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And even that isn't true for all SCSI busses. For example, my Tekram DC390U2W card has an isolation chip so that I can hook up single-ended and LVD devices and each will run at their max speed. I get 80MB/sec from my SCSI drives and 20MB/sec from my CDRW (not that it can use that much bandwidth, except to fill the buffer).

First off, I think you've made a number of incorrect assumptions. My views are based on years of corporate experience, including PC rollouts. Please read my responses below. Understand that I am the only person who gave you an useable, DOS/real-mode solution. And it's not as expense as you think.

SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us.

So are mine! You think I've been fired for buying SCSI all these years? More $$$ does NOT equal quality. I go through specific products below ... (and note that NONE say "Adaptec" -- been burnt by their crap too many times).

Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.

All of the cards I use have quite stable drivers. Of course when you buy something new, you shouldn't expect it to work. You should always wait ~6 months for the bugs to clear out. But when if you'd waited 5 years for good Adaptec Linux drivers, then you'd get quite irritated.

You can easily standardize on one SCSI chipset, the TekRam TRM-S1040:

• Low-cost end-user boards, TekRam DC-3x5U/UW series:
  • $15-20 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-315U for internal/external SCSI peripherials (no BIOS) -- This is probably all you need!. Much faster, cheaper, better and more compatible than Adaptec's AIC-7850-powered 2906
  • ~$40 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-395U for booting devices (BIOS) -- cheaper and better than Adaptec's AIC-7880-powered 2930 IMHO
  • ~$60 UltraWide TekRam DC-395UW for 40MBps Wide devices (BIOS)
• Single driver for all boards in series
• Excellent, direct vendor cross-OS support, DOS, 9x, NT/2000, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, SCO, NetWare, BeOS -- including full boot disks for just about any flavor. Check them all out -- especially Linux, *BSD or BeOS users, never seen such support!
• Although the chipset is just over one year old, I have seen 0 issues with drivers since March of 2000.

We cannot afford to put a Zip, Jaz, CD-R/RW and DVD-RAM/RW drive on every PC in my office. Instead, we have one or more external ones and put a $15-20 TekRam DC-315U in each system. Works great! Also great for cloning when I don't want to hit my server/network too hard (in the middle of the day), let alone transfer loads of data between systems. In Linux, I can even load/unload the TekRam S1040 driver on-the-fly, flipping drives on/off various systems without a reboot/shutdown. It's _awesome_ bay-bee!

As far as other experiences, I recently had to chuck my Adaptec AHA-2940UW (AIC-7880) in my Linux server because it is a POS (in 6 years of using Adaptec on Linux, I have yet to have a good experience thanx to their non-direct support). The sucker refused to work properly with a new, $4,000 Exabyte Mammoth2 60/150GB tape drive (talk about "betting my company's business" on a SCSI card!). I replaced it with an $60 Advansys (now owned by ConnectCom) chipset-based card:

• $60 UltraWide SIIG AP-40 Pro -- also readily available at your local computer/electronics store (although you'll pay about $99 retail).
• Advansys is known for their excellent direct driver development, and broad OS support (first vendor to officially support Linux -- way back in 1995)
• Has full per-device configuration in BIOS, just like Adaptec (i.e. Ctrl-A at boot). Works much better and more compatible with more devices than Adaptec IMHO!

But if you need faster still, Symbios Logic (now owned by LSI Logic) is always faster and more ubiquious than Adaptec. So much so that Adaptec attempted to buy Symbios out (since they were kicking Adaptec's butt in the OEM and FibreChannel market). You'll be interested in the popular 53c895/1010-series:

• Mid-cost, end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U2 series -- 53c895 Ultra2/LVD (aka Ultra80) chipset:
  • $100 TekRam DC-390U2B for single channel Ultra80/LVD (or UltraWide) channel
  • $130 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra80/LVD and isolated UltraWide bus
• Dual-channel, 32/64-bit PCI end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U3 series -- 53c1010 Ultra160/LVD chipset:
  • $175 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide) plus single channel UltraWide legacy
  • $235 TekRam DC-390U2D for dual-channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide)
• Symbios Logic 53c8xx-series supported natively in just about every OS -- many chipset are upward compatible (with exception of 53c1010 that requires a new driver -- but still better than Adaptec's cards, especially their newer ones)
• Better than Adaptec performance at any chipset/protocol (usually by an average of 5-10%)
• Widely supported, numerous OEMs, >10 year-old 8xx-series design/support
• The best damn cabling/converter bundle I've ever seen in a kit (boy is Adaptec stingy!)

And when it comes to hardware RAID, Adaptec is just NT/Netware-only. As such, I prefer DPT or, better yet, StrongArm ASIC-powered Mylex RAID controllers with broad OS support (and better performance too).

So what brand are you blindly putting your faith in? Eh?

SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)

And those IDE drives can be put in a $20-40 enclosure and made to work at 20MBps+, right? Not! When it comes to external (isn't that what we are talking about, eh?), IDE is a joke -- with slow as molassas USB (even in 12Mbps/1.5MBps "fast" mode) being the only option (although new ATAPI-to-FireWire bridges, like this Ultra33 one from Intito, is changing that -- although it requires OEM firmware/programming). Plus we're back to the DOS/real-mode issue (even for FireWire). Only SCSI is "ready-to-go" external.

Now you can compare GB/$ all you want. You do NOT need the latest SCSI drives. Go with a late-model 9-18GB SCSI drive. I mean, how much storage do you need? We're only talking $100-200 for the drive, another $20-40 for the enclosure and another $10-30 for cabling and termination, max. You could do it for under $150, including cables and termination, if you pinch your pennies (and buy your stuff mail-order -- use Cyberguys for SCSI cables/terminators). Plus, you must be looking at 7,200-10,000rpm RPM drives -- don't make the mistake of comparing 5,400rpm IDE drives to obviously much faster SCSI drives.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

First off, I think you've made a number of incorrect assumptions. My views are based on years of corporate experience, including PC rollouts. Please read my responses below. Understand that I am the only person who gave you an useable, DOS/real-mode solution. And it's not as expense as you think.

SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us.

So are mine! You think I've been fired for buying SCSI all these years? More $$$ does NOT equal quality. I go through specific products below ... (and note that NONE say "Adaptec" -- been burnt by their crap too many times).

Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.

All of the cards I use have quite stable drivers. Of course when you buy something new, you shouldn't expect it to work. You should always wait ~6 months for the bugs to clear out. But when if you'd waited 5 years for good Adaptec Linux drivers, then you'd get quite irritated.

You can easily standardize on one SCSI chipset, the TekRam TRM-S1040:

• Low-cost end-user boards, TekRam DC-3x5U/UW series:
  • $15-20 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-315U for internal/external SCSI peripherials (no BIOS) -- This is probably all you need!. Much faster, cheaper, better and more compatible than Adaptec's AIC-7850-powered 2906
  • ~$40 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-395U for booting devices (BIOS) -- cheaper and better than Adaptec's AIC-7880-powered 2930 IMHO
  • ~$60 UltraWide TekRam DC-395UW for 40MBps Wide devices (BIOS)
• Single driver for all boards in series
• Excellent, direct vendor cross-OS support, DOS, 9x, NT/2000, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, SCO, NetWare, BeOS -- including full boot disks for just about any flavor. Check them all out -- especially Linux, *BSD or BeOS users, never seen such support!
• Although the chipset is just over one year old, I have seen 0 issues with drivers since March of 2000.

We cannot afford to put a Zip, Jaz, CD-R/RW and DVD-RAM/RW drive on every PC in my office. Instead, we have one or more external ones and put a $15-20 TekRam DC-315U in each system. Works great! Also great for cloning when I don't want to hit my server/network too hard (in the middle of the day), let alone transfer loads of data between systems. In Linux, I can even load/unload the TekRam S1040 driver on-the-fly, flipping drives on/off various systems without a reboot/shutdown. It's _awesome_ bay-bee!

As far as other experiences, I recently had to chuck my Adaptec AHA-2940UW (AIC-7880) in my Linux server because it is a POS (in 6 years of using Adaptec on Linux, I have yet to have a good experience thanx to their non-direct support). The sucker refused to work properly with a new, $4,000 Exabyte Mammoth2 60/150GB tape drive (talk about "betting my company's business" on a SCSI card!). I replaced it with an $60 Advansys (now owned by ConnectCom) chipset-based card:

• $60 UltraWide SIIG AP-40 Pro -- also readily available at your local computer/electronics store (although you'll pay about $99 retail).
• Advansys is known for their excellent direct driver development, and broad OS support (first vendor to officially support Linux -- way back in 1995)
• Has full per-device configuration in BIOS, just like Adaptec (i.e. Ctrl-A at boot). Works much better and more compatible with more devices than Adaptec IMHO!

But if you need faster still, Symbios Logic (now owned by LSI Logic) is always faster and more ubiquious than Adaptec. So much so that Adaptec attempted to buy Symbios out (since they were kicking Adaptec's butt in the OEM and FibreChannel market). You'll be interested in the popular 53c895/1010-series:

• Mid-cost, end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U2 series -- 53c895 Ultra2/LVD (aka Ultra80) chipset:
  • $100 TekRam DC-390U2B for single channel Ultra80/LVD (or UltraWide) channel
  • $130 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra80/LVD and isolated UltraWide bus
• Dual-channel, 32/64-bit PCI end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U3 series -- 53c1010 Ultra160/LVD chipset:
  • $175 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide) plus single channel UltraWide legacy
  • $235 TekRam DC-390U2D for dual-channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide)
• Symbios Logic 53c8xx-series supported natively in just about every OS -- many chipset are upward compatible (with exception of 53c1010 that requires a new driver -- but still better than Adaptec's cards, especially their newer ones)
• Better than Adaptec performance at any chipset/protocol (usually by an average of 5-10%)
• Widely supported, numerous OEMs, >10 year-old 8xx-series design/support
• The best damn cabling/converter bundle I've ever seen in a kit (boy is Adaptec stingy!)

And when it comes to hardware RAID, Adaptec is just NT/Netware-only. As such, I prefer DPT or, better yet, StrongArm ASIC-powered Mylex RAID controllers with broad OS support (and better performance too).

So what brand are you blindly putting your faith in? Eh?

SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)

And those IDE drives can be put in a $20-40 enclosure and made to work at 20MBps+, right? Not! When it comes to external (isn't that what we are talking about, eh?), IDE is a joke -- with slow as molassas USB (even in 12Mbps/1.5MBps "fast" mode) being the only option (although new ATAPI-to-FireWire bridges, like this Ultra33 one from Intito, is changing that -- although it requires OEM firmware/programming). Plus we're back to the DOS/real-mode issue (even for FireWire). Only SCSI is "ready-to-go" external.

Now you can compare GB/$ all you want. You do NOT need the latest SCSI drives. Go with a late-model 9-18GB SCSI drive. I mean, how much storage do you need? We're only talking $100-200 for the drive, another $20-40 for the enclosure and another $10-30 for cabling and termination, max. You could do it for under $150, including cables and termination, if you pinch your pennies (and buy your stuff mail-order -- use Cyberguys for SCSI cables/terminators). Plus, you must be looking at 7,200-10,000rpm RPM drives -- don't make the mistake of comparing 5,400rpm IDE drives to obviously much faster SCSI drives.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

First off, I think you've made a number of incorrect assumptions. My views are based on years of corporate experience, including PC rollouts. Please read my responses below. Understand that I am the only person who gave you an useable, DOS/real-mode solution. And it's not as expense as you think.

SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us.

So are mine! You think I've been fired for buying SCSI all these years? More $$$ does NOT equal quality. I go through specific products below ... (and note that NONE say "Adaptec" -- been burnt by their crap too many times).

Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.

All of the cards I use have quite stable drivers. Of course when you buy something new, you shouldn't expect it to work. You should always wait ~6 months for the bugs to clear out. But when if you'd waited 5 years for good Adaptec Linux drivers, then you'd get quite irritated.

You can easily standardize on one SCSI chipset, the TekRam TRM-S1040:

• Low-cost end-user boards, TekRam DC-3x5U/UW series:
  • $15-20 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-315U for internal/external SCSI peripherials (no BIOS) -- This is probably all you need!. Much faster, cheaper, better and more compatible than Adaptec's AIC-7850-powered 2906
  • ~$40 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-395U for booting devices (BIOS) -- cheaper and better than Adaptec's AIC-7880-powered 2930 IMHO
  • ~$60 UltraWide TekRam DC-395UW for 40MBps Wide devices (BIOS)
• Single driver for all boards in series
• Excellent, direct vendor cross-OS support, DOS, 9x, NT/2000, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, SCO, NetWare, BeOS -- including full boot disks for just about any flavor. Check them all out -- especially Linux, *BSD or BeOS users, never seen such support!
• Although the chipset is just over one year old, I have seen 0 issues with drivers since March of 2000.

We cannot afford to put a Zip, Jaz, CD-R/RW and DVD-RAM/RW drive on every PC in my office. Instead, we have one or more external ones and put a $15-20 TekRam DC-315U in each system. Works great! Also great for cloning when I don't want to hit my server/network too hard (in the middle of the day), let alone transfer loads of data between systems. In Linux, I can even load/unload the TekRam S1040 driver on-the-fly, flipping drives on/off various systems without a reboot/shutdown. It's _awesome_ bay-bee!

As far as other experiences, I recently had to chuck my Adaptec AHA-2940UW (AIC-7880) in my Linux server because it is a POS (in 6 years of using Adaptec on Linux, I have yet to have a good experience thanx to their non-direct support). The sucker refused to work properly with a new, $4,000 Exabyte Mammoth2 60/150GB tape drive (talk about "betting my company's business" on a SCSI card!). I replaced it with an $60 Advansys (now owned by ConnectCom) chipset-based card:

• $60 UltraWide SIIG AP-40 Pro -- also readily available at your local computer/electronics store (although you'll pay about $99 retail).
• Advansys is known for their excellent direct driver development, and broad OS support (first vendor to officially support Linux -- way back in 1995)
• Has full per-device configuration in BIOS, just like Adaptec (i.e. Ctrl-A at boot). Works much better and more compatible with more devices than Adaptec IMHO!

But if you need faster still, Symbios Logic (now owned by LSI Logic) is always faster and more ubiquious than Adaptec. So much so that Adaptec attempted to buy Symbios out (since they were kicking Adaptec's butt in the OEM and FibreChannel market). You'll be interested in the popular 53c895/1010-series:

• Mid-cost, end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U2 series -- 53c895 Ultra2/LVD (aka Ultra80) chipset:
  • $100 TekRam DC-390U2B for single channel Ultra80/LVD (or UltraWide) channel
  • $130 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra80/LVD and isolated UltraWide bus
• Dual-channel, 32/64-bit PCI end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U3 series -- 53c1010 Ultra160/LVD chipset:
  • $175 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide) plus single channel UltraWide legacy
  • $235 TekRam DC-390U2D for dual-channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide)
• Symbios Logic 53c8xx-series supported natively in just about every OS -- many chipset are upward compatible (with exception of 53c1010 that requires a new driver -- but still better than Adaptec's cards, especially their newer ones)
• Better than Adaptec performance at any chipset/protocol (usually by an average of 5-10%)
• Widely supported, numerous OEMs, >10 year-old 8xx-series design/support
• The best damn cabling/converter bundle I've ever seen in a kit (boy is Adaptec stingy!)

And when it comes to hardware RAID, Adaptec is just NT/Netware-only. As such, I prefer DPT or, better yet, StrongArm ASIC-powered Mylex RAID controllers with broad OS support (and better performance too).

So what brand are you blindly putting your faith in? Eh?

SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)

And those IDE drives can be put in a $20-40 enclosure and made to work at 20MBps+, right? Not! When it comes to external (isn't that what we are talking about, eh?), IDE is a joke -- with slow as molassas USB (even in 12Mbps/1.5MBps "fast" mode) being the only option (although new ATAPI-to-FireWire bridges, like this Ultra33 one from Intito, is changing that -- although it requires OEM firmware/programming). Plus we're back to the DOS/real-mode issue (even for FireWire). Only SCSI is "ready-to-go" external.

Now you can compare GB/$ all you want. You do NOT need the latest SCSI drives. Go with a late-model 9-18GB SCSI drive. I mean, how much storage do you need? We're only talking $100-200 for the drive, another $20-40 for the enclosure and another $10-30 for cabling and termination, max. You could do it for under $150, including cables and termination, if you pinch your pennies (and buy your stuff mail-order -- use Cyberguys for SCSI cables/terminators). Plus, you must be looking at 7,200-10,000rpm RPM drives -- don't make the mistake of comparing 5,400rpm IDE drives to obviously much faster SCSI drives.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

First off, I think you've made a number of incorrect assumptions. My views are based on years of corporate experience, including PC rollouts. Please read my responses below. Understand that I am the only person who gave you an useable, DOS/real-mode solution. And it's not as expense as you think.

SCSI is not that cheap! Perhaps for a home system, but my company is betting it's business on the systems that we buy. That means quality, reliability, and driver issues are a big deal to us.

So are mine! You think I've been fired for buying SCSI all these years? More $$$ does NOT equal quality. I go through specific products below ... (and note that NONE say "Adaptec" -- been burnt by their crap too many times).

Each change in a driver results in a different build of the OS image. If we use a no-name SCSI card, each time the support chipset changes we need to build a new image. This is very expensive for us to maintain.

All of the cards I use have quite stable drivers. Of course when you buy something new, you shouldn't expect it to work. You should always wait ~6 months for the bugs to clear out. But when if you'd waited 5 years for good Adaptec Linux drivers, then you'd get quite irritated.

You can easily standardize on one SCSI chipset, the TekRam TRM-S1040:

• Low-cost end-user boards, TekRam DC-3x5U/UW series:
  • $15-20 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-315U for internal/external SCSI peripherials (no BIOS) -- This is probably all you need!. Much faster, cheaper, better and more compatible than Adaptec's AIC-7850-powered 2906
  • ~$40 UltraSCSI TekRam DC-395U for booting devices (BIOS) -- cheaper and better than Adaptec's AIC-7880-powered 2930 IMHO
  • ~$60 UltraWide TekRam DC-395UW for 40MBps Wide devices (BIOS)
• Single driver for all boards in series
• Excellent, direct vendor cross-OS support, DOS, 9x, NT/2000, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, SCO, NetWare, BeOS -- including full boot disks for just about any flavor. Check them all out -- especially Linux, *BSD or BeOS users, never seen such support!
• Although the chipset is just over one year old, I have seen 0 issues with drivers since March of 2000.

We cannot afford to put a Zip, Jaz, CD-R/RW and DVD-RAM/RW drive on every PC in my office. Instead, we have one or more external ones and put a $15-20 TekRam DC-315U in each system. Works great! Also great for cloning when I don't want to hit my server/network too hard (in the middle of the day), let alone transfer loads of data between systems. In Linux, I can even load/unload the TekRam S1040 driver on-the-fly, flipping drives on/off various systems without a reboot/shutdown. It's _awesome_ bay-bee!

As far as other experiences, I recently had to chuck my Adaptec AHA-2940UW (AIC-7880) in my Linux server because it is a POS (in 6 years of using Adaptec on Linux, I have yet to have a good experience thanx to their non-direct support). The sucker refused to work properly with a new, $4,000 Exabyte Mammoth2 60/150GB tape drive (talk about "betting my company's business" on a SCSI card!). I replaced it with an $60 Advansys (now owned by ConnectCom) chipset-based card:

• $60 UltraWide SIIG AP-40 Pro -- also readily available at your local computer/electronics store (although you'll pay about $99 retail).
• Advansys is known for their excellent direct driver development, and broad OS support (first vendor to officially support Linux -- way back in 1995)
• Has full per-device configuration in BIOS, just like Adaptec (i.e. Ctrl-A at boot). Works much better and more compatible with more devices than Adaptec IMHO!

But if you need faster still, Symbios Logic (now owned by LSI Logic) is always faster and more ubiquious than Adaptec. So much so that Adaptec attempted to buy Symbios out (since they were kicking Adaptec's butt in the OEM and FibreChannel market). You'll be interested in the popular 53c895/1010-series:

• Mid-cost, end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U2 series -- 53c895 Ultra2/LVD (aka Ultra80) chipset:
  • $100 TekRam DC-390U2B for single channel Ultra80/LVD (or UltraWide) channel
  • $130 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra80/LVD and isolated UltraWide bus
• Dual-channel, 32/64-bit PCI end-user boards in the TekRam DC-390U3 series -- 53c1010 Ultra160/LVD chipset:
  • $175 TekRam DC-390U2W for single channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide) plus single channel UltraWide legacy
  • $235 TekRam DC-390U2D for dual-channel Ultra160/LVD (or UltraWide)
• Symbios Logic 53c8xx-series supported natively in just about every OS -- many chipset are upward compatible (with exception of 53c1010 that requires a new driver -- but still better than Adaptec's cards, especially their newer ones)
• Better than Adaptec performance at any chipset/protocol (usually by an average of 5-10%)
• Widely supported, numerous OEMs, >10 year-old 8xx-series design/support
• The best damn cabling/converter bundle I've ever seen in a kit (boy is Adaptec stingy!)

And when it comes to hardware RAID, Adaptec is just NT/Netware-only. As such, I prefer DPT or, better yet, StrongArm ASIC-powered Mylex RAID controllers with broad OS support (and better performance too).

So what brand are you blindly putting your faith in? Eh?

SCSI hard disks are much more expensive than IDE. I just checked pricewatch, and a roughly equivalent SCSI drive was around $200 more than it's EIDE counterpart (36GB)

And those IDE drives can be put in a $20-40 enclosure and made to work at 20MBps+, right? Not! When it comes to external (isn't that what we are talking about, eh?), IDE is a joke -- with slow as molassas USB (even in 12Mbps/1.5MBps "fast" mode) being the only option (although new ATAPI-to-FireWire bridges, like this Ultra33 one from Intito, is changing that -- although it requires OEM firmware/programming). Plus we're back to the DOS/real-mode issue (even for FireWire). Only SCSI is "ready-to-go" external.

Now you can compare GB/$ all you want. You do NOT need the latest SCSI drives. Go with a late-model 9-18GB SCSI drive. I mean, how much storage do you need? We're only talking $100-200 for the drive, another $20-40 for the enclosure and another $10-30 for cabling and termination, max. You could do it for under $150, including cables and termination, if you pinch your pennies (and buy your stuff mail-order -- use Cyberguys for SCSI cables/terminators). Plus, you must be looking at 7,200-10,000rpm RPM drives -- don't make the mistake of comparing 5,400rpm IDE drives to obviously much faster SCSI drives.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

Okay dude, I know this sounds weird but SCSI would not only be faster, but probably cheaper. Most SCSI drives (of even two generations back) can do easily 10MBps+ (80Mbps+), whereas even USB's fastest speed, we're talking only 1.5MBps (12Mbps). And don't even think of those IDE to parallel kits, 2MBps (16Mbps) max (most don't get get 1MBps/8Mbps). Plus SCSI support under Linux is easy (and even loadable on the fly!).

Cards, case and cabling should run you under $100 for two systems. The a good sized, but older model, SCSI drive should only be another $30-100 for a decent size (2-23GB) and speed (5400-7200rpm, 512-2048KB buffer). The breakdown:

• Cards ($20/each) -- (2) SCSI cards at about $20 a piece thanx to the TekRam-315U (UltraSCSI, no-BIOS). You can find them at your favorite PriceWatch advertising reseller. You'll need more if you have more than a few systems to swap between. Of course this becomes cost prohibitive if its more than 5 systems, so consider that. But for just 2-4 systems, it's great (and, again, fast)!
• Case ($20) -- You can usually find them at various on-line resellers for $20 or so. Here's a great 2-bay w/40W PS for $19, and that's new. If you want smaller, there are various resellers with single bay SCSI enclosures too. Cyberguys has a 3.5" for $50, although you might find cheaper if you look a bit. The case should come with internal cabling (I've never seen one without).
• External Cabling ($10) -- Cabling is also an addition, but fairly cheap anymore. Assuming you set the drive jumper for termination, you only need the cable. You can get the SCSI-2 HD50M to Centronics 50M for $9 for cases with Centronics connectors, or SCSI-2 HD50M to HD50M for $10 for cases with SCSI-2 HD connectors -- both at Cyberguys. If you really want to not terminate the drive itself, but on the case, HD50M active terminators are $11 and Centronics passive terminators are $5
• Hard Disk ($30+) -- Depending on what model you get, older SCSI hard drives can be had for $30-100. If you want massive or fast, $200-300 will get you give a bit of each. Some resellers that carry new, unused, used and refurbished hard drives:
  • Computer Geeks Outlet -- good personal experiences
  • Hi-Tech Cafe -- don't deal with their web site (sux, lose orders), call them instead
  • Com puter Surplus Outlet -- good dealings with them several times

Drives that are 50-pin narrow (Fast, Ultra, Ultra2, etc...) and will work in the case without modification. Some with be 68-pin wide or 80-pin SCA (FastWide, UltraWide, Ultra2Wide/Ultra80, Ultra160). In the case of the two later, Cyberguys sells converters to 50-pin narrow for nearly all of these connectors. The only caveat you'll have is termination, either terminate on the drive itself (i.e. don't use an external terminator) or tell the drive to use 8-bit SCSI (instead of 16-bit in 68/80-pin) as any external terminator for 50-pin will only terminate the lower 8-bits (some drives will autosense the connection as narrow and will autoterminate anyway -- see the drive docs).

Again, the only reason not to go with this config is if you are going to be sharing with more than just a few systems. You're going to be lugging around a drive anyway, why not forget worrying about carrying the media as well and have 50x the storage (compared to Zip -- much more manageable).

If you absolutely need removable and have the money to burn look at SCSI Jaz instead (2GB capacity, ~5MBps/40Mbps performance). But don't go optical, e.g. 5.2/9.4GB DVD-RAM, it's slow (9x CD, 1x DVD = 1.35MBps/10.5Mbps).

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

Since we're talking about shoes and quality, I'd like to iterate what I discovered the last time I bought a pair of shoes.

The only kind of shoes I will wear are ones of the Airwalk or Vans style. (Lowtops, suede-like material) When I went looking for some, even at supposed bargain stores, the cheapest I could find them for was $50, and those were styles I didn't even like. Somewhere within the last few years, Airwalk and Vans must have gotten popular or something because their prices were nearly double what they used to be. So disgruntled, I was about to walk out of the mall, but figured I'd try Payless (no, this isn't an endorsement. :P). Well guess what? I found an awesome looking pair of Airwalk clones that were only $20! They have no name on them except for a tag on the inside, but look pretty damn cool. I've had them since chirstmas and so far they show no signs of wear, except for being a little dirty.

So the moral here is that something that doesn't have to cost a lot of money to be high quality. And many times the stuff that is high priced isn't worth half of what you pay for it. Case in point, my Tekram SCSI card. :P

Just occured to me, that this is probably a LOT off-topic. :P