Just found some old drives lying around what should i do with them?

[Zerileous]

Well we were cleaing out the junk room and i found some old drives (a CDROM and a HDD) lying round no clue where they came from. They are all HP branded. All this stuff is SCSI. The CDROM is a Toshiba XM-4101B which google reveals to be 2x. Then there is an ISA adaptec SCSI controller that has an internal and an external port (i dont know if both will run at once or anything. There is a 2.1 gig HDD and Googleing a model number reveals that this is a Segate Baricuda useing "50 pin narrow" (im a scsi noob so bear with me) and the other connections on CDROM and HDD are the same size. There is also something about scsi 2 mentioned in googlig the HDD. Its a 5400 RPM which is nice for the era. How hard would it be to get a cable for these devices? I actually have a use for them, i could use the CD rom to get a lil server going (Celeron II 333mhz, everthing but CDROM is there) and i could take the IDE drive from it for a second drive on my main rig (dont know what id do with it other than more space for something like dedicated music since im limited to 8 GB because im a HS student with no job.

Capsul summary:
Found SCSI controller, CD-Rom and HDD. All are SCSI-2 as far as i can tell and use 50 pin narrow whatever that is. I have a puter that needs the CDROM and i could use the extra HDD from it, then i could set it up as a server. I need a cable for these devices, how hard would getting one be? How expensive? Im a SCSI noob, any general information would be greatly appreciated. And one final question? Would Celeron 333mhz server with 160mb of pc100 be worth the effort of getting this going? also would it be worth putting the space to put this HDD in my current machine instead and run the drive there for extra space and ditch the older machine server idea? I could drop the CDrom in for fun too, a general music CD player or sumthing. Sorry the capsul summary isnt a very smal capsul but i got carried away.

Any help or input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[Xaotic]

The narrow SCSI-2 devices are usually very reliable, but also very slow. It'll probably be about 10MB/s on the interface. The cables are cheap and widely available. Termination is usually handled by the devices and the cable resembles a wider IDE cable. It should be well under 5.00.

 

[Zerileous]

Ok thanks, this sounds good for a server, and it allows me to use the scsi CDROM on the controller and thus have a CD drive for the server too. Speed doesnt need to be its strong suit. Come to think of it my friend has a Pentium 166 with a scsi setup, i would guess scsi 2 would be used and he is getting a real puter soon (xp 200+) so i may be able to rip a cable and maybee some other devices off there too. I read on how stuff works and i now understand enough scsi to actually run a setup. Thanks for the input.

 

[Tecumseh]

This old stuff is good for backup. It sure is a whole lot better
than tape.

 

[Xaotic]

That all depends on the tape. Then again, how may people use DLT8000s for home use? I trust mine more than any CDRW or DVD-RW.

 

[Tecumseh]

Even AIT tape is tape. Yes, it has its place, but that's mostly
in the past. For a desktop user the DVD±RW stuff is OK, but
a good HDD is even cheaper and faster.