80 or 68 pin SCSI?

Mikey1280 · 5 Mar 2006 at 13:59

Hi, I am thinking about getting scsi and have seen that there are many second hand 80 pin drives available but not many 80 pin controllers. Will it have a detrimental effect if I use an 80 pin scsi drive on a 68 pin card with an adaptor? Or should I buy 68 pin in the first place?

basmic · 5 Mar 2006 at 15:28

All I will say, is adaptors are much more hassle than they are worth.

I tried to do it cheap, bought a 50-pin card, 68-pin drives - but the convertor let me down, so bought a 68-pin card in the end.

Mikey1280 · 5 Mar 2006 at 15:29

Ok thanks basmic, will try an avoid convertors then.

MAllen · 5 Mar 2006 at 16:17

80-pin kit is designed for a hot swap enviroment. This is why you see so many on available. They are being salvaged from hot swap servers.

I have 68-pin drives in my system. Though I also haev a couple of 80-pin drives which work fine with the adapters I have. Main thing is to make sure the adaptor is a true LVD one as not all are made to the same quality.

As to 50-pin devices - this is the old standard for SCSI. And the slower standard. So basmic's setup would have been loosing the speed advantages that the 68-pin deivce would have had.

Check my sig for a nice TekRAM SCSI card. I always used to buy Adaptec, but then realised how much cash I was wasting. TekRAM is just as good (if not better) and they include all of the cables and terminators that you need. A bargin as these items can be pricy (up to £80 for a decent cable, and £20 for a terminator)

If you have the cash, then SCSI is noticable fast.... but it will demolish your wallet more than any other disk system.

johnnyboy32 · 6 Mar 2006 at 08:30

MAllen, what kind of adapter do you have. I have a U320 80 pin scsi drive and a 68 pin Adaptec controller. I tried to purchase an adapter from a local store but was told by the salesman that the adapters don't support full speed and I would be limited to 80 Mb/s transfer rate. Does your adapter support full U320 transfers and if so what model is it. Thanks in advance

MAllen · 6 Mar 2006 at 10:07

Hi johnnyboy32 - can't really give you enough details. Just like all of the adapters I have owned, there is no real marking on it. Just raw circuitry. And I only had old drives to use it with anyway, so no real way to test for full speed or not.

If you get stuck, I could check with my guy if his run at full speed.