rotary switch

Correct. I also don't want a multi-boot setup on a single drive. One drive will be in a removable drive bay.(virgin copy of WinXP pro will be available on a removable drive to clone back to keep a fresh, clean install available in just a few munites) My 2nd ide channel is currently used by a dvd rw and a zip drive.

Yeah. That's what I meant.
All my drives are no jumper for master, and one jumper for slave.
This sounds like the kind of advice I need. Thank you.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ah....what do you want in trade?
Gunner
Lathe Dementia. Recognized as one of the major sub-strains of the all-consuming virus, Packratitis. Usual symptoms easily recognized and normally is contracted for life. Can be very contagious. michael

Note that this is a Sun MultiPack -- they come in 6-hole versions (for 1.6" high drives) or 12-hole versions (for 1" high drives). All the drives are SCA (80-pin) -- and are hot-swappable.
The 6-hole one will also accept the 1" high drives, but the 12-hole won't accept the 1.6" high drives -- the top of the drive bumps on the next connector.
It will have a pair of 68-pin SCSI connectors, but it will work with a 68-50 pin cable with no problems. It will also automatically terminate the SCSI cable -- unless something else is plugged in the second socket, so you don't need to mess with terminators.
You *will* get faster transfer rates if you have a 68-pin SCSI card on the computer. (Some of the later SPARC Ultra machines have the 68-pin -- and some don't even have SCSI.) The Ultra-2 is equipped with a built-in SCSI port for the Ultra-SCSI. The Ultra-5 has only IDE drives. The Ultra-1 is too old, and has only the 50-pin SCSI connection.
The 6-hole ones are available in Ultra speeds, but the 12-hole ones are limited to some slightly slower fast-wide SCSI.
The 6-hole ones have a switch to select between SCSI-IDs 1-6 (for the 50-pin SCSI cables), or 9-14 (for the upper half of the 68-pin SCSI.
The 12-hole one uses SCSI IDs 2,3,4,5,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 (skipping over SCSI IDs 0 and 1 (used by the drives in the Ultra-2 and some other systems), 6 (the built-in CD-ROM), and 7 (the SCSI controller itself).
All drives will need a "spud" (Sun's mounting bracket for the hot-swap drives) -- but since this one is with drives, that is taken care of as well.
These are very nice boxen -- I've got three of various styles, and I am quite happy with them.
Oh yes -- they all have a lock to keep people from pulling drives without permission. All use the same key, and all that I have found have been unlocked, with the partial exception of one, which had the bitt of the key broken off in the lock, allowing it to be turned to lock or unlock, but not really locked. But I was able to pull the key remains out, and find a replacement key.
If you decide that want more of them after you've gotten this, I've recently found a local fellow with quite a few of them -- typically with two or four 2GB drives to throw out, after saving the spuds from them for larger drives. His price is pretty good by my standards -- but shipping will add to it, from Va to Ca.
Enjoy, DoN.

??? Drool.......
Ive got an older 800 mhz AMD dual P3 server with (4) 20 gigers and a single 80 gig (c:\) set up with a hardware RAID 1-0 controlling the (4) 20s, and a spare ultrawide 68pin external port on the RAID card. 1 gig of memory.
Its running under Win2k Server with an uptime now of about 5 months. Its got a HP DataStore 8 tape drive (but only windows backup software..sigh)
(not a bad trade for a fair Atlas 6" 3 jaw chuck, no? )
Id love to have the extra (6) 18gig drives even running outboard I store a lot of machine tool photos, a shit load of PDF files, machining, Military FMs etc.
I would like to learn a cad/cam program so figure the speed and memory would be of some value. Ive got a Port Royal version of Autocad 2002, but have been offered several Port Royal versions of Mastermumble and Surfmumble so I can learn them.
Id also like to set up a dual boot for some version of Linux, which Im having the devils own time learning to use for some reason. Self help books only go so far when the end user is butt ignorant.
I had a cd boot version of Knoppix, but loaned it out and it never came back...shrug. I was sorta kinda learning my way around in it, but never could get it to recognize the internal modem of my regular computer., or the rest of the network, even with Samba loaded.
I have the old Micron 500mhz machine as my regular workhorse, the wife has a no name 600 mhz for her MSN Gaming Zone computer and Ive got a old Compac 350 mhz out in the shop with the various machinist toolbox programs. I run Proxy X on the Micron when I want the any computer besides the wifes, to go on the net (only have dialup) or when I have my work 350mhz Compaq Armarda laptop plugged into the docking station, or sitting in the living room with the wife, over a very old and slow 1mps D-Link wireless pcmcia card and the access node , all plugged into a 10/100 3com 24port switch. She also has the one DVD play drive we have, while I have an old external USB ZIP 650 CD-r drive on the Micron along with a Compac Flash reader. Filled up the USB ports.
An elderly Lazerjet 4 with the network card option serves all the computers.
A buddy owns a surplus computer sales outfit and he has the machine tool jones...so we swap Stuff occasionally. They do surplus computer and whatnot..so sometimes they call me in to id or test odd stuff. Phone systems, electrical, dc drives..the usual stuff..
I could never afford half this stuff, even old and used, if I had to pay cash.
I wound up with a pair of 20 gig IBM DGHS drives about 3 yrs ago, that I think are the 80 pin hot swap drives as they dont have a power connector. I had to buy a 80pin to 68pin adapter so I could get one of them running in the Micron. The other is still in a box.
I got an older Belkin KVM (4) port last month for a heaping handful of Reliable Tools endmills so am running the big server and my Micron from the same keyboard, monitor and elderly Logitec trackball (which is failing fast...I cant find surplus trackballs..damnit...) and an old Viking external modem running off the Micron.
Where I live, there is no DSL available, and RoadRunner cable modem service is damned near $75 a month, so I stay on dialup with Earthlink. Shrug. Id love to have broadband..but need it like a third thumb, and damned sure cant afford it.
Here at my RV in LA, I have a no name 600 mhz puter and a docking station for my work laptop, networked with a very elderly 4 port hub (10baseT). Works well enough for doing the newsgroups and surfing the net. Got Zip 100 externals on most of the computers, so I can take data home, or dump it into the laptop.
Im a storage space junkie. Ive lost too much data over the years simply because I had no room, or couldnt do backups, and something puked.
So Id love to have Daves array. Im pretty sure the external Raid port (68 pin) on the server will handle the external array and run it as an extra external raid.
Trade, swap...no can do cash. Shrug.
Find any newer trackballs, Im needing one.
Gunner
Lathe Dementia. Recognized as one of the major sub-strains of the all-consuming virus, Packratitis. Usual symptoms easily recognized and normally is contracted for life. Can be very contagious. michael

Right, but a mechanical switch isn't necessary for multi-boot setup.

Why not just use a boot loader such as LILO or GRUB, built into any linux or BSD distribution? That's what it's for. Hard drive signals are very sensitive to having unexpected things on the line - a mechanical device would introduce unexpected and hard to predict changes to the data path. Not worth it.

I dunno. Let's take it to email, I'll give you the specifics and we'll go from there. I can scare up a controller for it too, to get you up and running quicker.
Dave

Yes, that's the one. Right. Yup.
The controller I have with it has the 68-pin connector, external, to go to the array (and a 100-baseT port for some reason).
I've got the Ultra-5 that goes with the array if he needs that too, far as that goes, but the controller will plug into any modern PC. Yeah, that's why I went for this one. Noisy, though, and I don't have anything worthy of RAID, really. I might keep you and your friend in mind as well, DoN.

Sounds like a plan then. I assume you need a cable? We have enough common interests and hobbies that I'm not worried about figuring out something there.
Dave

. Got one. Don't like 'em. Want it? e-mail me an address. If Gunner don't want it, first come first served.

[ ... ]
That's it. This one is for sure a 6-holer, though I can't tell whether it is the Ultra speed one or not. That would be written on the lower left-hand corner of the front, and *sometimes* on the side panel (which is label-side down on top of the enclosure). (The other way to tell is to look up the number on the backplane (visible if you unplug a couple of the left-hand drives). I could look it up in my copy of Sun's FEH (Field Engineer's Handbook), if it were visible -- but at the resolution in the auction photo, not a chance even if the drives were all out of the way and if a light were shining in there to illuminate it.
It has the nicer of the two styles of "spuds".
But I somehow doubt that it will close anywhere near the current price, which is *very* attractive, given the size of the disks.
[ ... ]
O.K. This is not hardware RAID. It is what Sun calls "JBOD" (Just a Box Of Disks).
That's pretty amazing. You probably keep that one clear of games and large complex applications (like PhotoShop or various CAD programs.)
That is an 8mm tape drive, like the Exabyte ones? (Perhaps even a re-branded ExaByte. What is the capacity?
Agreed.
I know how that goes -- though the details of what is stored tend to be a bit different.
O.K.
Hmm ... I don't work with linux very much, but I can help with generic unix questions, which will cover a lot of linux stuff.
Don't expect much from that internal modem. I'll bet that it is a WinModem -- which ofloads a lot of the stuff which a modem normally does on its own to software in the computer -- and uses a rather proprietary protocol for that, so it is difficult for the open source community to work around it. Plan for an external modem (which most Windows users are probably willing to give away, if they still have one).
Samba takes some configuration. At least on a dialup, you are less vulnerable than you could be while running it. And the Knoppix stuff tends to lose configuration information with each boot, since most of what it is using it reads from the CD-ROM and keeps in RAM disk.
Better to install it on another machine, learn what it does there, and only then work at dual-boot on a faster system.
A switch, or a hub? Both are possible, and the benefit of the switch over the hub is that it keeps other systems on the net from seeing the traffic between any two machines.
I'm still using a LJ4+, after finally wearing out a LJ4. Does yours also have the PostScript SIMMs installed? If so, that is still a good printer.
I've also got a LJ5 color laserjet -- it weighs a ton. :-)
Sounds like a good setup.
FWIW -- the price I paid for my first MultiPack with a couple of 4GB drives was something like $35.00, if you want to have an idea what they would cost if you decide to pay for them.
Hmm ... they sure sound like the SCA ones -- other than the size. 18.? GB is common, 20GB is not, in my experience, though given that it is IBM, it still may be so.
[ ... ]
O.K. Actually, a third thumb strikes me as a good thing to have in an initiation ritual, where you have to play "switch". :-)
I understand. A tape jukebox is a good thing to have, too.
Pretty likely. There are both single-ended and differential. The Sun Ultra-2 and the MultiPacks are single-ended, the D1000 (JBOD) and the A1000 (hardware RAID -- in the same box) are differential SCSI. The benefit of differential is that you can run longer maximum cable lengths. The disadvantage is that fewer systems support it. A hardware Raid controller may want to talk differential.
Well ... the guy with the MultiPacks is looking to move, so he won't want any large chunks of cast iron.
Good Luck, I've had to *buy* those new.
Enjoy, DoN.

Agreed. But the OP wanted to just switch power and the master/slave jumper. IIRC, the master/slave jumper is only read at power-up, so there are no high-speed signals going through it.
If the drives properly tri-state when powered down they should not represent a significant load (just like SCSI drives which are powered down).
What I *would* suggest is to space the drives as close together as possible, and crimp connectors on the cable with just say 1/4" slack between drives, so you don't have too long a run to the end of the cable if the active drives are not at the actual end.
Enjoy, DoN.

Thats cool too. With that much data storage, I can mirror at least one drive as a backup. Or even two if I used zip or some other form of compression. Ayup. Ive been considering using it for my internet computer but the old Micron Im posting from now does a fair job and Im not much for gaming.
8 gigs compressed, with the proper software. I was wrong..its a SureStore Dat8...DAT tape, 4mm When I load another box up, Ill call on you. Ive got a Viking 56k external now, so it should recognize it. Knopix seemed to always find everything except the modem. Indeed
Its a switch. 3com Superstack2 I think it does. Plus the network card. you are correct 18.2
tape jukebox? Id not mind running it as a box of disks. Thanks for the info.
Gunner
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H. L. Mencken

It can still be used as the disk farm for either software RAID or with a hardware RAID controller.
Nor am I.
O.K. DAT, and the "8" name from the capacity.
[ ... ]
Good enough.
Good -- yes, that should go.
If it is a laptop, you wind up with weird hardware (modems, floppys, CD-ROMs) which things like linux and BSD may not recognize. A desktop machine has a better chance of being fully recognized (except for WinModems. :-)
[ ... ]
O.K. Good enough -- and better security than a hub can give you.
[ ... ]
Very good.
[ ... ]
O.K. 7200 RPM -- not quite as fast as the 10000 RPM ones, but not bad at all.
And 1.6" tall -- which means that you would need a 6-holer, not a 12-holer to accept it.
The even numbers (10GB, 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 80GB, 120GB) tend to be IDE drives -- which may simply mean that the vendors are a bit more accurate in rating the SCSI drives.
[ ... ]
A mechanical system with a tape drive (or several) included, which will change tapes automatically, or under the command of the computer.
[ ... ]
And software RAID is still an option, as is connecting to a hardware RAID controller.
Enjoy, DoN.