[geeks] A very d'oh! moment

[Michael Parson]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:37:25AM +0100, Mark wrote:

<snip>

> My only gripe with the 2000 chassis is if you have 2 floppy drives (I
> have 1 Amiga drive and 1 PC drive hooked to a Catweasel) then there
> are no Hard Drive mounts. I have my 1GB HP SCSI disk bolted to the
> SCSI card (most earlier era cards are designed with a hard disk mount)
> but I'd like to put a second larger data disk in, maybe a 9GB or
> something but I have nowhere to put it :o( I think a strip of aluminum
> angle with the right honing at each end would do the job - I reckon I
> can get 2 drives on something like that then suspend them in one of
> the ISA slots at the end (which I never use as I don't have a bridge
> board).

When I was running what is now Bill's A2000, I originally had an A2090
MFM/SCSI controller in it.  I had a 20 meg ST-225 in the 5.25" bay and
some other brand 20 meg SCSI drive in the other 3.5" bay.  I bought an
Iomega Zip drive on an impulse buy, but I couldn't make it work with the
A2090.  There were reports that they would work with the 2091, which
was all SCSI, but also had the advantage of being bootable.  I had to
boot the 2090 from floppy.  I got an 80 meg SCSI drive from a friend
and mounted it to the 2091, the old 20 meg drive stayed in the 3.5"
bay.  Now I had removable storage that was bigger than either of my hard
drives.  Fun times.  These days, I'd probably put a SCSI CD in the 5.25"
bay.

But yes, for the size of the chassis, you did have very limited drive
expandability.  Even less so in the A3000 desktop case (3x3.5", on
internal, two external/floppy capable), but it was also a bit smaller.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org