>Drives with 80-pins are SCA drives. They are meant to go into a backplane.
>All you need to do to install a drive is to screw the drive onto a drive
>adapter (a little piece of plastic or metal similar to the ones used to
>mount drives in your Mac's bays, actually) then insert the drive into the
>backplane. The backplane provides power and each slot in the backplane is
>given a SCSI id, so the drive is given that id when it is inserted.
>
>So, in short, no, there are no host adapters that have 80-pin connectors. I
>have a backplane attached to a host adapter via a 68-pin cable. The
>backplane requires it's own power supply. I can show you pictures if you
>need some visual explanation.
Now that's a disappointment as the 80 pin connector (without
adapter) is by far the tidiest of the lot but the adapters are by far the
untidiest of the lot (higher than the drive and impossible to get into my
3.5" Pulsar bays 3,4,5,6 and 7) and my 8500 is not really designed to
accommodate either 68 pin or 80 pin adapters. I have two 80 pin Cheetah's
with adapters in it (the adapters have id jumpers) but the fit is very
poor albeit better than the two 68 pins (with adapters) I had in there
which used to 'bind' on the bay. Are there backplanes for the 8500? But
my response was to the ....
>I believe I have now isolated the problem to the Western Digital 18Gig
>Ultra2 LVD, that came with a 50 pin adapter. I would like to continue to
>use the drive. I have thought of getting a PCI card that will support
>the drive on it's own Ultra2 chain, thus eliminating the 50 pin adapter.
>Anyone care to make some reccomendations? Also, is there anything I
>should do the drive before I use it again? >>
In that the 50 pin adapter cannot be eliminated - just changed for a
68/80 as there are no 80 pin hosts.
>Yes. You will have three independent SCSI buses.
>I recommend getting a Adaptec 2940U2W. I had one lying around, and I heard
>that you can flash them with the Mac BIOS and turn them into a Power Domain
>2940U2W (the Mac version of the former). It took two minutes to flash the
>BIOS, SCSI drives attached to it are bootable, and it works like a charm.
>The PC version of this card is significantly cheaper than the Mac version,
>just like everything else, it seems.
>Again, if you want more info, let me know
The AHA 2940U2W is the card I intend to try flashing - but I heard
that this is not always trouble free and can leave the card unstable as
the original firmware cannot be re-installed without being extracted and
saved via the PC flasher utility on a PC - leaving the card as original.
Mind - I intend to try it anyway as the cards are so cheap....but AFAIK
the card only tops out at 40MBS and the Cheetah's will take 80MBS - one
is a 160MBS....
Pete
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