drive under 9GB at a lot of resellers I've
visited lately.
$30-$40 is unfortunately what shipping is likely to run to carry out
the swap I refer to above. Unless of course you're going to be coming
by Montreal for some other reason and can piggyback such a swap onto
such a visit, I suppose.
Anyone know where those stacks went? Are small drives
just
impossible to come by for less than $30 now?
Probably. :-(
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10:10 a.m.
On Sun, 5 Dec 2004 01:39:21 -0800, you wrote:
I fool around with a lot of systems that want small (by today's
standards) 50-pin SCSI drives. A few years ago you couldn't walk
around the streets of Palo Alto without tripping over big stacks of
500MB drives. These days, though, the stacks are made out of 9GB SCA
drives -- far too large for my needs, and often far too large to be
recognized by the computers I fool around with. But drives smaller
than that are suddenly "rare" and "expensive", $30 or $40 for any
SCSI drive under 9GB at a lot of resellers I've visited lately.
Anyone know where those stacks went? Are small drives just impossible
to come by for less than $30 now?
-Seth
I still find a lot of smallish 50-pin SCSI drives in old educational
Macintoshes. And there are quite a number of them still in the
process of being retired, it seems. The late 'all in one' 68K macs,
meaning from the 'LC' line, generally had a 250 or 500 MB 50 pin drive
in them. Usually when I see them at auction they can be purchased for
$1-5 for as many as there happen to be at said auction. Also a good
source for Apple SCSI CDROM drives. These Macs are plentiful still at
school surplus auctions, and one or two is all you need if you collect
them. (I remember when we were all saying that about the IBM XT, of
course- try to find a good IBM XT anywhere these days.)
-Scott
11 Dec
11 Dec
10:39 a.m.
Hi, Seth,
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 05-Dec-04 at 01:39 Seth Morabito wrote:
<snippety>
recognized by the computers I fool around with. But
drives smaller
than that are suddenly "rare" and "expensive", $30 or $40 for any
SCSI drive under 9GB at a lot of resellers I've visited lately.
Anyone know where those stacks went? Are small drives just impossible
to come by for less than $30 now?
I wouldn't say 'impossible' at all. I would add that the prices you're
seeing may be a regional thing.
I say this because the local (Seattle) used place, RE-PC, has boxfuls of 1-2 gig SCSI
drives for about $5 each. Granted, they're getting harder to find -- most of what I
see now are in the 1-4 gig range. However, I do see a few sub-1gig units.
If you're not talking about huge quantities, I could probably work on picking up some
for you. Let me know.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal
ports?"
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chenmel＠earthlink.net -
kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
sethm＠loomcom.com