Keeping old machines running.

Back when dinosaurs still ran the world (ie: +/- 72 million years ago) the standard for high performance mass storage was SCSI hard drives. Of course SCSI has been superseded by other storage solutions, but for various reasons some people want / need to keep those old machines that use SCSI drives in operation. The problem is those SCSI drives are old and failing. I've run across a solution for anyone desperate to keep one of those old machines in operation, BlueSCSI. In summary BlueSCSI uses an Arduino series Pico controller and a microSD card to mimic a SCSI hard drive. All the files required to build a BlueSCSI are available for free here : https://bluescsi.com/ With those files you can build a BlueSCSI from top to bottom. Alternatively, you can get it as a kit or pre-assembled. I don't (any longer) have any machines that use SCSI, but I know our community has a few people that love those old servers so might be interested in a way to keep those dinosaurs up and crawling with new hardware. Colin VE3ZAA

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 09:32:32AM -0500, Colin McGregor via talk wrote:
Back when dinosaurs still ran the world (ie: +/- 72 million years ago) the standard for high performance mass storage was SCSI hard drives. Of course SCSI has been superseded by other storage solutions, but for various reasons some people want / need to keep those old machines that use SCSI drives in operation. The problem is those SCSI drives are old and failing. I've run across a solution for anyone desperate to keep one of those old machines in operation, BlueSCSI. In summary BlueSCSI uses an Arduino series Pico controller and a microSD card to mimic a SCSI hard drive. All the files required to build a BlueSCSI are available for free here :
With those files you can build a BlueSCSI from top to bottom. Alternatively, you can get it as a kit or pre-assembled.
I don't (any longer) have any machines that use SCSI, but I know our community has a few people that love those old servers so might be interested in a way to keep those dinosaurs up and crawling with new hardware.
I use the zuluscsi for some of my machines. Nice device. Can even emulate multiple scsi harddisk and optical drives at the same time using different files on the SD card. -- Len Sorensen
participants (2)
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Colin McGregor
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Lennart Sorensen