Thanks for clearing that up Dynamox. I'll have to put it back on eBay and do a bit more reading before my next purchase...  Regards, Jon.
This, I'm afraid, is a highly newb question - apologies for time wasted by my ignorance - and one which will doubtless turn out to be a lesson learned for me (RESEARCH BEFORE PURCHASE!)  In an uncharacteristic moment of abandon, I purchased what was listed as an EMC CX3 KTN-STL4 15-bay enclosure (although one of the labels on the side contains the string: CX-4PDAE40F). I had simply assumed (sigh, when will I learn...) that I could install a suitable fibre channel HBA in my desktop PC (Vista), buy almost any old fibre-channel drives off eBay (I have a couple of 500GB 7k2 SCA40 drives already), load them into the enclosure, and be a happy, fast-storage camper for not an awful lot of cash. I fear now that I may just have proved my idiocy, as further research suggests this enclosure might only be connectable to suitable EMC matching hardware (rather than a standard desktop PC), and that the list of drives the enclosure will work with is relatively limited anyway.  Confirmation of the above would be gratefully received. I shall then return to dabbling with rather more basic hardware, and re-list the enclosure on eBay, lesson learned.  Regards, Jon.
CX3/CX4 compatibility query