os24u{at}wisdomtree.info wrote:
>  Soon time to get my scsi scanner: Umax astra 610s functioning.  Since
I heard wonderful stories of scsi hard drives considering setting up a
> scsi hard drive with usb external backup drive and scsi scanner.  Have
the above mentioned scanner and a pci Adaptec 2940UW controller.
>
> The scanner cable is 25 pin, the controller has a 68 pin external
connector and 68 and 50 internal.  
>
> Do I have the wrong controller card for this scanner?  Some adapter required?
> If also installing a hard drive does it matter if it is 50, 68 or 80 pin?
> Is there a certain size of drive that will not work with a particular
pin layout?  Is the bios involved and if so how does one determine what
bios
> level?
>
>  Never built a scsi system, setup a microchannel scsi once but there
was no tweaking needed.
>
>         Cal
>   
Hi Cal,

Can't assist with the scanner part - never had a SCSI one, only 
parallel, but you can usually determine the BIOS level by fitting it in 
a PCI slot and after the usual motherboard POST data has displayed, 
observe the Adaptec banner that is briefly on the screen. If it's not 
disabled in the SCSI card's setup, there will be displayed on the screen 
at that time a message to "Press
   to access SCSI BIOS" or wording to that effect.

Top transfer rate on a 2940UW is 40MB/second on the 68-pin channel 
AFAIR. The 50-pin is limited to AFAIR, 10MB/second
Drive size on that controller is originally somewhere around 8-9GB with 
early BIOSes, more recent ones 2.57 and 3.10 can handle larger ones, 
possibly up to ~30GB or so.

Any 80-pin SCSI disks are either SCA or SCA-2 type, and usually are 
pulls from servers, where they are usually hot-swap drives sitting in 
slide-open drawers with a backplane permanently fitted to the rear of 
the drawers' mating enclosure. They are LVD {low voltage differential} 
and run faster than SE {single-ended} designation disks. The 2940UW 
takes either type - usually the older ones are LVD/SE, but they need to 
have a jumper to be restricted to SE IIRC.

I ran an 80-pin 10K RPM Seagate Cheetah for several years off a 50-pin 
(8-bit) Adaptec AHA-2940AU controller, by using a "Z" shaped mini-PCB 
adapter that had the 80-pin connector on one side and both a 68-pin and 
a 50-pin connector on the other side, with no problems whatsoever - in 
fact until the day it got hit by lightning up my ADSL line. :'(  Those 
PCB adapters have a separate 4-pin Molex power connector, same as on a 
regular IDE-disk power socket.
80-pin connectors include the power signals along with the data signals 
in the one streamlined connector - especiallt for hot-plugging.

I currently have a somewhat shallower 80-pin/68-pin adapter - that was 
about US$9.95 or so.

That plug on the scanner sounds like a 50-connector Centronics - sure 
it's not 25 on each side? I have an external Plextor 2x CD-ROM and that 
has a round rubberised very stiff cable with a Centronics that connects 
to it, but has a higher density 50-pin male connector [of similar 
appearance to the normal 68-pin males found on a regular (16-bit) 
wide-SCSI cable] on the external 50-pin connector of the Adapter, so it 
sounds like all you need to get is that cable - have a look at e.g. 
SCSI4Me.com

HTH

Regards,
Mike

-- 
Failed the exam for
--------------------
MCSE - Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert
--------------------
Personal replies to any of :
mikeoc (at) internode (dot) on (dot) net
mikeoc (at) austarnet (dot) com (dot) au
majilok (at) gmail (dot) com
[Please ZIP any attachments, other than GIF/JPG or plain-text]


 
Yahoo! Groups Links

 To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/os2hardware/

 Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

 To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/os2hardware/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

 To change settings via email:
    mailto:os2hardware-digest{at}yahoogroups.com 
    mailto:os2hardware-fullfeatured{at}yahoogroups.com

 To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    os2hardware-unsubscribe{at}yahoogroups.com

 Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 

---