🚀 go-pugleaf

jfw@proteon.com (John Woods) writes:

>e4315555@student.uq.edu.au (Peter Naylor) writes:
>>>Does anyone know if SCSI drives sold for IBM-PCs are compatible with
>>>the MAc - specifically internal LC-II slot?
>>>They seem to be a fair bit cheaper  - why?  SCSI is SCSI isn't it?
>>Yes, SCSI is SCSI, generally.
>>I guess the answer about the Mac dealers' prices is that they can 
>>generally get away with it because a lot of Mac owners think they are 
>>sufficiently different that they need special "Macintosh hard-drives".  

>Perhaps things are radically different in Australia;

I doubt it, but it could be I guess...

>here in the US, I've
>usually found that PC vendors sell SCSI drives for more than Mac vendors
>do.  (I'll admit that I haven't looked very hard in the PC vendor world,
>sticking mostly to the vendors that look like they'll be in business next
>year rather than in prison...  this does, however, cut me off from most of
>the PC vendor world :-)

I don't own and I hate using PC clones... but I think that remark is a 
little over the top!

>In fact, I've occasionally seen Mac vendors sell
>SCSI drives for _less_ than PC vendors sell the equivalent IDE drives  --
>though this usually happens only at the end of a drive's manufacturing life,
>where it's possible that the SCSI marketing channel runs low on drives before
>the IDE marketing channel.  (It may also be that the Mac market is more
>dominated by business buyers than the PC market, and thus the vendors expect
>the average market-savviness of the buyers to be higher.)

I don't think that's the reason at all...

But yes, I've seen some retailers here sell the SCSI model for less than 
another retailer sells the IDE version, but never have I seen the same 
retailer sell the SCSI model for less than the IDE drive at the same time.

>However, Mac drive vendors usually have two associated costs that the PC
>drive vendors do not have (which _really_ has to make you wonder about US
>PC vendors!):  Mac drives are usually (not always) sold with mounting
>brackets, and they are _always_ sold with formatting/driver software.
>PC drives don't need formatting software, since they rely on the adapter's
>built-in driver.

Well, the only experience I've had with SCSI on a PC was when I installed 
a Sony magneto-optical and Adaptec controller on one of the machines at 
work.  It certainly needed a "driver" type file, and it came with the 
controller, not built-in.  I know, I'm being pedantic!  I haven't actually 
bought a drive from a PC or Mac dealer as such, I have only bought from an 
Amiga dealer, and also from the Australian importer.  I found that the 
import company supplied me with RAM for half the price quoted by ANY 
dealer, and the drive significantly cheaper.

Having to include mounting brackets is rather silly... my machine came 
with the brackets inside, so I don't have to worry about that sort of 
thing, and it doesn't incur any extra cost on the part of the drive 
seller.

I guess the main question is... are there any good prepping and 
partitioning packages for the Mac that are freely distributable.  I've 
never had any trouble with that sort of software for my machines, but what 
about the Mac?  I can't think of a single thing that Apple could change in 
the ROMs to improve the performance of a SCSI drive with their machines, 
there are only two things I can think of that would justify that strategy...

1.  To be able to charge whatever they feel like for a real "Apple" drive, 
which is of course "special" for "special" Mac users...

2.  To inhibit the use of some SCSI functions and lock the drive into 
certain modes, because of some inadequacies with the Apple SCSI controller 
when it comes to certain standard SCSI settings.  Perhaps Apple wants to 
stop the users from being able to select between synchronous and 
asynchronous transfer modes, or to stop them from choosing whether 
reselection is used, or to stop them from setting the (dis)connect bit on 
a Quantum drive.  Who knows... but it sounds like an attempt to stop users 
from trying to get the best performance from their systems to me, and that 
sucks.

In any case, I still think it's just a case of looking around for the best 
SCSI deal you can get, whether it be from a Mac/PC/Amiga/Sun or whatever 
dealer, or even from the distributor of a particular brand of drive.  I'd 
be of the opinion that if a drive which adheres well to the SCSI standard 
doesn't work with a standard Mac, with the standard system software (ie, 
not costing any extra, PD is fine), then Apple has ripped you off when it 
comes to supplying a SCSI interface.