I Hate SCSI !!!

[spaceman88]

Hi,
I started working on my never ending project again ( an A4000D in a toaster oven tower). It was mostly disassembled when I received it, but had an IDE boot drive and a SCSI drive that wasn't connected to anything. I tried putting in a few of the SCSI cards (a DKB Rapidfire, Alpfa Data Octagon, a GVP card and an ICD card). The computer sees the board but not the drive. Is there something special I'm supposed to do? I tried jumpers in different positions, but no luck.
Thanks, Len

[Tension]

Termination, Termination, Termination.

Like the TV show.

[save2600]

SCSI *IS* a pain if you're not used to them. Are you trying to use the same drive with all those cards? If so, make sure it is terminated properly and that you change your device driver to its appropriate designation. In other words, make sure HDTools (or whatever) knows you've got a SCSI card named xxxxxxxSCSI.device   (usually has the card or brand name and then the SCSI trailer).

In the early days, Amiga used to be known for its seemingly "plug and play" attributes. Yeah, right. You've got to take your sally by the hand and tell her EXACTLY what is going on, else things do not work right.  

[orb85750]

Also, make sure you have the jumper settings correct on the cards themselves.  For example, the GVP combo SCSI/accelerator cards have a different jumper setting if you're using a drive versus not using a drive.  Do you have the software for the respective cards that you tried?

[terminator4]

Termination jumper on your hard disk?  if not then get a scsi cdrom and put that at the end of cable (terminated also).  End of scsi cable must be terminated.  Check your SCSI card jumpers are set per user manual or bboah.  the only reason why your hard disk would not be detected then would be incorrect jumper settings on it.  consult manufacturer manual for that or post here.

[marcfrick2112]

Hi, Also, do you have another SCSI drive to use? They can fail, just like any other drive... (Tho, SCSI, IMO, seem more robust than IDE, I still have my first Amiga HDD, a huge 40MB SCSI Quantum, still works As suggested, check the BBoAH, amiga resource . cx , etc. for any info regarding jumpers/software, etc.

SCSI can be difficult to setup at first. Check everything. Twice. (Some drives may have a header marked 'test', don't put a jumper on it.... (Yes I did this once...) Take it slow, you'll get it sorted.... Myself, I hate IDE, what's all this 'cable select' nonsense...
 :-D

[Tenacious]

There are rules of thumb with SCSI the same as any other interface.

There can be upto 8 devices in a SCSI daisy chain, each with a unique address, 0 thru 7.  The controller is usually address 7, leaving room for 7 peripherals.  You must ensure that no two devices are jumpered to the same address, conflicted.  The address does not determine physically where in the chain a device is located.

From the controller, the chain can radiate in two directions: external devices connected from the D-sub 25 connector, and internal devices on the ribbon cable inside the machine.  There may be no external devices and only a HD internally.

Termination: only the last physical device at the two ends of the chain should/must be terminated.


Google will turn up more in-depth info about SCSI.  The rest is going to be unique to your card.

[jrfjunior]

SCSI was the Amiga standard but now is a dead standard. As IDE becomes widely available then pos Amiga IDE adapters becames popular. For me the future will be USB 3.0 (with faster transfer rates and the easily connection of this kind of hardware).

spaceman88 wrote:
Hi,
I started working on my never ending project again ( an A4000D in a toaster oven tower). It was mostly disassembled when I received it, but had an IDE boot drive and a SCSI drive that wasn't connected to anything. I tried putting in a few of the SCSI cards (a DKB Rapidfire, Alpfa Data Octagon, a GVP card and an ICD card). The computer sees the board but not the drive. Is there something special I'm supposed to do? I tried jumpers in different positions, but no luck.
Thanks, Len

[DoogUK]

SCSI is far from dead and is still faster and better than ide which uses lots of cpu overhead.

[HopperJF]

SCSI and IDE are dead.

SATA is the new standard.

[Floid]

HopperJF wrote:
SCSI and IDE are dead.

SATA is the new standard.

Don't forget SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI).  I gather the enterprisey thing to do is to use SAS controllers (as preinstalled on modern server boards) with mostly SATA disks.  (Of course, this is a big difference between SAS and prior SCSI flavors... these days the entire industry is aligned around making SATA and SAS play nice together and complement each other, hence the SATA-in-SAS and SATA-right-into-a-SAS-controller support.)

SATA is plenty "good enough" that there's basically no reason for a home user to go SAS (the benefits probably don't show until you have 128+ disks to juggle), though I still expect full SAS controllers to start trickling down once southbridges go through another couple die shrinks and someone convinces the overclocker/gamer crowd that SAS will somehow improve their framerates or level load times.

[terminator4]

finally a post that makes sense.  
scsi is not dead. :roll: Serial-ATA is in use on home PCs.  SAS/iSCSI on networks/servers.  Hence, it makes no sense for a "cheap" home user to spend big money on SCSI today. In early 80s/90s SCSI was used as its performance was visibly better than IDE/ata.  

[CLS2086]

I can use SCA-80 HDD (7200/10000 rpm) on all my amiga scsi systems :rtfm:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Connector_Attachment

[terminator4]

So what?  What does this have to do with the discussion here?
(someone said SCSI being dead)  Unless you mean its not dead, b/c you can use your SCA SCSI drives on your Amiga?

[save2600]

Within the past few years, various friends have literally given me their companies old Dell servers. Talk about heavy metal! I used one as weight in the back of my trunk one winter. lol  But to those that think SCSI is "dead"... each one of those servers had a wicked SCSI setup in 'em. I've got about 12 drives over here and a couple of PCI<>SCSI2 cards just waiting to be used. And like another user posted... get yourself those 50 pin adapters and you'll be golden!!    

Funny though... the CD-ROMS, floppies and DAT/tape backup units were all IDE in those systems.