I had heard that Apple did the DB-25 thing because the HD-50 hadn't been standardized yet and they didn't have enough back-panel real estate on the Plus for a 50-pin ribbon/Centronics type. Better Apple SCSI cables have enough girth to where I think they have the grounds internally, but they are wired in the connectors up to fewer pins, or the shield, or somesuch hack. For simple scanner use, a well-shielded (thick-girth) everyhing-connected DB-25 to DB-25 is something that I've used in the past. The Apple SCSI implementation is not pushing the performance boundary at all on the external port, I think it's asynchronous SCSI-1. Q950s and many PowerMacs have dual-SCSI, so your scanner can be on "substandard" wiring without messing up your drive chain, not sure about the 800 or 840. I have an interesting SCSI cable - its a ribbon/pin-header but has shields for "external" use. I think it might have gone with the ComputerVision CADDstation that I gave away (that had all pin-header connections with some sort of funky ground wipe that would connect the shield on this cable.) Was this ever something approaching standard, or was this CV proprietary (or was it not CV SCSI and just looks like it)?