Re: Cliff if there were ever a cabling construct that was the work of the Evil One...
>>I have to downvote as I was never interested in the prettiness of a solution, just the reliability and performance, and SCSI more than did it's job back in the day
Have to agree with you there Matt. SCSI worked, and your old SCSI drives probably even still work if you can find a way to power and interface them.
I have several Hard Drives from a 512K(!) Mac* that are about four years younger than I am. The last time I tested them, they still worked just fine. Better and more reliable than the crappy Seagate drives behind my modern Windows, BSD, and Linux installs, but I guess they don't make em like they used to, at least not reliability wise, they're just a hell of a lot larger in capacity by some orders of magnitude. Then again, ATA in either variety has never been the most reliable. Good enough, certainly, but not the best.
*- It was also my first "real" computer. Probably the first truly useful Mac as well, and I believe the first production model Mac with a color display. Some Apple historian would have to tell you for sure. I was 10 years old and I can't say I really cared much about the technical specifics when a family friend gave it to me, a computer was a computer (they still cost as much as a used car back then) and it sure as hell beat the 486 that my neighbors had, even if it was a good deal slower.