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Re: IIc hard drive hack?



Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net> wrote:

>Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
>
>:>I'd say forget it.
>
>: I would not use a Focus card.  Rather, find a CT-20 SmartPort hard
>: drive.  Assuming you use the "UniDisk" revision IIc, you should
>: be able to mount the SmartPort to SCSI interface board in the IIc
>: where the 5.25" drive is.  Then you can use an extra slim notebook
>: 2.5" SCSI hard drive for storage.
>
>First problem: who would want to scrap a CT drive? They're pretty scarce.
>You'd spend what a Powerbook 170 costs these days on one of those drives,
>easily. Second, ever see inside one? The converter board is enormous. It'd 
>take power and the hard disk would take power too, all internally of course. 
>So scratch yet another unworkable idea.

Then the best bet is to trade the IIc for a Laser 128EX/2.  This
unit is better anyway, having an internal 3.5" drive, a clock/calender,
MIDI, 1MB of memory expansion sockets for 41256 chips, parallel
as well as serial, and a single expansion slot on the side.  It can
easily accomodate a Focus card and there was a cap you could
use to extend the casing of the unit so that the Focus card was
enclosed.

More importantly, the serial hardware does not suck like a IIc
and go caput around 9600 (well below the ability of its serial chip).