I've come to appreciate Firewire 800 - even though it is likely only
an interim solution for external storage and destined to be displaced
by Esata. That said, production lines change slowly ... so there are
likely many buying opportunities for PATA drives in the years ahead
and Firewire provides access to such bargains.

Unfortunately, 1394b bridge boards are still expensive and I need a
source which would make PATA "bottom fishing" practical. The best I've
been able to do so far is $69.00 for a 4 IDE channel unit (can only
use the two master slots with our PATA drive trays). I need better
pricing for these bridges and a good source for inexpensive 9 pin
jumpers and 1394b hubs.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 15 Apr 2006 12:17 PDT

art...

Drivecase.com has them for $63.78:
http://store.yahoo.com/drivecase/fir800i13toi.html

Let me know if this helps...

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by artgdoyle-ga on 15 Apr 2006 22:36 PDT

Hi, 

Thanks for taking a crack it this, but the model you describe supports
only one ide channel (master/slave ie 2ea IDE drives) - so it isn't
really equivalent. The one I just ordered @69.00 supports 4ea drives,
allowing me to designate 2 of them as "master"...and thus permitting
the use of common (master only) drive trays.

Haven't looked up the cost of the initio chip itself, but my guess is
that these finished bridge boards boards have an actual manufacturing
cost of < $10/ea. Unfortunately - their source is proving quite
illusive.