Series 3 SSD Drive System

[donkeyontheedge]

I have a Series 3 SSD Drive System. This is an external unit which attaches to a PC and allows the reading and writing of SSDs on the PC. It is a dual drive, i.e. can take two SSDs (good for cloning data quickly).

The connection to the PC is via a proprietary "Psion fast serial card" - which I don't have (nor the cable for that matter). Everything else - it is boxed with the manuals and PC drivers.

This originally came from a company who upgraded all of their S3s to S5s and I think the serial card must have remained behind in one of their PCs.

So you can see the question coming - is it any use? According to the box, the data transfer rate was 1.536Mbits/sec, and the card also supplied power to the drive. The interface on the back of the drive is a 15 pin connector similar to a PC joystick/midi port.

[mayhem.deranged]

It would be extremely hard to duplicate the action of that interface card to be honest. It was by no means standard.

The earliest S3 machines (circa 1991-93) employed a semi-custom gate array known as the ASIC2.
This chip contained the system clock oscillator, controlled switching between the standby operating states and provided an interface to the power supply, keyboard, buzzer, SSDs and COMMS devices.

And it was this IC that was also the star attraction of the interface card you need.

Revision 3 devices were often used on the PC interface cards and Revision 4s were found in the S3 machines themselves. Although the PC cards should support the later revision IC.

These cards were not manufactured in high volumes and therefore they will not be very easy to find. There were 2 revisions of PCB to my knowledge. All of them were the old ISA type PC cards - one 8 bit and the later one was a 16 bit ISA type card.

Did you really still need one ?

[donkeyontheedge]

I don't need one, no. I just hate to see potentially useful kit lying around gathering dust. My S3a bit the dust years ago which led me to a revo, then a S5mx, then a S7 which I am now getting a nb module for.

The 3a has the "jailbars" on the screen so I have recently been thinking of patching the ribbon cable with some suitable wires I've recently found in my old electronics kits. This reminded me I had the SSD drive.

As a matter of interest, I've found somewhere that sells the SSD drives for use with the Workabout MX, and they now come with PCI cards. This company also sells the PCI cards separately - the killer is the price - 529 Euros :eek: Drive and card is 774 Euros!

Other places have advertised the drive and card for E609 and $495.

I didn't note any web addresses as I can't afford them!