SMD/IDE hard drive conversion anyone?

Wilson labs has been doing similar converters for a few decades now. Due to the abysmal reliability of IDE drives, they usually provide an adapter for hooking a SCSI drive up to an older interface.

Hint: if you're worried about the price difference between an IDE and a SCSI drive, you are not a potential customer :-).

Tim.

modern-ish

SMD

Boy, those are some serious units! Unfortunately, the drive in question is a 5.25inch SMD 20MB drive in a micro-computer in an EPR spectrometer. From looking at Wilson's website, their SMD drives are targeted at old Winchester drive users with a lot of space to house the drive. That said, they do suggest a call so it might be worth a punt when the old drive goes.

FYI, apparently the replacement code (refurbished) is about $3,000.00 and replacing the micro-computer for the latest controller is about $15,000.00 - but obviously you get a lot more function such as networking etc. for that.

Thanks for the link, Paul DS.

If, for example, it's a Unibus or Q-bus PDP-11 or VAX, then there's probably a drop-in compatible disk controller that'll talk SCSI instead of SMD.

Whether anyone is willing to "support" a hodgepodge-not-as-originally-delivered-from-the-vendor config is a different matter.

Tim.

No way to hang an external drive?

Years ago I worked for a company which made such controllers, part of the operation is still in business, so if this is the problem send me a few more details and I may be able to chase down a Tech for you.

Andrew

Why not buy an IDE card? Or get one from an old computer? I saw lots of them, almost none of them had one integrated in the motherboard.