Is Scuzzy Dead?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Hubbard
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron Hubbard

I have an older desktop I use as a server. It has two hard drives a Zip
drive, a floppy drive, and a CD burner-- all on IDE, so I can't add another
CD-ROM.

Being old system and running Windows NT 4.0 which has no provisions for USB,
I was wondering if I could install a SCSI board to drive more ROMs should
the need arise.

Is SCSI still alive or ha newer technologies killed it for good?
 
I have an older desktop I use as a server. It has two hard drives a Zip
drive, a floppy drive, and a CD burner-- all on IDE, so I can't add another
CD-ROM.

Being old system and running Windows NT 4.0 which has no provisions for USB,
I was wondering if I could install a SCSI board to drive more ROMs should
the need arise.

Is SCSI still alive or ha newer technologies killed it for good?
Click to expand...

SCSI is still available, but expensive. Why not just add on and additional
IDE controller? There are plenty still available that work with NT 4.0

JT
 
"JT" said in news:[email protected]:
SCSI is still available, but expensive. Why not just add on and
additional IDE controller? There are plenty still available that work
with NT 4.0
Click to expand...

I just picked up a Promise Ultra100 TX2 at eBay for $15. Lots of folks are
getting this card with Western Digital drives but don't need the card (yet)
and instead sell them off at eBay.

I do still use a SCSI host adapter but not for hard drives because they are
just too pricey. I just use it for my Travan tape drive and a scanner. My
next scanner will be USB but I'll probably keep the tape drive for awhile.
 
*Vanguard* wrote:

I do still use a SCSI host adapter but not for hard drives because
they are just too pricey. I just use it for my Travan tape drive and
a scanner. My next scanner will be USB but I'll probably keep the
tape drive for awhile.
Click to expand...

And I use a SCSI card for driving an old scanner and also my excellent old
Yamaha 4x4x16 SCSI CD-RW. (It's in my spare machine now). Man they knew how
to make drives in those days, (1998? And around $1,000) that thing must have
burnt thousands of CDRs and doesn't miss a beat. No buffer under-run
protection or anything fancy but at 4x and not being dependant on the IDE
bus/CPU for data it doesn't need it.

My next scanner will also be USB but I'd hate to retire that Yammy drive
while there's life still in it. I also have a SCSI magneto-optical
rewritable drive but, as it onlyhas a 128MB capacity, I've retired it.
 
JT said:
SCSI is still available, but expensive. Why not just add on and additional
IDE controller? There are plenty still available that work with NT 4.0

JT
Click to expand...

You can add a controller. Maxtor makes one that I use. I've got 6 or 7
IDEs on one computer. SCSI is very fast, faster than firewire and isn't
likely to die from the general impression I've gotten.
 
Not so quick said:
You can add a controller. Maxtor makes one that I use. I've got 6 or 7
IDEs on one computer. SCSI is very fast, faster than firewire and isn't
likely to die from the general impression I've gotten.
Click to expand...

SCSI isn't going away anytime soon. It's still huge in the server
side of things. Reason: RAID-5.


If one were to look only at the desktop computer market, yeah SCSI's
significance has dwindled to nearly nothing. Reason: cost per
megabyte on hard drives is so much lower with IDE, and SCSI
controllers are added cost home uesrs aren't willing to pay. Plus for
single user computers, IDE is mighty damned quick so the performance
benefits of SCSI really don't buy a typical desktop user much over the
IDE that's built in to the motherboard. Scanners, Zip drives, and
tape backups used to be the only holdouts you'd see with SCSI
interfaces on desktops (~5 yrs ago), but all that's been supplanted as
the USB interface has matured and stabilized.

Best Regards,
 
Todd H. said:
SCSI isn't going away anytime soon. It's still huge in the server
side of things. Reason: RAID-5.


If one were to look only at the desktop computer market, yeah SCSI's
significance has dwindled to nearly nothing. Reason: cost per
megabyte on hard drives is so much lower with IDE, and SCSI
controllers are added cost home uesrs aren't willing to pay. Plus for
single user computers, IDE is mighty damned quick so the performance
benefits of SCSI really don't buy a typical desktop user much over the
IDE that's built in to the motherboard. Scanners, Zip drives, and
tape backups used to be the only holdouts you'd see with SCSI
interfaces on desktops (~5 yrs ago), but all that's been supplanted as
the USB interface has matured and stabilized.

Best Regards,
Click to expand...

How much faster is SCSI than SATA?
 
Not so quick said:
How much faster is SCSI than SATA?
Click to expand...

Have a look here:
http://www.intel.com/technology/serialATA/pdf/NP2108.pdf

SATA 150MB/s (point to point).
SCSI 320MB/s (bandwidth is shared among all devices on the channel)

The raw bus speeds are but one factor in overall system performance,
however.

I'm not aware of any SATA-base RAID solutions (though there may be
some--dunno). The benefit of RAID-5 is the creation of an array of
hard disks with built in redundancy such that if a single disk ofthe
array fails, the array continues to hum along with no noticeable
impact to the server. The hotswappable failed drive is pulled out, a
new one popped in, and then the array can rebuild that disk from
parity information stored on other disks in the array.

This functionality is quite critical for servers. Hard disks do
frequently fail, so they servers that require high uptimes have to
employ techniques to keep running through the eventual point failure
of a hard disk.

Here's a comparison of ATA and SCSI, which isn't quite what you've
asked for but interesting nonetheless:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/comp.htm


Best Regards,
 
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