To SCSI or not to SCSI

[mhamm]

Hey ya'll

Well im pretty sure i want to go SCSI. Get a Plextor burner, CD-ROM (Wide), and a pioneer SCSI DVD drive. Later i may upgrade to SCSI harddrives, but i really dont know which controller card i should get. Not brand, but interface. Ultra, Ultra Wide, Ultra 2 Wide, 160, 320? AHHH!!!

Thanks

Hamm

[Blackearth]

i considered scsi once, at the time i could afford it but now-no. i'm not an expert or anything but i would say 160. for the cdrw and dvd, i dont think it would be worth it to go w/ 320. for hard drives, yes i would go 320. but if you had that mix you would need 2 contollers cards. . .as far as controllers go, i dont know, adaptec? tekram? i dont know. . .trying to be helpful.

[mhamm]

well thank you for you help. i think im going with an adaptec UW160 for now. UW320 is just too much

hamm

[MrX]

adaptec do make cards with multiple interfaces. If im not wrong the card you are suggesting buying is a n Ultra160/Ultra card?

[Dark Illusion]

Scsi is only worth it if you go-all-the-way. Having a scsi CDRW and CD, and DVD drive will do you no good due to that blasted IDE HDD you still got. Well, you could do direct CD-CD burns..but I don't trust the integrity of those.

IDE HDD-SCSI CDRW you still can't do anything with your comp while burning or it'll mess the burn. Bar burn-proof CDRW's of course. And then there's that massive system lag you gotta deal with.

SCSI HDD-SCSI CDRW you have seen the light!=) Do 500 things at once and still be able to play UT online. Yes, I hated the fact that my system was bogged whenever I went to burn something. No longer a problem. I laugh at my friends when they could no longer use their comp=P

If you're looking for deals and willing to try your luck, go eBay. Got 20gigs for $150 and that was dutch. Too bad I was broke at the time.

For interface make sure you get the right scsi cards. I believe most DVD/CD/CDRW still use the 50-pin interface. Either scsi or fast-scsi. It's backwards compatible and you won't be hitting your ceiling that often. Adaptors for these are cheap.

HDD usually comes in the 68-pin types in UW/above. There's also the 80-pin SCA which you wanna make sure to stay away from. It means you gotta buy a new adaptor and they don't come cheap. All 68-pins are of course backwards compatible too. They'll run at the slowest HDD speed. In addition LVD drives which use the same connection but give you double the transfer. You have to have an adaptor that is LVD if you want to use this too. Don't worry, they're also backwards compatible.

Then you buy your cable to fit the specs of whatever scsi you'll be using. Make sure there's a terminator at the end so it doesn't muck up the signal. These can be cheap or expensive, I forget as I haven't bought a new able in a while.

It's a big investment. I consider it worth the money if you shop right. I still have one of those huge 5400rpm HDD's that took the room of 3HDD's and its chugging along nicely holding my beloved music. Weighs 7 lbs and when it starts, sounds like a airplane. You comp doesn't get anymore manly than that. I cold boot everynow when new guests are over. Makes me proud=)

[Dark Illusion]

One more thing. Whether or not scsi is noticable or not.

Scsi definately feels more robust and the quality of the drives are higher. If you burn CD's a lot I'd say its worth it. Regular transfers however, pretty much the same as IDE. If you use it for internet, desktop work, and games there's no point in scsi. IDE feels pretty much the same for less.

[Crash893]

scsi is more for high end machines isnt it?

i heard some where that it takes some load off of your cpu if you use scsi

i would never use it
still seams to werid to me there are to many diffent flavors scsi for me to deal with

wait for serial ide to come out

will have transfer rates of 300mb/s or some insane thing like that

[Dark Illusion]

Yea, I guess its for high-end. But its getting more afforable..prolly why some are considering it.

My system never goes above 3% usage when I do anything w/ my HDD. IDE is software controlled for the most part so you'll see more usage.

There's:

Scsi-20mb/sec
Fast-scsi/scsi II-40mb
ultrawide scsi/scsi III-80mb
ultra160-160mb
ultra320-320mb

Amoung those you could have low-voltage-differenatial(LVD) or regular. If they have the same pins they're backwards compatible. 50-pin fast-scsi is backward compat w/ 50-pin scsi, but transfer rate will be that of scsi.

Then there's what those big servers use, SCA, fibre-channel I-scsi, whatever else there is. Actually I don't remember the details of it as I just got back to America. But if anyone sees my info as wrong feel free to correct. And excuse the grammar too=)

[Ridenow]

U160 is about right for what you are wanting. I have an Adaptec 29160, but do not use all of it. A 19160 should do nicely. There is also a Tekram card that I have heard is nice, but I do not remember which one.

Last I heard, Plextor was not making any SCSI stuff.