SAS connector

[dhslichter]

The current SAS connectors on the Shuttler FMC and AFE boards mate with a cable connector (SFF-8087) that is used for internal cables only, as far as I can tell. I have not been able to find cables available that are over 1 m in length, and the mechanical robustness and electrical shielding are not as good as for external SAS cables.

The external mini-SAS HD cables appear to be much more widely available and in many more lengths. The only drawback is that these don't have sidebands, so we would need to select a second cable for the serial communications between the Shuttler FMC and Shuttler AFE (minimum 12 pins, ideally 16 pins).

Could we consider using two 4x mini-SAS HD cables for the voltages (and corresponding connectors on FMC and AFE cards) -- something like these (see drawing) ? This would do 16 analog channels, and you can get arbitrary cable lengths. Then we would choose some appropriate other multi-pin cable (shielding/pairing much less important) to send the digital logic signals between FMC and AFE cards.

Thoughts @gkasprow? Or is there a good source of SFF-8087 cables of longer lengths and good mechanical robustness that you use?

[gkasprow]

we are using ones from 3M
8F36-AAA105-xxx where xxx is length
for example 4m ones