On 20 Jul 96 14:46:12 -0800, ceridwyn@wolfenet.com wrote:

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BTW, I'd try a fiber-optic connector to the machine because 1) it's

Do you know anything about where to find info. on connecting drives (IDE or SCSI) with fiber? I'm very interested in this possibility, but need to research further. I'd like to home-build a system, but any info on current products would also be helpful.

One, you could probably replace the wires with fiber/xmitter pairs. However, this would probably screw your timings to hell - SCSI probably wouldn't work. OTOH, it's possible that with a careful enough job and some decent components you could pull it off. It would be incredibly wasteful, though, as you would need 40+ fibers to do the job of one... I'd find some network cards that support fiber and breadboard a little system together. Possibly, you could find a hookup that would work off the shelf - look for sources for embedded systems. For instance, at least Novell's networks have embedded system support. I recall a DDJ that had someone wire up a coffemaker as a network controlled device, so I doubt you'd need a PC. As I recall, he had a single chip ethernet device. Now, this was for regular ethernet, but I'd assume you could connect a fiber based ethernet over with some sort of adapter. Search for the article at http://www.ddj.com - if you can't find it there, drop me a note. // Chris Adams <adamsc@io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!