[krabat]

Some years ago I saw an external box, into which one could slip the old ATI hard drive and have it converted to SCSI - for a last squezze of those precious GBs.

Granted, this was about two years ago, when storage real estate came at a much higher price, but having already run out of space on my 6 months old 40 GIG ATI I would like to make good use of this, when I buy a new 200 GIG.

So, if you are as old as I am, and can remember when iMacs came in only one colour, I would appreciate if you can did up information on this box, as numerous net searches have produced zilch. Thank you.

many greetings,
ken

[ChrisF]

Originally posted by krabat:
Some years ago I saw an external box, into which one could slip the old ATI hard drive and have it converted to SCSI - for a last squezze of those precious GBs.

First, it's ATA, not ATI (ATI is the video card manufacturer.) You're much better off using a firewire case instead- any such ATA-> SCSI cases are long gone unless you bought yourself an external RAID that has such a configuration, but that's going to cost you a bunch of money.

[DrBoar]

http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/aec-7720u.html

Is just the IDE SCSI card, but there are com,plet solutions with boxes and cables etc out ther called BridgeSmart

A Google on "BridgeSmart" will tell you all about getting IDE as SCSI.

I do agree with the previous poster as pointless if you have FireWire in your computer. FW is way better than SCSI in most regards.

[OreoCookie]

SCSI drives are -- for most applications -- not worth the extra investment as they cost about three times as much per GB (granted, at much higher rpms).

ATA drives are now more than fast enough to handle DV streams, etc. If you need this space externally, because you don't have enough space in your Mac, go for FireWire: no termination, just plug-and-play.

[krabat]

Thank you for replies.

Just to clarify: When I substitute my "old" 40 gig Hard Drive in my Bondi iMac with formac TV/SCSI card for a 200 gig HD, I would like to utilize the 40 gig - i.e. put it on the scsi chain along with extern burner and two other scsi drives. The old bondi blue iMac has no Firewire, and a USB to Firewire converter is sort of silly. Therefore the request for ATA to SCSI conversion

ken

[krabat]

Acard ARS2100 SCSI-IDE BridgeSmart is a small converter, with a wide-SCSI (60 pins it looks like) at one end, and a normal ATA plug at the other, and a matchbox size plastic box in the middle containing a chip of some kind. At the royal prize of 120 British Pounds !!! Total rip-off.

The converter also comes as a PCI-card.

All for windows platform - Mac OS not reported or announced.

ken

[ranga]

Hi,

I used to have a similar setup to the one you are describing.

I used the Acard Bridge Smart IDE to SCSI adapter (ARS-2000FW):

http://www.acard.com/eng/product/scside/ars-2000fw.html

to connect a 30 GB IDE drive to my PM 9500's SCSI bus. I put the drive and the adapter into an external SCSI enclosure. The converter works pretty well (MacOS sees the drive as a SCSI device), but it is a bit pricey (~$80 US).

If you want more info, XLR8 has a review of the card here:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/IDE_t...i_adapter.html

Acard used to sell an external SCSI enclosure that had this converter built-in. XLR8's review of this enclosure can be found here:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/ACARD....html#storytop

HTH,

--ranga

BTW, I'm not using my adapter any more, if you are interested in it I'd be willing to sell it to you for a reasonable price.