Once upon a time, I loved SCSI. (Was: Help! Is this kernel or hardwareproblem?)

[Benjamin Scott]

On Nov 27 at 8:26pm, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>>> ... and Mac's 25-pin-looks-like-a-serial-connector bit).
>>
>>   Apple Kludge.  It was "SCSI" in the same way that "Windows 95" was a 
>> multi-tasking, memory-protected operating system.
>
> How were the SCSI Macs a kludge?

   "Apple Kludge" is the term the SCSI industry came up with to describe the 
25 conductor "SCSI" variant Apple perpetrated.  8-bit SCSI uses 50 
conductors.  Apple crammed that into half as many, mainly by tying most of 
the grounds together.  It stomps all over the SCSI standard.  It made later 
improvements like differential signaling outright incompatible.

   "Apple Kludge" doesn't refer to anything other then that.

   Of course, it's been perpetuated into more modern times by other vendors, 
mainly due to the fact that it's cheap.  IOMega, I know, loved it.

> They had a full SCSI implementation, could run hard disks, scanners, 
> printers, etc. with almost no fuss ..

   I never really played with the Mac all *that* much, but their strong 
support of SCSI was always impressive.  Pity it never transferred over to 
the IBM-PC desktop world (servers being another thing entirely).  Similar 
thing happened with FireWire, which has a number of advantages over USB. 
Sigh.

> The Powerbooks were the first laptops with access to external storage.

   I remember one of the neat features being the ability to shut down the 
Powerbook and use the internal hard disk as an external disk for another 
host.  That would be damn handy to have these days.

> I did Mac and PC tech support in the early 90's and the Mac SCSI gear 
> always worked when it was cabled correctly

   I encountered some problems *way* back in the dawn of my computer usage, 
trying to use a generic SCSI hard disk in a Macintosh at the school.  It 
didn't "just work".  Apparently there is/was some special "signature" or 
something that needs to be written to the disk before the Mac software will 
deign to use it.  The local Apple shop needed to be consulted.  They lectured 
us about non-Apple-approved hardware.  Their Apple-brand disk worked on the 
first try.  It just cost significantly more.

   Things likely improved (in fact, I know they did), but I've never liked 
being held hostage by gratuitously incompatible hardware.  My first home PC, 
a Tandy 1000, taught me that lesson well!  So that experience left a bad 
taste in my mouth.

> ... the Adaptec DOS drivers and ASPI were a bit more persnickety.

   DOS?  Touchy?  Unreliable, even?  No way!  ;)

-- 
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>