by rich » Wed Nov 10, 2004 11:27 pm
That is a good question. Since very few people are actually using hard drives with my card, it has not been much of an issue. But if you want to use a desktop hard drive, you may need to come up with an separate supply for that drive. Having just checked the specs on a 160G drive that I use in my PC at WD site, I found that the peak spin up current for that drive is 2.2 Amps at 12v. That will definately exceed the Apple II supply rating. In general I have tried and have had good luck using some of the smaller "lap top" style 2.5" drives with the CFFA card. These drives are single 5volt drives and typically draw no more than 1Amp during spin up and about .5A for normal operation. A typical Apple //gs power supply can deliver about 4Amps at 5v. So you would have to measure your current usage to see if there is another .5A continuous available.
In general the physically smaller the drive the lower its power consumption.
If you really want to try a 3.5" desktop IDE drive, you may want to get a PC power supply to run it. It just wouldn't be a very elegant solution, but would keep your Apple's supply from overloading.
_________________
Thanks,
Rich
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2004-11-10 23:29 ]</font>