The Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, pronounced scuzzy) that every Mac from the Mac Plus on has supported (except for the iMac and the Blue & White Power Mac G3) is a mixed blessing. SCSI is a parallel interface, meaning that bits of data travel alongside each other rather than in tandem like they do […]
Tag Archives: SCSI
SCSI isn’t the black art it sometimes seems to be, but the various terms different people use for the same thing makes it tough to sort out. I hope the following lessens the confusion.
Hard drive capacity is limited not only by how densely bits can be packed on a magnetic platter, but also by the number of sectors and tracks and drive surfaces in the drive itself and the number the computer’s operating system is designed to handle.
1999 – I have a Performa 6400 and am looking to upgrade my hard drive. I do not want to buy an external drive. Should I upgrade the IDE hard drive or add a SCSI drive to the bay above the CD-ROM?
The article on SCSI Component Order generated some excellent feedback and dialogue. The following comments were written by Keith Bumgarner of MacInformed, the author of the original article.
Per a few private requests, I found enough interest to post a thesis for all to see about the SCSI ID 5 issue.
Sometimes getting a SCSI chain working properly seems to be more hit and miss than science. We know the last device should be terminated, that the chain should not exceed a certain length, and that every device must have a unique ID. But even that isn’t enough to consistently build a busy SCSI chain and […]
Apple popularized SCSI (small computer system interface) by making it a standard feature on the third Macintosh, the Mac Plus, which was introduced in January 1986. Although Apple only embraced a subset of the emerging SCSI standard, the new bus allowed chaining up to seven peripherals to the computer. The 8-bit parallel interface was theoretically […]
1997 – Surprising to many, the first Macs didn’t have SCSI. The Apple design team created a compact, closed box with a disk drive, CPU, monitor, 128 KB of RAM, keyboard and mouse ports, a floppy drive port, and two serial ports. The serial ports were the secret – they could support a 230.4 Kbps […]
