Cheapest way to get a SAS 8088 external port.

[AceXsmurF]

Here is my problem. I have a number of external SAS tape drives that I have for testing in our lab. I do not have enough SAS cards though, and all the cards I am seeing that have an 8088 external SAS port are all like $300-$400.

I am looking for something on the cheaper side, this is only for testing not production, and definitely does not need to have any RAID capabilities. Any suggestions?

 

[MarkL]

Just get a M1015 card from Ebay ($50-$100) and crossflash to LSI firmware, that makes it a 9211-8i..
Then buy a 8087<->8088 cable and run the cable from inside out through a hole/PCI slot, etc..

Buy a second cable and now you have a 2 8088 ports for just over $100

 

[Shadohh]

I wish I could get a m1015 for $50 Expect to pay $120 + ship for the card, $20 for cables....still within your budget.

 

[joe7dust]

@Mark

Just get a M1015 card from Ebay ($50-$100) and crossflash to LSI firmware, that makes it a 9211-8i..
Then buy a 8087<->8088 cable and run the cable from inside out through a hole/PCI slot, etc..

Buy a second cable and now you have a 2 8088 ports for just over $100

What do you think of the M1015 versus BR10i? Or even a kit including a P400 and other adapter such as this.

 

[MarkL]

They are only SATA2/SAS1 (3gbps) cards.. not SAS2/SATA3 (6gbps) like the M1015. I would avoid them. They also can't go over 2TB drives.

 

[joe7dust]

They are only SATA2/SAS1 (3gbps) cards.. not SAS2/SATA3 (6gbps) like the M1015. I would avoid them. They also can't go over 2TB drives.

For a data recovery on 60GB drive its more than enough? I'm leaning towards this over the BR10i because it's $14 instead of $34 and seems to include all the cables I'll need. Are there other cables I should get?

 

[odditory]

For a data recovery on 60GB drive its more than enough? I'm leaning towards this over the BR10i because it's $14 instead of $34 and seems to include all the cables I'll need. Are there other cables I should get?

What does this have to do with OP's questions? Not cool to hijack other peoples' threads with your own dilemmas - better is to start your own.

 

[joe7dust]

It's not cool to randomly flame people for asking for help either, but that's what happened when I already tried your suggestion.

 

[odditory]

It wasn't meant personally. I'll check out your thread

 

[Dalfo002]

If OP is OK with just SAS1 (3gb) you can also consider the Dell SAS6 (crossflash same as the BR10i to LSI IT firmware) the SAS6i cards are showing up all over ebay and are easily found for $20 shipped. I personally wound up hunting down an 8087-8088 panel mount adapter so i have an SFF-8484 to SFF-8087 cable connected to an SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 panel mount adapter which allows me to connect an SFF-8088 cable to my external devices.