[RndTbl] Need to borrow a SCSI Controller

[Adam Thompson]

Amazingly, no, there was actually a SCSI over USB transport defined circa the USB 1.x specs.  The bigger problem is all those devices will be USB2.0 at best, and typically only came with the DB25 (DE-25 for the pedands int he crowd) plug.

Fun fact: did you know that ATA (the hybrid step in between IDE and SATA) is more or less just SCSI-over-IDE?  And SATA is pretty darn close to being just SCSI-over-serialized-IDE.

Talk about a love/hate relationship...
-Adam
________________________________
From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces at muug.ca> on behalf of John Lange <john at johnlange.ca>
Sent: January 13, 2023 2:11 PM
To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable at muug.ca>
Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Need to borrow a SCSI Controller

Once upon a time they made a USB-to-SCSI adaptor and it worked more or less out of the box with Windows and Linux. Sadly there is no such thing anymore so you'd have to find one used. Also, I suspect it wouldn't work with tapes because I think it makes the drive just show up as generic USB storage which means you probably can't send the tape commands to it.

John


On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 12:40 PM Alberto Abrao <alberto at abrao.net<mailto:alberto at abrao.net>> wrote:
On 2023-01-13 01:02, Trevor Cordes wrote:

> VHDCI would be a bit weird on that cable at the HBA side (going from
> memory)?

Here:

End #1: https://cloud.abrao.net/s/GCHFd9aycJRnncf

End #2: https://cloud.abrao.net/s/NgRjBY9S4KYfKHb

> Ya, you'll have to do pics, or just come on over one evening and we'll
> make it work.  If you want to wait until after your trip and you're in
> no big rush, could do it at the next-next board meeting.

My timelines are a lot tighter than that, I am afraid.

> Adam's note of drive termination may be correct and that will solve
> that problem if you can crack open the case.
Guess I'll have to, although I am trying to avoid that.
> My idea of making the
> thing internal by taking it out of its case is probably the way to go.
> If you're cracking it open to flip a termination DIP then you might as
> well just get it all running via internal.  Hell, you can probably just
> have it hanging half out the system ("an internal external!").
If it comes down to that...
> You may have trouble putting together the required external cables from
> MUUG members without ordering something (and waiting...) if you try to
> make it work all-external.

Per my calculations, we would use 2x LTO-8 tapes *at most* to fit the
contents of all Ultrium 2 tapes we have They're also on the the lower
range of their expected life span (15-30 years, as per Wikipedia).

> Checking checking... nope, not I; so another vote for an internal
> solution.

Greg offered exactly what I'd need to perform this task without messing
with the drive, which seems to be working OK - we ran a cleaning tape on
it this morning.

With that said, I need to get on it fairly soon, so I'll have to get it
going one way or the other. I may just go down that path, if needed.

> Don't worry, much of your stuff is still here, and I'll let Alberto
> know if he needs to thank you for the loaner part :-)
>
To be fair, I should do that already: thank you Greg, Adam, Trevor, and
Hartmut, for the input!

Kind regards,
Alberto Abrao

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--
John Lange

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