Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request From: amc-gw!jon@entropy.ms.washington.edu (Jon Mandrell) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: 3/80 SCSI cables Message-ID: <1665@brazos.Rice.edu> Date: 22 Sep 89 21:49:22 GMT Sender: root@rice.edu Organization: Sun-Spots Lines: 32 Keywords: Hardware Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 133, message 6 of 9 I have heard many mutterings about the SCSI connectors on the 3/80's, and interfacing to external shoeboxes. We had the same problem, upgrading from 3/60's, and have come up with a solution. We received a 3/80, noticed the connector and called Sun to get another. No luck, they are back-ordered. I talked to our parts people here, and they found the part's manufacturer, and found out that they are back-ordered SIX MONTHS. Unacceptable. So, we opened up the 3/80 case, and lo and behold, the internal drives are connected with standard 50-pin headers to connectors on the board! We build a cable using about 4 feet of 50 conductor ribbon cable, with 2 headers at one end (about 6 inches apart), and an old Sun-type connector at the other (sorry, I can't recall the AMP part numbers). Remove one of the short cables between one of the drives and the main board, and replace with this cable. Snake the cable out the back of the box between the top edge of the case. We haven't had any problems with this. Pardon the poor drawing, but this is what it looks like: +------------------------+------+ <= ribbon cable | | | | | header, connect to internal drive | header, connect to board Old-style Sun connector, connect to shoebox cable I should also include something along the lines of "I'm not a Sun tech, and can't promise that this won't hurt your machine", but it works just fine for us. Jon Mandrell, Applied Microsystems Corp., (jon@amc.com or ..!uunet!amc-gw!jon)