25 Apr
2025
25 Apr
'25
6:25 a.m.
At 11:34 PM 4/24/2025, Travis Pierce via cctalk wrote:
I just now used one tonight to image a JAZ disk that I
found. I used DD on
a modern Linux box. These little bridges do come in handy and are pretty
convenient. I really like mine quite a bit.
I was hoping they just present the SCSI drive as a block device to
the operating system, did not require proprietary software,
and that they'd work under modern Windows as well.
My only criticism is that
once you have it all connected (USB, Power, SCSI Drive) there are
literally wires everywhere, but that's just how SCSI was.
And then there's the blood sacrifice. Fortunately I have bales of cables.
At 10:19 PM 4/24/2025, Henry Bent wrote:
Oh, one more click and I would have gotten there...Â
<https://web.archive.org/web/20060831144110/http://www.digitalintelligence.com/files/UltraBlockUSB_Manual.pdf>https://web.archive.org/web/20060831144110/http://www.digitalintelligence.com/files/UltraBlockUSB_Manual.pdf
That is the bridge for forensically reading USB devices.
Mine is for SCSI devices, like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/387890903599
or
https://web.archive.org/web/20060421102553/http://www.digitalintelligence.c…
I looked at https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.digitalintelligence.com/files/*
but did not see the UltraBlock model "T4" manual.
- John
25 Apr
25 Apr
7:01 a.m.
New subject: Digital Intelligence UltraBlock-SCSI bridge to USB/FW
Yes. No driver is needed. I've used it on both Windows and Linux and it
just works. I don't have a manual, but I connect the SCSI device before I
power on the UltraBlock. I turn on the UltraBlock and wait a few moments
then power up the SCSI device. After the SCSI detect light turns green, I
then plug in the USB to the computer. The host detect light should turn
green at this time and it will show itself to the OS.
On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 7:31 AM John Foust via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
At 11:34 PM 4/24/2025, Travis Pierce via cctalk
wrote:
I just now used one tonight to image a JAZ disk
that I found. I used DD
on
a modern Linux box. These little bridges do come
in handy and are pretty
convenient. I really like mine quite a bit.
I was hoping they just present the SCSI drive as a block device to
the operating system, did not require proprietary software,
and that they'd work under modern Windows as well.
My only criticism is that
once you have it all connected (USB, Power, SCSI Drive) there are
literally wires everywhere, but that's just how SCSI was.
And then there's the blood sacrifice. Fortunately I have bales of cables.
28 Apr
28 Apr
6:46 a.m.
New subject: Digital Intelligence UltraBlock-SCSI bridge to USB/FW
I've got several different versions of this. They came with the EnCase
Forensic Imager package. EnCase got picked up by Tableau back in the day,
and at some point apparently OpenText bought them. I don't do forensics
any more, but EnCase is/was the gold standard in US courts for forensic
recovery of digital media; that is, if you can show proper use of the tool,
opposing counsel can't nit-pick the provenance of the data (yes, I know
there's more to it than that...this isn't a digital forensics lecture).
It's been a while since I mucked with them, but in my experience the
devices are self-contained functionally and try to be as transparent as
possible to the OS, so you shouldn't need a device driver just to use them
as a bridge (other than the device driver you'd need to use the target
device). Travis pretty much has it right in how to deal with them. In
this case, the only 'active' part the device visibly participates in is
blocking writes if you've selected that on the device. If you're doing
actual recovery, there's more software involved (mostly preventing the OS
from butting in and changing anything in the datastream, AFAIK). And yes,
I've used them to mount old SCSI drives on USB without issue, assuming
there's nothing underlying like odd block sizes going on.
KJ
On Sat, Apr 26, 2025 at 2:07 AM Travis Pierce via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yes. No driver is needed. I've used it on both
Windows and Linux and it
just works. I don't have a manual, but I connect the SCSI device before I
power on the UltraBlock. I turn on the UltraBlock and wait a few moments
then power up the SCSI device. After the SCSI detect light turns green, I
then plug in the USB to the computer. The host detect light should turn
green at this time and it will show itself to the OS.
On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 7:31 AM John Foust via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
cables.
At 11:34 PM 4/24/2025, Travis Pierce via cctalk
wrote:
pretty
I just now used one tonight to image a JAZ disk
that I found. I used DD
on
>a modern Linux box. These little bridges do come in handy and are
convenient. I really like mine quite a bit.
I was hoping they just present the SCSI drive as a block device to
the operating system, did not require proprietary software,
and that they'd work under modern Windows as well.
My only criticism is that
once you have it all connected (USB, Power, SCSI Drive) there are
literally wires everywhere, but that's just how SCSI was.
And then there's the blood sacrifice. Fortunately I have bales of
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days inactive
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days old
2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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John Foust -
Ken Seefried -
Travis Pierce