Scsi???

Ive got a few UW SCSI 3 drive around the house and Im wanting to use them. The problem is I dont have any card for them yet, and none of the mobos I have come with onboard scsi. Ive looked around and I see the LSI U160 used a lot. It is 64bit 33MHz and Im wondering if it will work in a 32bit slot? If so how much of a performance hit will it have, and will it be worse than regular ATA/100?

Would be using 3 4.3Gig drives in this SCSI array.

the LSI U160 does fine in a 32/33 slot. I've used several. The performance will vary largely by bus contention. On most boards, the IDE controllers reside on the PCI bus and are subject to contention from other devices. As to SCSI bus contention, specifically which drives are those 4.3s. They could be anything from 5.4K to 10K on a variety of different interfaces. If it's a U2W or better you'll get decent to good performance. While buying cards, make sure you get good cables and termnators. Get at least U160, preferrably U320, cables and terminators. You can almost count on paying as much for the cables and terminators as the card, so consider getting a retail box rather than bare card.

They are some basic IBM UW3, 68pin, i think 5.4k. Nothing special but they were free so I took them I am not really looking for the best performance here, I just want to use the for something besides paperweights. In theory if i could find a cable with only 3 interfaces on it would i still need a terminator? Is there a jumper setting on the 3rd on i could set it as the end of the line??

Yes, you will need a terminator. The only devices that typically offer self termination are in the narrow 50 pin devices. For inexpensive cables and terminators for U160, SVC.com has some for around 10 for the cable and 10 for the terminators. When ordering from them add a connector to what they state for number of devices.

I had GREAT service from this company (one day delivery, in my own state though) and it came recommended by xaotic too..
http://www.cableclub.com
and i got one of those same LSI scsci adapters (lsiu160) from newegg.


cheers!