scsi drives: nice developement housing

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
#1

while i was browsing my attic, i came across a bunch of external scsi drives, picking them up to trow them away, when a thought struck me. hey! 5volt, 12 volt, cooling, a lot of inputs/outputs, a settable binary counter. perfect for a arduino project.

drive some steppers? wire the thing up with the drivers in the case and route them trough the old centronics 50 pin to a db 25 cable used on old macs and you have your shielded break out! wire the motors on a female db25 an off you go.

now to find a standard way for the pinout...

even the led on the front can have a purpous here!

#2

Back in 1999 (when they were ALREADY obsolete) I covered the top of one with breadboards and ran the power to a couple of terminals. Used it for 6 or 7 years, worked great. Not entirely sure what ever happened to it, maybe it's in a box somewhere.

The power supply won't have enough oomph to run steppers. But it's pretty decent for 5 volt projects. They are typically pretty empty inside once you remove the SCSI drive, lots of room for the Arduino and random circuitry.

#3