>> Can a shark support two disks on the IDE connector [...]?
> I've never tried it, but I see no obvious reason why not unless
> there's a buffer-strength issue on the lines.  All the pins are
> there...

That was kind of how I felt, but I've often enough seen hardware with
bugs (or just "limitations") anything from "oh, there's no mounting for
a second drive, so we can use an IDE chip that doesn't support slave
drives" to "oops, we forgot to wire up that pin, well, it doesn't
matter" to "you're the first person to try that; we never tested it".

> I can confirm that running an external disk works ok,

Well, it would almost have to, since a bog-standard laptop IDE drive
works, and the interface is the same electrically. :)

> but you tend to need a slightly longer cable than standard (or to add
> an extension cable).

Well, the cable that came with mine had only two connectors, so I can't
use it with two drives without crimping on another connector anyway. :)

> There's a plate on the back of the shark (for a parallel port cable?)
> which can be loosened and the ide cable passed through it.

Two such plates, and yes, I'm using one of them.

There's actually a slot in the plastic faceplate that would be perfect,
except that only the cable fits through it - to use it, I'd need to run
the cable and then add the connector.

Annoyingly, the longest IDE cables I have are 80 pin, they all have a
blocked pin, and the onboard IDE connector on the shark has all 40
pins.  But I found a 40-pin cable that is long enough to get both drive
conenctors outside the case....

I'll report on my experiences. :)

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