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