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Hello,

> It came with three external noisy hard disks, which add up 45 Gb.
> These disks are SCA. Is this supported under netbsd-macppc?

SCA is just SCSI + power + ID bits on a different hot-pluggable connector.
So the answer is yes, they should work. From the driver's point of view the=
re's no difference between a SCSI and an SCA disk.
( I use a 9.1 GB Seagate Barracuda SCA in my S900 )

> Other possible solution would be to get a PCI-SATA adapter, like this
> one (http://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdf_datasheets/temposata_=
datasheet.pdf)
> and then some cheaper HD. Althought this is not cheap, it seems a
> viable solution since the PCI card can be reused on almost any other
> PCI mac. Is this supported / advisable?

Good question - some SATA chips are supported. You only need a Mac-specific=
 card if you want to boot from it though, you can use a PC SATA card withou=
t a ROM ( provided the chip is supported - see www.netbsd.org ) and continu=
e booting from a SCSI disk.

> Or find some SCSI HD in ebay, although I have looked around and waht I
> find is not cheap (I live in spain)
> What would you recommend?

Depends what you need - your SCA disks should just work. I bought several 5=
0GB Seagate Barracuda SCA or UW-SCSI disks from ebay for $29-$39, they're n=
oisy and get pretty warm but they're also fast and reliable.=20
There's one problem though - the external SCSI bus on the 9500 doesn't supp=
ort more than 5MB/s if I remember correctly, the internal one only runs asy=
nchronously in 2.0 ( -current supports synchronous operation which gives yo=
u about 10MB/s but it doesn't work with certain targets like ZIP drives. Ca=
n be disabled on a per-target basis though )
So if you want to use your external drives you might want to get a SCSI car=
d ( or see if you can live with the speed you get from the external bus ) -=
 almost any SymBIOS chip will do ( provided it's fast enough, you probably =
want an UW-SCSI model ) - they're well supported, should be cheap to get an=
d as long as you don't want to boot from one you can use any PCish card.

have fun
Michael

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