3/80 SCSI cables

[Jon Mandrell]

I have heard many mutterings about the SCSI connectors on the 3/80's, and
interfacing to external shoeboxes.  We had the same problem, upgrading
from 3/60's, and have come up with a solution.

We received a 3/80, noticed the connector and called Sun to get another.
No luck, they are back-ordered.  I talked to our parts people here, and
they found the part's manufacturer, and found out that they are
back-ordered SIX MONTHS.  Unacceptable.

So, we opened up the 3/80 case, and lo and behold, the internal drives are
connected with standard 50-pin headers to connectors on the board!  We
build a cable using about 4 feet of 50 conductor ribbon cable, with 2
headers at one end (about 6 inches apart), and an old Sun-type connector
at the other (sorry, I can't recall the AMP part numbers).  Remove one of
the short cables between one of the drives and the main board, and replace
with this cable.  Snake the cable out the back of the box between the top
edge of the case.  We haven't had any problems with this.

    Pardon the poor drawing, but this is what it looks like:

  +------------------------+------+  <= ribbon cable
  |                        |      |
  |                        |      header, connect to internal drive
  |                        header, connect to board
  Old-style Sun connector, connect to shoebox cable

I should also include something along the lines of "I'm not a Sun tech,
and can't promise that this won't hurt your machine", but it works just
fine for us.

Jon Mandrell, Applied Microsystems Corp., (jon at amc.com or ..!uunet!amc-gw!jon)