[Herefordshire] SCSI hardware

[EdwardFW at aol.com]

Graham

In general, if the kit itself is suitably compliant for the relevant SCSI 
standard, and properly configured / terminated, you should be able to connect all 
sorts of SCSI stuff to the same adaptor, up to the limit in numbers for the 
type of adaptor you are using. They try to make it backwards compatible but you 
generally want to group stuff of about the same era / standard which helps re 
performance, compatibility and cabling issues. I would have to look it up but 
I think you would slow down a fast item (e.g. a good hard drive) if you had 
something ancient and plodding, in use, on the same daisy chain. I don't think 
this would be a problem for the kit you mention.

I have a couple of cards I am not using which you can borrow to experiment 
with if you wish. An Adaptec AHA 2940W / 2940UW which is PCI. And an Iomega Zip 
Zoom which is ISA.  

The Adaptec may be more sophisticated than you need. If you can inform 
yourself properly there may be cheap, and limited, but good enough cards about e.g. 
on eBay that will allow your devices to perform at their best, such as the 
Iomega. We have a SCSI scanner that came with its own card. A snag with the small 
cheap cards can be that you need some knowledge to string more than just the 
one item onto them, whereas the full blown cards are ready for this, with a 
manual full of settings to have fun with. But the Iomega manual says that you 
can connect another device to an Iomega Zip SCSI drive, so their card might well 
work for you if you still have ISA. I think we successfully ran something an 
Iomega and something else off it at one time. 
But if you have enough free slots, at least under Windows, it was not a 
problem to have more than one SCSI card, and the cabling might be easier that way. 
I.e. If you have a cable for the scanner and a card that takes the cable, 
ditto the CD, whereas you might not have a cable to go from scanner to CD. Check 
what you would do with cables and cable adaptors or you can find that the 
devices were cheap but the project definitely was not, though I expect eBay will 
help with this. 

Good luck, Edward FW
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