From: Mike McDonald
Subject: Misc. Symbolics Hardware Questions
Date: 
Message-ID: <CJspEu.21B@jabba.ess.harris.com>
  Well, I get to take my 3620 home with me today. Yippy!! I have a few questions
about adding peripherals to it.

  1) How many disks can one put on a 3620? There are 2 ST506 drives in it already
with space for two more but I can't find any more connectors to hook any new
drives up to.

  2) How do I get the drive tray to slide out? The machine was rack mounted. Is
this keeping the tray from sliding?

  3) What kind of cart tape drive does it need? Can I take a cart tape off a 3640
and plug it in to the Cart connector on the IO card?

  4) How about a CD-ROM drive? I'll probably just hang one off my Linux system
but I'm curious.

  5) Did Symbolics ever make a color board for the 3620s? If so, does any one
have an idea how much they cost these days?

  Thanks,

  Mike McDonald				Advanced Technology Dept.	
					Harris Corp.
  Email: ···@trantor.harris-atd.com	M.S. 16-1912
  Voice: (407) 727-5060			P.O. Box 37
  Fax:   (407) 729-3363			Melbourne, Florida 32902
From: Barry Margolin
Subject: Re: Misc. Symbolics Hardware Questions
Date: 
Message-ID: <2hfltmINN5i1@early-bird.think.com>
In article <··········@jabba.ess.harris.com> ···@trantor.harris-atd.com (Mike McDonald) writes:
>  1) How many disks can one put on a 3620? There are 2 ST506 drives in it already
>with space for two more but I can't find any more connectors to hook any new
>drives up to.

I think the extra space is for the tape drive.

>  3) What kind of cart tape drive does it need? Can I take a cart tape off a 3640
>and plug it in to the Cart connector on the IO card?

I think any Symbolics cart tape drive should work, so I think taking one
from a 3640 should be OK.

>  4) How about a CD-ROM drive? I'll probably just hang one off my Linux system
>but I'm curious.

There was no such thing as a CD-ROM drive when the 3620 came out.  None of
the 36xx systems have standard busses (no SCSI or VME), so you can't
connect standard peripherals to them.

>  5) Did Symbolics ever make a color board for the 3620s? If so, does any one
>have an idea how much they cost these days?

I don't think so.  There aren't enough slots in a 3620 to add color boards.
When they finally squoze all their color hardware onto a single board they
came out with the 3630, which is in the same size cabinet but color-only.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

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