[RndTbl] Need to borrow a SCSI Controller

[Alberto Abrao]

On 2023-01-12 21:41, Adam Thompson wrote:
>
> Luckily for Alberto, there’s basically no such thing as a passive HD68 
> or VHCI terminator, so anything he finds that’s physically compatible 
> will also be electrically compatible with Ultra160 signalling.
>
> Terminators of all flavours are – amazingly – still easy to get on 
> both Amazon and eBay, and at not-insane prices, too.
>
My first worry was to buy a bunch of things and something - e.g. the 
tape drive - is not working.

If I can at least hook it all up and see if the tape drive will read the 
tape in the first place... but at that point, might as well keep going, 
read all of them, be done with this vintage of tape for good.

> Oh, and LSI did make the LSi20320IE chip, which is a PCIe Ultra320 HBA 
> controller – I see one on Amazon for only $115?!?  The overwhelming 
> majority of Ultra320 and Ultra160 adapters were PCI-X, which means 
> server-class motherboards only; you **usually** have to go down to 
> Ultra-Fast Wide (80MB/sec) before plain PCI could keep up.  (PCI was 
> limited to 133MB/sec, you can do the math!)  66MHz PCI (266MB/sec) 
> really only existed in PCI-X anyway, so there you go…
>
Ultrium 2 maxing out at 80MB/s means I should be OK with PCI.
>
> A word of warning, if you’re buying a SCSI HBA (card), make sure you 
> do NOT get a RAID card – those are often useless for tape drives.
>
I am trying my best not to buy anything, not because I am not able to, 
but because I am hoping that'll be the last time we'll use this 
particular tape drive, making it pointless. Unless we must, then it is 
what it is.

Still, I appreciate the input, as it may happen that we end up keeping 
it around for whatever reason. You know what they say about hope, it 
springs eternal.

> (If I hadn’t done a major purge 3 yrs ago when I moved, I would still 
> have all the bits and pieces needed.  Oh well.)
>
If you hadn't done a major purge 3 years ago, no one would be asking for 
it. More often than not, we keep it around just to *not* need it. That's 
the only explanation I have for only needing things I've purged *after* 
the purge... sigh.... ;)
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