Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!rg20+ From: rg20+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rick Francis Golembiewski) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: home-made hard-drive Message-ID:Date: 29 Sep 89 23:12:36 GMT References: <4068@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Organization: Class of '92, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 38 In-Reply-To: <4068@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> There already exists a program that allows you to use an ibm as a 'file server' (using the par. port) however I wouldn't advise this as a cheap alternative, mainly for the following reasons: a mother board will cost you $70+ (these are the prices at dayton hamvention last year), $35+ for a power supply, $15 for a par card. $25 for a cable, $35+ for a case + 25 for 256K... Don't try to get a system without a case, unless you don't mind incredible noise around your amiga (and what ever else), not to mention having an unprotected hard drive eeeek. so your looking more along the lines of $200 even at rock bottom pricing. And your performance will really reek (28K/sec is the MAX the parallel port can do, and that will eat lots of CPU...). Take it from me you probabily will end up spending a lot more on jun that doesn't work then just getting a real controller, there are a lot of fairly good controllers for the 500, I believe there is a st506 (IBM type) controller... or you could try to get The wedge (an interface that allows you to plug an ibm hd controller into an amiga), however I warn you this might not work (it's a kit, and I'm sure the software is questionable) but it is cheap. I spent way more then I'de like to admit on the Palomax project (similar to the wedge, but it was just plans no kit), and I never got it to work... I finally just got a stardrive (a cheap scsi controller that plugs into microbotics starboard II ) and even with this comercial product the software was cheezy (it didn't support my St296N and except for the fact that someone sent me a hacked up driver I would be out of luck), and slow (~ 100K/s :-( ). The moral of the story is you get what you pay for, save up and get a nice system, it'll be worth it, and give you a lot less hassle... -Rick Golembiewski