[geeks] Back cover for Octane

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 03:47:10PM -0800, Kurt Huhn wrote:

> > PCI SCSI cards?  Perhaps a 3rd party SDI board (which can be used with
> > a bridge to talk firewire)?  I'd hang onto it, unless money is extremely
> > tight.

> I don't have a single firewire device anywhere in the house - and can't
> imagine that I'd be getting one.  While some digital cameras do talk
> firewire, it seems (to me anyway) that talking to digital cameras is
> better left up to the windows laptop (now used by Karin).

My prefered method (in theory, have only read reviews) of talking to a 
firewire camera would be an SGI (although an Avid would also be acceptable)
with SDI, and a firewire<->SDI bridge.  Then, I'd be ready to go if an SDI
camera of VCR fell into my lap.

On a more serious note, my understanding is that the SGI firewire card can be
substituted with a generic one, and it supposedly works decently, but again
haven't tried it.  The only time I've done anything with firewire was on a G3
running Premiere (blech).
 
> The Octane has a rompin' SCSI controller, so a PCI SCSI card wouldn't be
> necessary - for me anyway.

Yes, I know the built in scsi controller rocks, but if you are me (meaning 
rather broke), there is appeal to more older disks, than a small number of
disks fast enough to keep up with the Octanes scsi.  But, that might be just
me.  And, FC-AL is getting pretty cheap, except for enclosures.
 
> Is there anything particularly interesting or cool that can be done with
> that card cage and commodity PCI cards?

Not that I know of, since you aren't interested in firewire. 

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd