{"id":107,"date":"2008-06-30T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T07:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=107"},"modified":"2013-06-09T11:10:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T18:10:10","slug":"i-remember-scsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"I Remember SCSI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time . . . the best way to add truly powerful external gizmos to your PC was using something called the SCSI standard<\/em>.
\n
\nThe Small Computer Serial Interface, or SCSI, was fast. It was pronounced scuzzy<\/em>, so everyone enjoyed saying it. But SCSI was poorly implemented.<\/p>\n

Back in 1988, I purchased a 60MB (yes, that’s megabytes<\/em>) external hard drive for my Macintosh SE computer. It was a SCSI drive, which meant two things: I needed a SCSI cable to connect the drive to the Mac, plus I needed to terminate<\/em> the SCSI connection. Don’t be appalled at the lingo.<\/p>\n

You see, SCSI allows you to daisy chain one device after another to a single computer, up to 6 devices (if I recall correctly). Each device has to have its own SCSI ID, numbered 1 through 6. The computer was SCSI device zero. Setting the device ID was an ordeal for some gizmos. For my external hard drive, there was a dial on the back that set the ID. Other devices used jumpers or some other oddball method to set the ID. No two devices could have the same ID. But worse than setting the ID, the last device in the chain had to be terminated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

No, that doesn’t mean that the device had to be killed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Termination was the process by which you ended the SCSI daisy chain, explaining the SCSI interface that a specific device was the last in the chain. Without terminating the last device, none of the devices would work. Yes, that was a pain.<\/p>\n

Later in life I bought more SCSI gizmos. I had external SCSI hard drives, tape backup drives, and nifty magneto-optical drives. On one PC I had four SCSI devices all nicely daisy chained and connected. To accommodate them I had a plethora of SCSI cables, some thicker than a garden hose and nearly impossible to bend.<\/p>\n

Worse than the thick, gangly SCSI cables were the connectors. There was a variety of SCSI connectors and, like computer printers, SCSI devices never came with cables. So to accommodate all the different cables and connectors, I collected a small clutch of SCSI adapters.<\/p>\n

\"adapters\"<\/p>\n

Above on the left is a 50-pin “mini” to “regular” SCSI adapter. Another adapter is in the middle. The gizmo on the far right is SCSI terminator.<\/p>\n

Back in 2004 or so, I tossed out all my SCSI gizmos and their assortment of stout, now-useless cables. But I kept the connectors. I’m guessing that the adapters survived because they’re small and they have lurked in the bottom of a storage bin for years. Or perhaps I kept them because they cost $50 each. But I guess I keep them because they’re relics of a bygone era.<\/p>\n

Bygone and good riddance!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time . . . the best way to add truly powerful external gizmos to your PC was using something called the SCSI standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}