[rescue] wide drive in an LX?

Curious George jorge234q at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 31 11:28:57 CST 2007


Hi,

I'd like to replace the 4G half-height drive
in my LX with an 18G third-height drive that
I have "collecting dust".

The 4G is a SE narrow drive, as expected.
The 18G is a SE *wide* drive.

The LX, of course, expects SE narrow.

I think I have a short 50-pin ribbon to
68 pin SCSI D cable that I pilfered off
of some other piece of Sun kit (possibly
to attach a CD-ROM to a wide SCSI bus?)

The cable has a 68pin connector (male) on
one end and a 50 pin terminator on the other.
Adjacent to the terminator is a 50 pin ribbon
(female) connector.

I.e., if I cut off the terminator, I have
the cable that I need.

However, this means the drive end of the
cable is unterminated (since the wide drive
does not have on-board termination like
the narrow drives do).

I can strap the drive to force it to
operate in SE mode (vs. LVD).  But, how
will operating it without a terminator
on that end of the cable work?  Likewise,
since there are only 50 conductors coming
across the cable, the high bits of the bus
are unconnected and, thus, "floating".
Will this be a source of problems?
(I know I will have to ensure the drive
is strapped for ID < 8 else it will never
be selected  :>  )

Or, am I worrying too much about nothing?
Is the LX slow enough (rise times) that
termination on such a short cable will be
insignificant (I suspect the cable is about
12 inches long and there can't be more than
another couple of inches on the LX plus the
drive itself)?

I'd prefer not to take the "try it and see"
approach -- any more than I'd be happy 
driving across country in a vehicle of
dubious integrity!  :>

Any other things to be wary of?  (besides
boot partition in the first 2G of the drive)

Thanks!



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