SUMMARY: 2nd IDE drive in Ultra 5
2007-12-24 19:33:00
OK, I got 6 replies to my question before *I* even got the question!!!
Thanks to Christophe Dupre, Toby Rider, Patrick L. Nolan, Robert L. Harris,
Darren Dunham, and Rob Staab for taking the time to reply.
Responses varied from "probably can't be done" (evidently not true
since others have done it) to "use an external SCSI unipack" (don't want to
do that because I want to mirror the 2 internal IDE drives with DiskSuite)
to "go to CompUSA and get an IDE ribbon cable with 3 connectors" (that's
what I was looking for). Basically, you cannot use the connection from the
motherboard to the floppy for anything other than the floppy. Therefore,
you either have to not use the CD-ROM or get the 3 connector IDE ribbon
cable, putting either both disk drives or one of the disk drives and the
CD-ROM on the cable, and configure the 2nd drive as a slave drive.
I apologize for my lack of knowledge of IDE devices. I'm much more
familiar with SCSI. Thanks again for the help. Six months from now when I
search on this in the archives I should get a hit, though!!! ;-)
Original post and replies follow.
Kevin Buterbaugh
LifeWay
"You have moved your mouse. Windows NT must be rebooted for the change to
take effect. Reboot now (Y/N)?"
---------------------- Forwarded by Kevin Buterbaugh/Nashville/BSSBNOTES on
03/13/2001 02:28 PM ---------------------------
Sent by: codeprof-admin at codeprof.com
To: codeprof at codeprof.com
cc:
Subject: 2nd IDE drive in Ultra 5
Greetings All,
I hate to post this because I feel certain this has been discussed
*somewhere* before ... but I've searched the archive at codeprof.com,
SunSolve, and a couple other sites with no luck.
I have an Ultra 5 which I want to put a 2nd internal IDE hard drive
in. I've purchased an identical drive to the one that's currently in the
box (a Seagate 9 GB). I don't need the floppy, but would like to be able
to use the CD-ROM. Therefore, I was planning on removing the floppy
altogether and hooking up the 2nd hard drive in its' place.
When I opened the box I noticed that there are 3 ribbon cables coming
off the motherboard. Two wider one's which go to the existing hard drive
and the CD-ROM. Then there's a slightly narrower one going to the floppy.
What do I need to do to be able to use the 2nd hard drive? Is there a
special "converter" cable that I need to get to replace the floppy's narrow
cable? Or is there something else that should be done?
I know that what I'm asking about has been done before (that's why I
expected to find something about it without having to post). Thanks in
advance for your help. Of course, I'll summarize...
Kevin Buterbaugh
LifeWay
"If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time a Windows box crashed ... Oh,
wait a minute, he does!"
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====================================
As far as I know, there's no way to have two hard drives AND a CD-ROM.
The narrow cable is a floppy disk cable, the controller will not know what
to do with a disk. You migth even destroy it.
The other two cables are connection to the IDE controller. Unfortunately,
IDE only supports two devices per controller, so you're probably out of
luck
Note that I don't have any Ultra-5 to actually play with, I just have a
good knowledge of IDE in general.
--
Christophe Dupre
System Administrator, Scientific Computation Research Center
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY USA
Phone: (518) 276-2578 - Fax: (518) 276-4886
===========================
No, go over to PC club and buy an IDE cable with three connectors. One
for the motherboard and two for the drives. Connect the drives, one as
master, one as slave. There you go! I actually run Ultra 5's with 3
drives internally before :-)
--
+ Toby A. Rider - toby.rider at fronteracorp.com
+ Unix Systems Administrator
+ Frontera Corporation - http://www.fronteracorp.com
+ Culver City, CA.
==============================
You don't need to remove the floppy. A second 1-inch disk will sit
on top of the floppy. There are a couple of screw holes in the mounting
bracket that you can use to mount it.
You need to get some new cables. Any PC supplier should have ribbon
cables which are designed to handle two IDE drives with a single
controller. You will probably have to add jumpers to the disks to select
which one is the master and which is the slave. (I think the ultra 5 comes
with the disk set to "cable select".) You will also need a Y power cable
so you can power the second drive (if you don't remove the floppy).
I have successfully added a 30 GB drive on an ultra 5 with Solaris 7.
==============================
Ok, The easy way is to put the floppy back and get an external unipack
or something similar and run it off the back of the box.
The most likely way, go to compusa, and get a SCSI ribbon cable. make sure
it's the same plugs, 50pin most likely. The little cable is for a floppy
which
is very diff than scsi. Verify your SCSI ID's and then chain the 2 HD's
using
the new cable you just bought.
Robert
==============================
When you purchase the drive upgrade from Sun, you get a blank to put in
the slot that used to be for the floppy. You also get a longer ribbon
cable that has slots for both a master and slave device. I can guess
that more "normal" EIDE cables would function, but have not tried them.
--
Darren Dunham ddunham at taos.com
Unix System Administrator Taos - The SysAdmin Company
Got some Dr Pepper? San Francisco, CA bay area
< How are you gentlemen!! Take off every '.SIG'!! >
===============================
There are two ide controllers on the board (One goes to the HD and one to
the CDROM) Just go to a local store and buy an IDE cable with three jacks
on
it instead of two. Pull out the cable attached to the CD-ROM. Put the new
hard drive that you've bought and run the cable from the motherboard to the
cd-rom AND the new hard drive.
Change the jumpers on the hard drive to master and the cdrom to slave.
boot -r the machine and it should see the new disk.
BTW: Run format to ensure that you see the new disk.
I did this to a couple Ultra 5's and it's no big deal. Alternately, you can
buy an overpriced kit from SUN to do the same thing. No worth it though
IMHO.
- Rob
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