Date   : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:01:29 +0100
From   : zeem.uk@... (Alex Taylor)
Subject: Hardware Woes

2009/8/16 Rob <robert@...>:

> Plan E, Can I put a hard disc and an ethernet card in an A3000 ?
> What would I need?

Hard disk interfaces for those machines tend to come in the form of
mini-podules such as the ICS IDEa range, and I think APDL might even
still sell such things. I've had some in various A30x0 machines (even
one in an ex-primary school A3020, which I promptly fitted the drive
directly to the motherboard and put the interface in an A3010
instead).

I actually have a spare 120MB external SCSI drive and six Linguenuity
SCSI Share mini-podules - this allows up to six A30x0/A4000s to access
the same disk. It's currently set up with one common partition for
apps and six individual partitions, one for each machine. The setup
was used in a school I worked in with six A3000s which got heavily
vandalised before being given to me.

Once the mini-podule slot's filled then the ethernet would probably
have to go on the external podule slot. Podule cases used to be
available for protecting any cards hanging off the back of an A3000 -
in fact I think there might be one hiding at work.

I think there may have been mini-podules made with a whole range of
interfaces in the one card (possibly the HCCS Ultimate system),
including IDE and Ethernet, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope of
finding one.

-- 
Alex Taylor