Open The Box! Is your hard disk drive future-proof? With pliers between teeth, Colin Monro takes the plunge... In 1993, I bought my first hard drive for my Atari 1040STFM. One of the Gasteiner "Mega Drive" series, it was only long after the warranty had expired, that curiosity overcame me and I opened the box. Inside was the host adapter board with real-time clock (about three times the size of the modern ICD Link adapter), a power supply unit, the 47MB disk drive (physically huge by today's standards) and...a big space. With a spare power lead trailing from the PSU, it was obvious that the yawning gap was intended was intended for a second drive. This was not that uncommon in those days--Protar Series 1 and ICD FaST drives amongst others left similar spaces for extra mechanisms. Times change, and so does equipment. The Gasteiner drive was switched to running my 4MB STE and my MIDI kit. Even after tidying up the partitions, though, it became apparent that I wasn't going to get too many 16-bit audio samples on it, and so I took the plunge to fill that space. It's almost impossible these days to buy a hard disk under 1GB new, but after cruising the "for sale" topics of the CiX bulletin board, I bought a six month-old bare Maxtor drive--ś50 for a 290MB model. Despite having been in a Mac, all it required was re-partitioning. Both the ICD utilities and HD-Driver software can do this for you. And now, the disclaimer. If I'm an idiot, and erase all my valuable song files and samples by fiddling with hard disks, that's my fault. You undertake this kind of operation at your own risk, so always, always, back up your data from the original drive. Next, not all SCSI drives are created equally. They have different jumper settings, power requirements, physical sizes, and most annoyingly, the mounting holes never seem to be in the same place from one to the other! None of this is insurmountable, it just requires some patience... Tooling Up So you've acquired a second drive mechanism, you've got appropriate tools: flat and star bladed screwdrivers, pliers, a hand drill preferably--you can use a power tool but be sure to remove all the components from your drive casing first because electronic components will not like the vibrations. A hand drill worked slowly and surely is much more gentle (it took me fifteen minutes to drill each hole). Choose a flat worktop, with plenty of containers for screws, brackets and cables. Softly Softly Having disconnected your hard drive, unscrew it and open the box (the design varies between manufacturers). Note the orientation of any power plugs, leads, and mounting brackets. Draw diagrams if necessary, this will help when you try to put it all back together and discover you have spare bits left over! Unless you've opted for the power drill approach, all you need remove is the original hard disk. Treat this with care, put it in an anti-static bag preferably, and stow it away from your work area and over-zealous elbows. Treat your new hard disk drive with the same respect: you should only need to handle it to mark out where the mounting screws should be placed on the floor of the case. These mounting screws should preferably have spacers fitted over them to give the drive clearance of air under it--but correct-sized nuts will do. Some disk drive cases have vents on their floors as well as a selection of pre-drilled holes. Bits For More Bytes You'll require two principal components: firstly, a power lead to connect your new drive to the internal power supply unit. If one is not already attached to the PSU, you can buy a "two into one" cable. Second, you need a special SCSI ribbon data cable that will allow two (or more) devices to be connected. Take your time with these, make dry runs if you like, to assess the best way to lay these cables so that they do not snag on the case lid or the other bits of equipment. You may also require some jumper blocks for your drive or indeed drives. Jumpers are little plastic-coated pegs that fit onto a series of pins on the back of the disk drive to set the SCSI ID number. If your original case allowed push-button setting of ID numbers, this must be disabled as the new mechanism must have a unique number. Shameless Plugging Things are looking good; you've attached that new hard disk, re-attached the old one, and you've plugged those all-important cables into them. Be careful with those connections--while the plugs and sockets on SCSI ribbon and power cables are usually designed to fit one way only, make sure they are seated firmly in the sockets. This applies particularly to the SCSI ribbon connector. Press firmly and evenly on it-- seating it squint may cause data loss, bent pins and a whole lot of frustration after you've spent careful minutes re-assembling the case and booting up. Once the hard disk box is sealed tightly, it's time to connect it to your Atari, boot your machine and run your preferred hard disk utilities from floppy disk. Install or modify your hard disk driver, partition your new device to your liking and then start installing that software you didn't have room for before. Not forgetting of course, to give yourself a pat on the back! ** Boxout 1 ** Jumper Settings for ID numbers The "first" pin on a jumper setting block will have Pin A or similar marked on it. After that, the pins follow a binary number system. Thus, pin A is 1of, Pin B is 2 of, and so on. Using these with a jumper allows you to set any ID between 0 and 7. ** end boxout ** ** Boxout 2 ** Maplin Part Numbers for SCSI ribbon cables (2 devices)+power splitter cable. The two parts you will require are available from Maplins or many other electronics suppliers. Here are the Maplins catalogue codes: SCSI flat cable for connecting two devices: DG52G Power Supply Y-Cable: DG43W ** POWERCBL.EPS ** ** SCSICABL.EPS ** Required parts ** end boxout ** ** Images and captions ** ** HDISK2.GEM ** Hard disk enclosure with lid partially off ** HDISK3.GEM ** Hard disk enclosure with lid completely off showing internal components ** PRESS_IN.GEM ** Shows the best way to make sure SCSI connectors are fully home.