castlewod orb internal drive?????

[Quater-inch-Lug]

i can get a good price on a orb but it is an internal drive....my question is can i still use it with an fd-8????like maybe put in in some type of box or something...im very new to all of this and any help would be very appriciated......thanx

 

[Jim Marquard]

Yeah, the internal is about $50 cheaper, but it would be an EIDE drive which would require connecting it the FD-8's circuit board or possibly the ribbon that a hard drive is connected to. Do you have a hard drive in your machine? Basically, it will require accessing the inside of your machine. Sounds like a bit work and probably more than $50. I'd recommend that you just go for the SCSI external and buy the 50pin/25pin adaptor or cable for about $20 or less. I keep my drive in a box with a little padding to keep the noise done so I don't record the sound of the drive and it works really well. And I have been extremely pleased with the performance of the Orb.

Peace, Jim

[This message has been edited by Jim Marquard (edited 03-27-2000).]

 

[C. Mulvihill]

I just recently purchased an FD-4. I too followed Jim's advice (previous post) and purchased the external SCSI Castlewood Orb drive. I admit that I'm just getting started with it, but so far it appears to be working fine. There shouldn't be a problem in using this drive with the FD-8. Regarding an internal Orb drive, I'm not too sure (mine is an external drive). The external drive uses a 50 pin HD connector, the internal drive uses a 68 pin connector designed for a ribbon cable. If you don't already own an Orb drive I'd say look for the external SCSI version since some of the people here have had success with it. Also, since I suspect the internal drive gets its' power from the computer power supply you might run into difficulty trying to power it up without it being mounted in a PC.