SCSI2SD: Is it worth a try?

Sophie Haskins sophaskins at sophaskins.net
Tue Mar 19 07:58:58 CDT 2019


I've had pretty great luck with using SCSI2SDs in my various mostly-90s workstations (https://blog.pizzabox.computer/, among a few others). In a few cases (VAXstation 4000 VLC, Quadra 610) you need to put the settings to emulate a "real" model of drive, but otherwise compatibility has been pretty good.

Someone later in the thread mentioned tape support - I haven't used it, but the configuration utility has the option to set a given SCSI ID to present itself as a tape drive. I have a feeling I'm gonna need to explore this when I get around to trying to get my Sun 3/80 running...

Sophie
 
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Charles Dickman via cctalk
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 10:16 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: SCSI2SD: Is it worth a try?

What is the experience with the SCSI2SD with old computers? It looks to be
SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 compatible and I see a lot of reports of usage on this list. I am curious about how well it works and which version to get.

Versions up to 5 seem to be GPLed and reasonably available. V6 does not seem to have schematics or boards open sourced and I haven't seen a supplier for them. The web page lists some sources, but they don't have the
V6 available.

It looks like the V6 is not open because someone used the design without following the GPL.

V6 claims synchronous transfers, but I don't think most of my hardware supports it. That consists of VAXstations and qbus scsi cards. If I was after speed I wouldn't be using old hardware, but the speed has to be consistent with the era.

Chuck


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