Drive by Showing
If you were at the keynote you may remember that Steve Jobs was not just happy to see you, he also had a sleek little drive in his pocket. You can see this firewire drive at the VST booth (booth 3735, www.vsttech.com ). The working prototype holds a 2.5 inch drive in a curvy red case. The drive gets power from the firewire line itself, so it doesn’t need a power cord. VST is also selling the first external USB floppy, at $99.
Adaptec (booth 2129, www.adaptec.com ) is selling a modestly priced PCI SCSI card, perfect if you want one of the new G3?s but have a pile of external SCSI drives you just can’t part with. The $65 SCSI 2906 card can move data at 10 MB/sec, twice as fast as the Mac’s traditional external SCSI. An even speedier option is the $149 Power Domain 2930U, which can transfer data at 20 MB/sec.
For those with more demanding SCSI needs, ATTO (booth 1043 www.attotech.com ) has introduced their Express PCI UL2D dual channel card. Each port supports 80 MB/sec Ultra 2 SCSI, for a total of 160 MB/sec. It takes advantage of the 64 bit PCI on the new Apple G3’s. While you’re at the ATTO booth take a second to admire the MicroNet Genesis RAID array ( www.micronet.com ). The external tower holds LVD drives but connects out the back via either Ultra 2 SCSI or Fibre Channel.
There are oodles of cables at the Granite Digital (booth 642, www.scsipro.com ). They are introducing an Ultra 2 SCSI TPO 68 ribbon cable, for hooking up internal LVD drives. They are also showing a variety of PCI SCSI cards and cable testers.
For those who haven’t found the right removable yet, swing by booth 2007, where Castlewood ( www.castlewood.com ) is showing the Orb drive. The external SCSI version should be shipping in February. The $199 Orb should be fast, according the specification sheet the data transfer rate is 12.2 MB/sec. Castlewood is also developing USB and Firewire version of the Orb.