new harddrive for AS250

[Alex Angerhofer <alex chem ufl edu>]

Hi list,

thanks for all the suggestions that came in on my previous inquiry on
this subject. I have looked around for suitable harddrives and found
some that where reasonably priced and have large space, e.g., the IBM
Ultrastar series. The DNES-318350 for example, with 18.2 GB storage
space is priced at $399.-. The problem with this as well as with other
drives in the range at or above 9GB is that they are all UltraSCSI, and
many come with a wider connector. There are SCA -> SCSI interface
adaptors that reduce the connector width back to 50 pins, but I am not
sure whether they would work on the alpha's. Furthermore, the UltraSCSI
drives are spec'ed at 20 or 40 MB/s which is more than my current
NCR53C-810 controller will yield. My questions at this points therefore
are:
1. Would it be possible to get an UltraSCSI drive to work with a SCSI-2
   controller on the AlphaStations, possibly with the interface adaptor
   that reduces the connector to 50 pin? Has anyone done this in the
   past successfully? I realize that there would be an obvious
   degrading in speed from the specs. I am also wondering whether the
   old SCSI-2 adaptor will actually be able to handle harddrives larger
   than 8GB.
2. Would it be possible to add the UltraSCSI drive as a second drive to
   the machine by getting a PCI bus SCSI controller? This way I would
   keep the old controller on the motherboard hooked up to the original
   1GB Quantum HD and plug the IBM HD in to a new SCSI controller on the
   PCI bus. This might be the better solution since it seems to
   preserve the speed. Would it be possible to boot off the new disk at
   all? Following Kirk Erichsen's and Paul Bunn's suggestions I am
   looking at the Symbios 22915 PCI->Ultra3 adapter or its little
   brother, the SYM8951U. Is there anything that looks questionable
   with this plan of action?

While I am at it: Can anybody suggest a source where I can buy the
ZLXp-E3 video card? I currently have to live with an 8bit ZLXp-E1 and
would like to upgrade. Apparently, these cards are not anymore in
production and I would have to find a shop that hawks off the remaining
inventory or a second hand shop.

Thank you very much in advance for any helpful comments on the above.
Best regards, Alex.

-- 
Dr. Alexander Angerhofer
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Department of Chemistry
The University of Florida
Box 117200
Gainesville, FL 32611-7200
USA

Tel.: (+1) 352 846 3281
alt.: (+1) 352 392 9489
lab : (+1) 352 846 3283
FAX : (+1) 352 392 0872