🚀 go-pugleaf

c art (cart@umich.edu) wrote:
: *****************
: SCSI HELL: THANKS
: *****************

: I wish to thank the many people who offered me advice regarding my trip to
: Scuzzy Hell. I got too many responses to write to individually (??!).
: Definitely the first time that's ever happened to me in three years on the
: Net, and a nice thing to remember. 

: I tried everything that was offered as advice, though not all possible
: permutations. Keeping the original configuration [7100 --> Zip drive -->
: Epson 1200C scanner], but with a Digitally Active Terminator and APS
: cables finally seems to have done the trick. At least, still waiting for
: the blowup -- will be looking askance at SCSI equipment for a long while
: to come. Now feel that every SCSI peripheral should be shipping with a
: DAT. At least a warning sheet -- "You have purchased a SCSI device --
: please be prepared for any contingency."

Actually, in the case of the ZIP drive, they should have included a
warning: "The 25 pin connectors included on this drive are illegal as
hell, as anyone with minimal reading skills can see by looking at
the SCSI spec.  Use of this device can cause data loss on hard disks,
bus lockups, failure to communicate with devices, and even nastier
problems".

: Most interesting to me was that _every single person_ seems to have a
: _different_ recipe as a solution. To the individuals who referred to a
: "SCSI standard," I just had to laugh. That's clearly an oxymoron.

There's a very well written ANSI standard covering SCSI.  Please blame
the vendors who sell junk that blatantly violates the standard, rather
than the standard itself.  In your case, the ZIP drive used illegal
connectors, forcing the use of illegal cables.  The 25 to 50 pin
cables sold are give rise to horrible signal quality problems.  Blame
Apple or blame Iomega, but not SCSI.  You never had a SCSI system to
blame.

When you use quality hardware that meets the standard, configuring SCSI
can really be as easy as assigning unique bus addresses, and watching the
max bus length limitation.